jewish artists in the great European paintings exhibition NGV

THE TRAGIC STORY OF GERMAN AND JEWISH ARTISTS WHO LED THE MODERNIST MOVEMENT

The greatest irony of the magnificent exhibition of European Masters from the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt is summoned up in the story of Max Beckmann. Born in Leipzig in 1884, he studied at the Weimar Kunstschule from 1900 to 1903. Eventually promoted to professor at the Stadelschule in 1925. once the Nazis came into power in 1933, he, along with many various great Jewish artists, was denounced as degenerate and fled into exile. Now his art holds a special place in the museum, 100 of whose works have been loaned to the NGV in Melbourne where they will be on show until October whilst the building in Frankfurt is being renovated.. They will not be seen anywhere else. It is a great tribute to the gallery that such priceless works can be safely shown to an eager public.
Like so many of his compatriots, Beckmann was proudly German; his greatest desire was to regenerate German art after the First World War which had affected him very deeply. Having volunteered as a medical officer, his world view was profoundly changed by the experience. The early self portrait of 1905 shows a budding artist looking out at us with questioning, gentle eyes. Behind him is a window as though the world were his oyster, but that was not to be. Compare it with the painting of the Frankfurt synagogue (1919) where everything leans at a dangerous angle, the buildings, lampposts, streets all crowding together in a claustrophobic space reminiscent of some of Van Gogh’s most disturbed works. A little band of odd characters wanders in front of the synagogue looking as if they had strayed from a circus. Like much of his later work, done in exile in Amsterdam, it is full of fear and foreboding as if he could sense what was about to happen. Beckmann was angry and disoriented by having to leave his beloved home to which he never returned. “The Circus Carriage” (1940) shows a stern Beckmann as circus master pretending to read a newspaper whilst an acrobat is trying to climb a ladder to get out of the room. But he is trapped in the picture as are we. The central figure is a reclining woman gazing blankly ahead – a fortune-teller perhaps, holding a hand of cards. A coarse animal- trainer holding a whip guards his fierce tigers in their cage. Though Beckmann, like his fellow Kirchner portrays a world on the brink of madness, the intensity of the colour and expression prevent the viewer from falling into despair. He points ahead to surrealism and the absurdist movements. But the utter humiliation of the Degenerate Art exhibition which toured Germany for four years was to damage his psyche. After he and his wife fled, they lived in Amsterdam for ten years and in 1947 emigrated to the US where he died three years later at the age of 66. The Australian born critic Robert Hughes says that this, along with Beckmann’s other triptychs “represent one of the greatest efforts of the symbolic imagination in all 20th century art, a sort of ....world theatre in which the follies and tragedies of Europe, along with its pining for a utopian order on the very brink of collapse, were given an unrelentingly vivid allegorical form.” Hughes believes that the power of Beckmann’s work comes from the heat it generates and has called him “the greatest German painter of the 20th century.”
As a failed artist, nothing was more important than art to Hitler. He based his thinking on a book by the Jewish writer Max Nordau (Degeneration,1892) which surprisingly supported the idea of superiority of traditional German culture, sowing just how assimilated many of Germany’s best intellectuals were. Twice rejected from the Vienna Academy, Hitler’s taste was limited to 19th century neo-classical landscapes and idealised figures. With Goebbels as Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, the systematic suppression of creativity in all the arts held sway.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a contemporary of Beckmann’s and a founding member of a group called “Die Brucke (The Bridge) which aimed to draw a link between the art of the past and that of the brutal new era that was dawning.. Born in Dresden in 1880, he too volunteered for military service during World War I in 1914 but suffered a nervous breakdown in 1915 and was discharged, recovering for the next two years in sanatoriums in Switzerland.
In 1918, he settled in Davos, living in a farm house in the Alps; from this time onwards his main subject matter was mountain scenes. On 3 July 1919, he wrote in a letter from Davos, "Dear Van der Velde writes today that I ought to return to modern life. For me this is out of the question. Nor do I regret it.... The delights the world affords are the same everywhere, differing only in their outer forms. Here one learns how to see further and go deeper than in 'modern' life, which is generally so very much more superficial despite its wealth of outer forms."
The two of his works on show from the Stadel are so exquisite in their use of colour composition and surface tranquillity that they hide the angst that afflicted him throughout his life. “The Reclining Woman in a White Chemise” is a voluptuous picture redolent with sensuality, the well- proportioned lady showing off her ample curves; the huge flowers contrast brilliantly with the furniture, and the echoing curves of the sofa and wall behind give off an air of luxuriance that suggest that the subject was intimately known and loved by the artist.”The Sleigh Ride in the Snow” of 1927-9 is filled with movement – in the foreground the horse pulling the sleigh through the snow, in the background hills and rows of sloping hills and trees in a variety of sharp and light colours.
In 1933, Kirchner was labelled a "degenerate artist” by the Nazis and asked for his resignation from the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 1937, over 600 of his works were confiscated from public museums in Germany and were sold or destroyed. In 1938, the psychological trauma of these events, along with the Nazi occupation of Austria, close to his home, led to his suicide.
The list goes on: Max Ernst is represented by two works which illustrate how much he was influenced by Freud, as were the surrealists who came later. “Aquis Submersus” of 1919 exhibits an eerie still world centred around a swimming pool with lifeless figures dominated by a doll-like figure in the foreground without limbs and riddled with bullet holes. In the sky a clock replaces the moon. We are already into the world of the subconscious and dreams. He did in fact collaborate with many other artists including Dali and Paul Klee. He led the most extraordinary life, marrying many times and working with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes..Like a cat he seemed to have nine lives, escaping near death and two spells in concentration camps before moving to the USA which was the fortunate recipient of many of those European artists and intellectuals who were not destroyed by the Nazi onslaught.
The exhibition traces the history of 19th and 20th century Europe and contains far more than I can begin to describe. But out of the ashes of terrible persecution, Jewish artists managed to triumph and leave an outstanding legacy.
1239 words
betty.caplan1@gmail.com
Betty Caplan is a freelance writer and teacher based in Melbourne.

How Can a woman be a saint but not a priest?

A WOMAN CAN BE A SAINT BUT NOT A PRIEST
RIDDLE: How come a woman can be a saint but not a priest?
ANSWER: Because she has to be dead first.
Does it not strike you as odd that a woman can achieve sainthood in the next life but cannot do the work of the Church in this one? Last week the Vatican pronounced that paedophilia and the ordination of women were equally grave sins. This statement alone proves that the Catholic Church has remained stuck in the dark ages when male priests were not allowed to marry to ensure that land could be retained by the church. No wonder it is finding more and more difficulty in recruiting priests in the West, where there are other options and where the need for sexual love is acknowledged as human. The same is not true in so called Third World countries because severe economic difficulties mean that any opening to a paid career is taken seriously. And, to be fair, the Catholic Church has done a huge amount to improve the lives of ordinary Africans by providing excellent schools and hospitals all over the continent, often in places the government doesn’t even visit.
It isn’t that the women can’t do the work: it is that they cannot be acknowledged or rewarded for it in the same way as men. They cannot strut about in lavish robes amongst the poor and the hungry who may not have clothes to cover their backs. Yet it is the women who do all the fund-raising, knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning and caring – everything that enables the church to continue its physical existence. And they don’t ask for thanks but for recognition which the Anglican Church at least has granted them. Reform Judaism also acknowledges female Rabbis.
But how are the two things linked? Paedophilia is a sin committed by a powerful adult who holds the trust of a vulnerable child in his hand. Secrecy is an integral part of the deal: the priest can threaten his victim with all sorts of things if s/he spills the beans, and the victim, trusting in a superior who is respected and feared, colludes. “T’will not be believed,” said Angelo to Isabella in Shakespeare’s play “Measure for Measure” when he tried to seduce her. He knew his reputation was strong enough to defy any charge by a mere woman. The Seducer-Priests are in league with one another, ensuring that their reputations remain intact and that any misdemeanours are swept under the thick-piled carpet. They must remain outside the law – as the Pope’s angry reaction to the recent police investigation in Belgium proves – and be free to behave as they see fit. For them sexual abuse of a young person is not a crime whose effects can be damaging for life, but just a small matter to be quickly forgotten. As far as they are concerned it isn’t even sex, but mere play. The fact that one party has not given consent is irrelevant in a society which has never pretended to be democratic.

There is no point in half-heartedly attempting to punish those who are caught because there are far too many. It is, after all, a world-wide phenomenon. One must ask instead, why are they there? The church is attractive to such men precisely because they know they will be safe and comfortable. The hothouse cloistered environment heightens and intensifies sexual feelings without allowing them proper expression. The same happens in prisons: men forced to be together will form sexual relationships because their pitiful situation has put them in more need than ever of human warmth and affection. Emotions require an outlet; if there isn’t a healthy one, an unhealthy alternative will be sought.
As for women, they must be controlled at all costs. Because they hold the keys to the mightiest skill of all – giving birth – they must be watched over constantly. It is true of all the monotheistic masculinistic religions, but most exaggerated in the higher echelons of the Catholic Church. Even here in supposedly advanced Australia, as in the USA, there are states where women don’t have reproductive freedom and abortion is criminalised. The Jewish line passes through the mother because, (pre-DNA testing), only she could be sure who the father was. This is the Achilles’ Heel of the male gender. This is why the lord Jesus could not have been delivered to a mortal woman but came to earth, as the story goes, as a result of an Immaculate Conception, and therefore remained forever a Holy Virgin unbesmirched by contact with male flesh.
Linking the two totally unrelated issues, then, leads us to logically conclude that it is as sinful to be a woman as it is to be a paedophile. This is why Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden in shame, covering their now ugly human bodies, only moments before considered to be part of nature and beautiful. And so in Islam, a woman must be dressed “modestly” which is interpreted in a hundred different ways, some of them offensive to Europeans who are not at all disturbed by teenage girls wearing clothes that barely cover their bottoms. And it doesn’t stop at dress. Yesterday, an arbitrary edict was suddenly issued in Gaza preventing women from smoking water pipes. It must be one of the few pleasures they still have.

betty.caplan1@gmail.com
Published the Star July 20, 2010

BOSTON MARRIAGE: REVIEW OF MAMET'S PLAY MTC MELBOURNE JULY 2010

BOSTON MARRIAGE

“Boston Marriage” is a euphemism for an intimate but discreet relationship between two women, coined well before the words gay and lesbian were current. In Aidan Fennessy’s production for the MTC, David Mamet’s play is a writer’s delight: there are echoes of so many precedents – Genet, Beckett, Oscar Wilde – but the concoction is, in the end, Mamet’s alone. Perhaps that now that Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter is dead, Mamet, also Jewish, can assume his crown. I shall recommend him even if he’s not British.
It takes consummate artistry to have 90 minutes pure of theatre in which nothing actually happens and three people just talk. But what talk! The dialogue between the two genteel society ladies Anna (Pamela Rabe) and Claire (Margaret Mills) crackles and sparkles like a Catherine wheel. It reminds you of the age of conversation before electronic gadgets took over. Victims of an age when clever but unschooled women were reduced to whiling away the time whilst servants like Catherine (Sara Gleeson) slavishly attended to all the household chores, they naturally got up to mischief. (See Liaisons Dangereuses, for instance.) The brilliance is in having the third person who is not, as you might expect, the lover to whom Claire is going to give herself, causing her to break her tryst with the older Anna, but the humble servant girl who, by constantly interrupting the flow of dialogue, provides a comic foil as well as adding the dimension of class. Our gratification is forever being delayed. Her thanks? To have their sadistic, frustrated impulses heaped upon her, all the energy and drive which would normally be directed towards work or family. But they, poor rich things, are blissfully, delightfully free – to do nothing at all but talk. Until, that is, their protector snatches the carpet from under their feet and forces them to depend on themselves.
Mamet is known for writing about men: Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed- the- Plow, American Buffalo. In the provocative “Oleanna”, he dealt with sexual harassment in the university. Here by contrast, we are locked into a claustrophobic boudoir throbbing red in Christina Smith’s delicious design, with no apparent window on the outside world. Only the maid comes and goes with messages about a man fixing the stove and bringing new parts – all delivered with a knowing undercurrent of sexual nuance. For this play is a High Camp melodrama: it’s really about theatre, acting, plot, costume and, of course, language. Everything is artifice, uttered with a sense of irony. There are the necessary props, too – a tell-tale necklace which causes the fantasy protector to abandon his mistress, some scarves, candles, and select items of luxurious furniture. These are just excuses. Underneath all the role play, the needs and desires of these women – all three – are as strong and believable as any. That is what makes the play so much more than a versatile exercise in satire.
Boston Marriage continues at the Fairfax Theatre until July 24.

HOW A WOMAN CAN BE A SAINT BUT NOT A PRIEST pub The Star (Kenya) July 22 2010

A WOMAN CAN BE A SAINT BUT NOT A PRIEST
RIDDLE: How come a woman can be a saint but not a priest?
ANSWER: Because she has to be dead first.
Does it not strike you as odd that a woman can achieve sainthood in the next life but cannot do the work of the Church in this one? Last week the Vatican pronounced that paedophilia and the ordination of women were equally grave sins. This statement alone proves that the Catholic Church has remained stuck in the dark ages when male priests were not allowed to marry to ensure that land could be retained by the church. No wonder it is finding more and more difficulty in recruiting priests in the West, where there are other options and where the need for sexual love is acknowledged as human. The same is not true in so called Third World countries because severe economic difficulties mean that any opening to a paid career is taken seriously. And, to be fair, the Catholic Church has done a huge amount to improve the lives of ordinary Africans by providing excellent schools and hospitals all over the continent, often in places the government doesn’t even visit.
It isn’t that the women can’t do the work: it is that they cannot be acknowledged or rewarded for it in the same way as men. They cannot strut about in lavish robes amongst the poor and the hungry who may not have clothes to cover their backs. Yet it is the women who do all the fund-raising, knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning and caring – everything that enables the church to continue its physical existence. And they don’t ask for thanks but for recognition which the Anglican Church at least has granted them. Reform Judaism also acknowledges female Rabbis.
But how are the two things linked? Paedophilia is a sin committed by a powerful adult who holds the trust of a vulnerable child in his hand. Secrecy is an integral part of the deal: the priest can threaten his victim with all sorts of things if s/he spills the beans, and the victim, trusting in a superior who is respected and feared, colludes. “T’will not be believed,” said Angelo to Isabella in Shakespeare’s play “Measure for Measure” when he tried to seduce her. He knew his reputation was strong enough to defy any charge by a mere woman. The Seducer-Priests are in league with one another, ensuring that their reputations remain intact and that any misdemeanours are swept under the thick-piled carpet. They must remain outside the law – as the Pope’s angry reaction to the recent police investigation in Belgium proves – and be free to behave as they see fit. For them sexual abuse of a young person is not a crime whose effects can be damaging for life, but just a small matter to be quickly forgotten. As far as they are concerned it isn’t even sex, but mere play. The fact that one party has not given consent is irrelevant in a society which has never pretended to be democratic.

There is no point in half-heartedly attempting to punish those who are caught because there are far too many. It is, after all, a world-wide phenomenon. One must ask instead, why are they there? The church is attractive to such men precisely because they know they will be safe and comfortable. The hothouse cloistered environment heightens and intensifies sexual feelings without allowing them proper expression. The same happens in prisons: men forced to be together will form sexual relationships because their pitiful situation has put them in more need than ever of human warmth and affection. Emotions require an outlet; if there isn’t a healthy one, an unhealthy alternative will be sought.
As for women, they must be controlled at all costs. Because they hold the keys to the mightiest skill of all – giving birth – they must be watched over constantly. It is true of all the monotheistic masculinistic religions, but most exaggerated in the higher echelons of the Catholic Church. Even here in supposedly advanced Australia, as in the USA, there are states where women don’t have reproductive freedom and abortion is criminalised. The Jewish line passes through the mother because, (pre-DNA testing), only she could be sure who the father was. This is the Achilles’ Heel of the male gender. This is why the lord Jesus could not have been delivered to a mortal woman but came to earth, as the story goes, as a result of an Immaculate Conception, and therefore remained forever a Holy Virgin unbesmirched by contact with male flesh.
Linking the two totally unrelated issues, then, leads us to logically conclude that it is as sinful to be a woman as it is to be a paedophile. This is why Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden in shame, covering their now ugly human bodies, only moments before considered to be part of nature and beautiful. And so in Islam, a woman must be dressed “modestly” which is interpreted in a hundred different ways, some of them offensive to Europeans who are not at all disturbed by teenage girls wearing clothes that barely cover their bottoms. And it doesn’t stop at dress. Yesterday, an arbitrary edict was suddenly issued in Gaza preventing women from smoking water pipes. It must be one of the few pleasures they still have.

betty.caplan1@gmail.com

Catholic Church Should Put its Own House in Order

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The Catholic Church should put its own house in order

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By BETTY CAPLAN
Posted Thursday, March 26 2009 at 18:46

Pope Benedict XVI has now left the continent having preached to thousands in Angola and Cameroon. But doesn’t the epithet that “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” apply to him?

Scientists have agreed that it was nothing short of irresponsible for him to claim that condom use actually increases the rate of HIV infection. It encourages promiscuity, the church believes.

This stance is immoral on two levels: first because it is plainly untrue, and goes against the advice of trained personnel. The church must recognise that it has failed in this mission.

SECONDLY, BECAUSE IT contradicts the kind of philosophy that has due regard for the health of our ailing planet. On the day the Pope arrived in Africa, the Nation featured a picture of dozens of beautiful children, all in the care of the police, their parents unwilling or unable to claim them.

The church fathers are stuck in a time warp; living in medieval times; they are totally out of touch, especially with youth.

Not only does the Vatican refuse to admit that its policies have not worked, but it will also not face the immorality which continues to fester in its own ranks.

Cases of sexual abuse of minors have been reported in countries as far apart as Australia and Mexico. The Pope himself suppressed publication of a report which revealed the extent of this exploitation.

In 2007, child sex abuse cases cost the church $615 million (Sh49 billion), an increase of 54 per cent over the previous year, most of which went towards settling in court. Therapy for the victims and the accused took care of $23 million.

New allegations of abuse in 2007 totalled 689, most of the sufferers being young males between the ages of 10 and 14 when the abuse began.

A Charter for the Protection of Children has done better at protecting clergy from exposure.

In 2007, on his first visit to the USA, the Pope avoided Boston for fear of the protests about sex abuse scandals there.

The numbers of men in the West willing to repress their sexual needs and become priests has been decreasing rapidly; calls for the obligation to remain celibate have gone unheard.

But Africa, as in colonial times, is unfortunately ripe for conversion: only here is the church growing — an “opiate” as Marx called of desperately poor “masses” whose lives are made bearable by the unprovable belief that the next world is better than this one.

One cannot avoid the suspicion that underneath this pattern of behaviour is a fear and dislike of women who are particularly disadvantaged in the Catholic Church and prevented from holding high office.
Compare to the Anglican Church, which has tried hard to move with the times and accept homosexuals as being as worthy of love and respect as all men and women.

OR WITH HINDUS OR BUDDHISTS. The Catholic ideal is a Virgin, painted in centuries of European art as a (lily-white) maiden flying high in the clouds, well away from the grasp of men whereas she would have looked much more like an Arab or a Swahili.

Is a female to be nothing but a vessel for a man’s sperm?

Witness the shocking case of the nine-year-old girl in Brazil whose family and doctors were ex-communicated because the foetus was aborted.

No compassion was shown for the girl, traumatised and subjected to incest, yet meant to bring up another child though not past childhood herself.

“Abortion is a greater crime than rape,” declared the church, defying years of worldwide struggle for equal rights, and minimising the effect of sexual violence on young people who have placed all their trust in adults who are in loco parentis.

betty.caplan1@gmail.com




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Submitted by mogofalo
Posted March 28, 2009 01:00 AM


Maybe the pope should not be the enormous moral authority across the global culture that he is. The pope believes that a myth about the existence of a good one in Heaven at war with an evil one cast down to and ruling over Earth is; the truth about the existence of one totality that we all share. To claim that myth is truth as he does is to lie to the many of our global culture.




Submitted by gabbysteve
Posted March 27, 2009 06:55 PM


The CATHOLIC CHURCH has already put her house in order by simply saying it's not advocating for use of condoms. This ought to be followed to the letter. You need not mix issues of individual priciples and doctrines of the church. Which came first, HIV or condom? Condom! Even before HIV, the music was the same, "stop use of condoms" This is not going to change as God is not going to change. Simply, those who are not married should wait to marry and those married already to have the obligation only with their partner (spouse only).




Submitted by Jellyfish
Posted March 27, 2009 06:22 PM


Betty you are dead wrong. Did you see this article on the East African? "UNAIDS and myth of condoms efficacy against AIDS" posted on 7th of february 2009 by Curtis Abraham. http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/525956/-/rku48lz/-/index.html. To say that the scientific community is in agreement is disingeneous to say the least. If you need more scientific info on how ineffective condoms are I would be happy to furnish you with more.





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Remembering 7/7/2005 London

REMEMBERING 7/7/05

There was an eerie feeling in my stomach the night before. I was waiting for my daughter to give birth for the first time and on the platform of the underground station, one of those nasty tiffs between a few drunken louts was happening where you worry that one of them will fall onto the train tracks and die an Anna Karenina –type death. An omen, I later realized.
The baby was born that night and I planned to go and meet her the next morning.
“Don’t go into town, mum,” my older daughter phoned at 9 o’clock. “Kenny took the Liverpool Street train at 8 and said there was something wrong with the electrics on the underground network.” I was in North London and the baby was at Kings College Hospital in South London where her mother and sister were born. Then about an hour and a half later, she called again.
“Mum, there’s been a bomb. No-one is going anywhere.”
What to do? I had a new granddaughter and couldn’t see her. I turned on the television and the details were only beginning to emerge. A co-ordinated series of attacks had targeted four different trains and a bus right near elegant Endsleigh Square where I had stayed a year ago. It was mid-summer so the trees were in full bloom and there was that air of utter hedonistic pleasure that comes in a cold place where sometimes you get no summers at all. Every bit of sunshine is celebrated as if it might be the last.
For claustrophobes the idea of being attacked when you are in a train far under the good earth is frightening. All your fantasies of being trapped, helpless abandoned come to the surface. But that’s what happened to the 52 people who died on that day, clawing and screaming to get out of the carriages, whilst 700 others lay bleeding or dying around them. I had lived through the years of the IRA bombs and the hoaxes and there was nothing like this. Like the war in Afhganistan where young diggers are dying, it was for nothing – that is the worst part. Not for any noble idea, not to rid the world of a Hitler. People’s lives shattered for nothing. A few lunatics with a grudge against the country that had brought them up very imperfectly.
On television there were images of police systematically closing off everything. All the phone networks were jammed. As in a crisis, family and friends pulled together. When you could get through to someone, there were anxious voices: “Where are you? Are you alright? You’re nowhere near.......”
I went to the street market nearby usually full of Cockney traders calling out, ”Come on, termaters (tomatoes) 50 pence! Last orders please.”
What hit me was silence. It was warm but the sky was grey and closing in on me. No-one spoke. Although it was only about 11 am, one by one the market stalls were being dismantled. Everything was shutting down. Is this what the end of the world will feel like? And there at the opposite end of town wailed my first grandchild, blissfully unaware of what kind of world she had come into.
In the only shop that stayed open a fat family sat eating greasy chips.
For days you couldn’t go anywhere. The brand new University College Hospital couldn’t cope with the confusion and the deluge of patients. Now there are warnings everywhere: “Emergency Rooms This Way.” They’ve learnt how to manage a crisis.
I couldn’t use the underground for weeks. I got the bus to Kings Cross and everywhere there were big signs saying: “Have you seen my brother/sister/friend?” with accompanying photographs.
A woman who spoke on the BBC this week remembered her daughter who died aged 24. After all, this was 9.10 am on a weekday so the bombers hit those who had jobs and were on their way to work. The mother was a pillar of the community, an Anglican priest and a marriage celebrant. She had been forced to give up her work. “I can’t forgive them for taking my only daughter away. So how can I stand up there and preach love and forgiveness?”
“In the midst of life we are in death.”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
And for most of us the fear does go away, those whose lives have not been shattered and who haven’t had to pick up the pieces and start all over again. Anniversaries remind us of those who suffered, and that we are all vulnerable wherever we are, to the whims of nature or to the blind rage of youths who use religion as a cover for their unarticulated feelings. .
betty.caplan1@gmail.com