ABSTRACT
Charlotte Salomon’s Life? Or Theatre? is a drama of ideas with a poignant musical counterpoint, expressed through pictorial dialogue within the framework of a family saga. Its narrative energy is generated by a series of interpersonal confrontations and ironic disclosures, tending towards a tragic climax. In the work of Felix Nussbaum, by contrast, the storytelling impulse is muted, since he seems content to allow his pictures to ‘speak for themselves’, frequently failing even to provide them with a formal title. However, he made a point of inscribing the date of almost every completed painting next to his signature, and this makes it possible, building on the pioneering research of Karl Georg Kaster and his collaborators, to place his work in historical context. 24 In this sense his oeuvre, including the numerous still-lifes, invites a very different reading from that of a Paul Cézanne, who refrained from dating his paintings, thus endowing them with a timeless quality.
