The life of Käthe Kollwitzspanned one of the grimmest periods in Western history; as an adult German she witnessed the horrors of two world wars, losing a son to the first and a grandson to the second. The Gestapo nearly imprisoned her and her husband for their refusal to support the Third Reich. Covering her eyes and mouth seems to be the only sane reaction.
"The Lamentation" (1941-42)
Yet she did neither, so clear-eyed--even at 23--that the viewer may be more likely to turn away when confronting her work. Kollwitz never painted pretty pictures. Instead, her artistic credo screams "stop this insanity" from the perspective of a woman, wife, mother and lover.
Self-Portrait, Turned Slightly to the Left (ca 1893)
Trained as a painter, Kollwitz abandoned color early in her career.
"Uprising" (state I, 1899)
She began making prints to reach a wider audience and looked back nearly five centuries to the German Peasants War to create a timeless image of the violence men inflict on women. Given the events to come, her work is almost prescient.
"Raped" from "Peasant's War" (1907-08)
She also exposed herself to unrelenting scrutiny. This work, never exhibited in her lifetime, depicts an extramarital affair whose passion remains raw and undeniable. She nevertheless persisted in her marriage to a Berlin physician--whose working-class clientele reaffirmed her left-wing politics--for nearly 50 years until his death in 1940. Kollwitz died months before the defeat of the Nazis.
"Love Scene I" (1909-10)
A humanist and a pacifist, Kollwitz chose the murder of a communist as the subject of her first woodcut, establishing the style which led to her current reputation as a German expressionist. Her MoMA retrospective demonstrates illustrates her career-defining grief in many different forms.
The simplicity of this work conveys emotion so powerfully that it's almost painful to behold.
"The Widow" from "War" (1921-22)
Oddly, Wikipedia doesn't mention that her bust is the most recent addition to Wallhalla, the grand Bavarian temple erected by King Ludwig I to make Germans proud of their heritage. The sculptor captures her unflinching, accusatory gaze.
Welcome to the wild, wonderful world of Joan Jonas whose weird (in a good way!) work has somehow eluded me for my entire life. She's 88.
The backdrop of this video shows her at home in Cape Breton Island, which I missed during a visit to Nova Scotia nearly a decade ago.
Jonas is particularly good at engaging her audience, or perhaps this is yet another example of the selfie generation running amok in a museum.
As much as I loved the Guggenheim's 2022 retrospective of Alex Katz, MoMA makes equally great spatial use of its auditorium to hang "Seasons," a more recent work.
With Chris in town exploring the vibes of post-retirement residence in New York City, the Three Amigos spent several successive Saturdays taking advantage of its museum offerings.
Sultry J. C. Leyendecker spent five decades depicting idealized beefcake on magazine covers--more than 350 for the Saturday Evening Post--and in print ads.
1874-1951
Although the exhibit at the Historical Society was small, the thrust was unmistakable. Look no further than below the tasseled belt in this Ivory soap ad!
It's probably not how the curators of this superb exhibit would like you to think of the Sassoons, but as Chris observed as soon as we read about how the opium trade seeded the family's fortune: "Maybe there's hope yet for the Sacklers."
David Sassoon, the "Treasurer of Bagdhad" and family patriarch, was forced to flee his homeland in the early 19th century. He moved to India and China before his he and his descendants--known as the "Rothschilds of the East"--finally settled in England where their assiduous efforts at assimilation into polite society paid off handsomely. Beauty ran in the family and marrying bankers helped, of course. Shortly after wedding a German one, Rachel commissioned this lovely portrait but the other Sassoons disowned her after she converted from Judaism to Christianity.
This French Rothschild married into the Sassoon family and moved to London where she painted and ran with "The Souls," a group of "personages distinguished for their breeding, beauty, delicacy and discrimination of mind." Fun fact: Jack Huston, he of mutilated face in Boardwalk Empire, is her great-great grandson!
Aline's daughter Sybil parlayed her money and looks into becoming a titled member of the British aristocracy. Cecil Beaton photographed the Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1930. I would not have wanted to announce her name at an event.
Rather than use their wealth to fund cultural institutions like the Sacklers, the Sassoons collected art. No surprise their tastes included Gainsborough. What painter was more representative of Britain's 18th century establishment?
But Phillip, son of Aline and brother of Sybil, clearly had an eye for the unusual, too, acquiring works depicting people with something other than peaches and cream complexions.
The Sassoon men weren't bad to look at either. John Singer Sargent sketched Philip as a young man in 1912. He seems to have spent a lot of his time posing for portraits. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Only one of 25 Jews in his graduating class at Oxford, he served in World War I and trained as a pilot afterward, eventually becoming the Under Secretary of State for Air.
But more importantly, Philip, forever single and gay, managed to charm his way into the British aristocracy--including Edward VIII, whose abdication he supported--with house parties that evolved from the sybaritic to the discreet.
1922
Sir Philip Sasson by John Singer Sargent (1923)
Amateur painter Winston Churchill was among those luminaries who attended the latter before Philip's premature death of 50 which spared him the pain of World War II as well as the embarrassment of underestimating Hitler. The exhibit contrasts the future prime minister's talent with that of Sargent's.
Ruins of the Cathedral of St. Vaast, Arras, 1918 by Winston Churchill (1920s)
Well, yes, but could Sargent inspire nations with his speeches?
Ruined Cathedral at Arras by John Singer Sargent (1918)
Prior to this exhibit, Vidal and Siegfried were the only Sassoons I could name, and I knew more about the hairdresser than the writer. Here's Siegfried as a boy advertising his beloved Aunt Rachel's newspaper. Although his father had been disinherited for marrying outside the Jewish faith, Aunt Rachel (large portrait above) left him enough pounds sterling so that like his cousin Philip, he could buy his own country manor.
Young Siegfried Sassoon Dressed as a Page by Thomas Ashby Flemons (1896)
Siegfried's mother plucked her son's first name from an opera, a favorite from Wagner's "Ring Cycle."
Despite distinguished service in World War I, Sassoon was nearly court-martialed when he turned against it after losing his closest friend, with whom he may or may not have been having sexual relations. If there's a genetic component to queerness, it appears to run in the Sassoon family. Siegfried enjoyed relationships with men, including Ivor Novello and Stephen Tennant, whose rejection after six years together was quickly followed by marriage to a woman and the birth of a son. But after divorcing his wife, he came back into the fold and befriended both E.M. Forster and J.R. Ackerley.
ca 1916
The exhibit includes Siegfried's war journals which informed his highly acclaimed poetry and novels. More than anything else (except for perhaps the hair products!), they have established the family's legacy and erased the taint of the opium trade.
Even among writers, a picture can be worth a thousand words. Siegfried captioned this drawing "The Soul of an Officer."
There are always new discoveries to be made in the Jewish Museum's permanent collection and temporary exhibits.
