Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part II)

A poster in a London bus station featuring an image by the artist Egon Schiele.
The banner, however - strategically plastered over the figure's pubic area -

was not of the artist's device. See here or here.
(All images in this post can be clicked-on to enlarge.)

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The C-Word: Censorship

“Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.”

- Egon Schiele, Austrian painter (June 12, 1890 - October 31, 1918).

"The purging wave seems to know no bounds. The poster of an Egon Schiele nude is censored; calls are made for the removal of a Balthus painting from a museum on grounds that it’s an apology for pedophilia; unable to distinguish between the man and his work, Cinémathèque Française is told not to hold a Roman Polanski retrospective and another for Jean-Claude Brisseau is blocked. A university judges the film Blow-Up, by Michelangelo Antonioni, to be "misogynist" and "unacceptable." In light of this revisionism, even John Ford (The Searchers) and Nicolas Poussin (The Abduction of the Sabine Women) are at risk."

- Via an English translation of one of the more coherent passages from the notorious "#MeToo" backlash letter published in Le Monde earlier this year, written and signed by 100 French women-of-note, up to and including Catherine Deneuve. The original document (in French) can be found here and, in English, here. Inset left is the  painting under scrutiny at that time, Thérèse Dreaming.

"As with previous awareness raising campaigns, it is not unlikely that the backlash will snowball and that the deeply entrenched patriarchal mechanisms that have maintained sexism for centuries will reassert themselves. That is after all how the system has survived to date. It is also all too likely that we will all — men and women — soon grow weary of allegations of sexual harassment as we have done in the past, making #MeToo a distant memory, a bud that did not blossom into long-lasting structural change. As Jessa Crispin writes in her manifesto about why she is not a feminist, popular social movements must, by their very nature, be “banal… non-threatening, and ineffective.” This underscores the problem with movements propelled by hashtags and celebrities."

- Excerpted from the Public Seminar article The Many Faces of the #MeToo Backlash, written by Maryam Omidi.

"In an angry riposte, French feminists described the letter’s signatories as “apologists for rape” and “defenders of paedophiles”, a reference to Deneuve’s vigorous support of the French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl.

'There’s nothing really new in the arguments they use; they’re like the embarrassing colleague or tired uncle who doesn’t understand what’s happening,' a group of feminists wrote in an open letter of their own to French radio."

- Regarding a backlash against the former backlash via this article. Inset left is a still from Repulsion, a Roman Polanski film starring Catherine Deneuve (pictured) as a woman who kills two men, one of whom sexually assaulted her. As one might expect, Deneuve's character is portrayed as psychologically deranged (i.e., violence of men is expected and often applauded in a patriarchal society, violence in women - even when justified - is pathological.)

As for Roman Polanski, in 2018: "in light of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel Polanski from its membership." As for Polanski's relationship with his "victim," Samantha Geimer, apparently they have become friendly... see Samantha Geimer on Roman Polanski: 'We email a little bit'.

"The problem of comprehending Lolita begins with this moral discrepancy and her literary position as a rape victim. It causes us to unravel with Humbert. We question the book, ourselves, our culture, and in the space between our disgust and Humbert’s desire, we obsess over and recreate the story. Spawning two films, several musical adaptions, ballets, plays, a Russian opera spin-off, fashion subcultures, and endless memorabilia, Lolita is a transcendent literary icon. Her ghost lingers in Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and many a pop icon seen cradling a teddy bear in skimpy lingerie. The hyper-sexualization of young women is Lolita’s legacy, a cast thrown sixty years into the future: a transition from rape victim to sex icon."

- From Emily Roese's 2016 (Huffington Post) article: The Problematic Idolization of Lolita. Inset right is a detail from a poster for Stanely Kubrick's 1962 film adaption Lolita.

"Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of our voices, and what a voice means: the right to self-determination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and narrate. A husband hits his wife to silence her; a date rapist or acquaintance rapist refuses to let the 'No' of his victim mean what it should, that she alone has jurisdiction over her body; rape culture asserts that a woman's testimony is worthless, untrustworthy... Having a voice is crucial. It's not all there is to human rights, but its central to them, and so you can consider the history of women's rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence."

- From Rebecca Solnit's A Short History of Silence, an essay from her (highly recommended) collection: The Mother of All Questions, 2017, Haymarket Books.  Regarding the photo (inset left) - "STILL NOT ASKING FOR IT" - more info can be found here and here.

***

Apparently, the poster which introduces this section is one of several which appeared in London bus stations this year announcing an exhibit of artwork by Egon Schiele, a Viennese artist and painter, known for his oddly contorted human figures, both nude and otherwise (inset right and sourced here). I don't know that any feminists were involved in the censorship of his work - and, possibly, the exhibition of his nudes in a bus station wasn't the most brilliant of plans to begin with - but, in terms of censorship "100 years old and still too daring" makes a significant point. In terms of culture, are we as a species moving forwards, backwards, or remaining stationary? More importantly, will the censorship of art and/or the artist - either contemporary or from the distant past - solve anything? Lastly, is the sensual and/or sexual content of art - regardless of the variety explored or intimated - a feminist issue? And, if so, should art fall under the jurisdiction of any and/or all other political and societal movements as well?

While I can both sympathize with and applaud the #MeToo
(and subsequent Times Up) movements - which marked the historical moment when women finally broke their silence and dragged a few "rape culture" enthusiasts out from under their proverbial rocks (where they'd been congregating for a very long time) - the infamous backlash letter signed by 100 French female luminaries was correct in one respect: suppressing a work of art due to its sexual content or the sexual behavior of its makers - even when said content or behavior is presently considered taboo - is antithetical to the nature of art, human creativity and human expression. But, most importantly, for a feminist, fanning the flames of censorship can also backfire.

Then again, history tells us that in almost every case of censorship or prohibition - across the board - the eradication of the offending behavior was not achieved... neither in the short term and, most certainly, not in the long term. Case in point: Lolita, the 1955 novel written by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). Basically, it's a feminist's nightmare - and a hebephile's wet dream - following the obsessional musings of a middle-aged man directed towards his manipulative, sexually precocious 12-year-old stepdaughter whom he eventually rapes. Banned in Great Britain and France for a period of two years, it was then banned in Australia from 1958 to 1965. Meanwhile, when it arrived in America, 100,000 copies were sold in its first three weeks. After all, nothing says "Must Read" like the word: "Banned"...

Portrait of Vladimir Nabakov by Magda Nachman Acharya.

As it was, Nabokov (above) was quick to point out that Lolita was a work of fiction and bore no resemblance to his life or sexual predilections. In any case, while Humbert's narrative may have inadvertently provided validation for many a male's inner child-molester, it had one further consequence none could have foreseen: it later inspired a number of young women - specifically female pop stars (inset right, Britney Spears) - to incorporate the nymphette persona into their stage acts. Well, it was one way of attracting fans: the little girls who wanted to emulate them... and the leagues of old perverts who wanted to possess them. And, yet, Rebecca Solnit had this to say from her 2015 essay Men Explain Lolita to Me (from her afore-mention collection):

"I had never said that we shouldn't read Lolita. I've read it more than once. I joked that there should be a list of books no woman should read, because quite a few lionized books are rather nasty about my gender, but I'd also said 'Of course I believe everyone should read anything they want. I just think some books are instructions on why women are dirt or hardly exist at all except as accessories or are inherently evil and empty'... You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us."

In other words, art makes or breaks us, but, at the same time, suppressing "dangerous art" is not a fool-proof option. One can't really predict the future effects of any one work of art and "dangerous" is a relative term. Likewise, determining its historical value in its early days is dicey. More exasperating, art is never fully understood but merely interpreted. In any case, the real question is: who will we permit to decide what is "dangerous" regarding our creative endeavors? The government? The Art Police? The ill-informed individual on the street? Or, just any college student with networking skills and a flair for hashtags?

Toddler Cheesecake.

In the case of the 1938 Balthus* painting (shown earlier in the post) - Thérèse Dreaming - the Metropolitan Museum in NY received a petition (with 6000 -11000 signatures) to remove it from its walls on the grounds that it "romanticized the sexualization of a child" and was painted by an alleged pedophile. Understandably, the museum did not comply; there is, after all, nothing idealized about this image... nor does it scream pedophilia. Which is not to say it isn't disturbing - much of this painter's work is disturbing - but is it actually damaging? Note the expression on the girl's face (inset right below). Does she appear alluring? Is this a "cheesecake" shot (like the one inset left) -  or is she merely resigned to holding an uncomfortable pose. She might even feel a certain distaste towards the artist. Let's put it another way, it's no Lolita.** Nor is it Toddlers & Tiaras... that utterly revolting American TV "reality" show about child beauty pageants which - including its various spin-offs - ran for eight years before "Honey Boo Boo" and company said bye-bye. And, within that period, 2008-2016, it blatantly featured more female-centered child sexploitation (inset left) than several centuries of fine art, film, and fiction combined.

Regarding the ambiguity of Thérèse Dreaming, however, Cynthia Cruz had this to say in 2013:

"In 1936 Balthus began his series of the then eleven-year-old Thérèse Blanchard, his neighbor, in Paris. Eleven is the tail end of childhood, the middle world between childhood and adulthood. Also, it was at the age of eleven that Balthus made the forty ink drawings of his cat Mitsou when Mitsou went missing. A child prodigy, his work was made into a book titled Mitsou in 1921, with a preface by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Taken in this light, we might view his portraits of Thérèse quite differently. Rather than seeing Balthus as a man viewing a young girl as an object, as “other,” we might, instead, see his paintings of Thérèse as a series of a kind of self portrait. What I am suggesting is that Balthus saw himself in the young Thérèse."

Incidentally, the portrait of (a young) Nabokov (shown directly after the jump) was painted by Russian artist Magda Nachman Acharya (1989-1951). I particularly wanted to include her work here because of the image below. it was painted at some point past the age of 40, after she and her husband fled Nazi Germany and settled in Bombay.

While not blatantly erotic - nor damaging to the masculine psyche - her painting could (conceivably) have been interpreted as problematic at the time and, possibly, even now. And, maybe, that's my point; in this case an older woman is expressing her appreciation for a beautiful boy. Perhaps she was encouraged by her friend, Nabokov! But, we have no facts. All we really have at our disposal is the ability to interpret what we see... and the expression in the boy's eyes speaks volumes. (More of her work can be found here.)

The reality is, Magda (inset left) was one of the luckier woman painters of that period... that is, her father was Jewish but his daughter managed to "get out of Dodge" just in time. Others were not so lucky... specifically those whose work the Nazi regime labeled (or libeled) as entartung or "degenerate art." And, as it so happened, Egon Schiele was one of those "degenerate" artists... (and) "still too daring today."

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* For more examples of Balthus's work, try here. BTW, here's some trivia for you: in 1994, David Bowie interviewed Balthus for Modern Painters, an art magazine. What's more, Balthus's mom, Baladine - also a painter - had a tempestuous love affair with poet Rainer Maria Rilke!

** Incidentally, the Wiki article goes on to say that: "Lolita is included on TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005. It holds a place in the Bokklubben World Library, a 2002 collection of the most celebrated books in history. In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 200 "best-loved novels."

(BTW, in case you're wondering if I'm a fan of Lolita, the answer is: no. I read it when I was thirteen and found Humbert tedious and Lolita obnoxious.)

Note: Ah well, as we know from past experience, every now and then Salvador Dali (inset right) must put in his 2 cents (from beyond the grave) and, as I'm a sucker for a man with a flower behind his ear, I must comply... so, here's some more interesting trivia (sourced here):

"Delia Ungureanu is assistant director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University. While doing research on 'dream literature,' she stumbled across a forgotten short story of Dali’s called 'Reverie: An Erotic Daydream.' Published in 1931, a decade and a half before 'Lolita,' 'Reverie' traces the extended fantasy of a middle-aged painter (instead of a professor, like Humbert Humbert) who plans to seduce and violate a prepubescent girl after getting her middle-aged mother to fall in love with him. The girl is named, of all things, 'Dullita.'"

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The "Degenerate" Artists

The Act of Love, 1925-30, Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler

"After her mental state deteriorated again, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler returned to her parents' home in Dresden in 1931. At her father's instigation she was committed to the Arnsdorf psychiatric institution, where she was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Initially, Lohse-Wächtler had the opportunity to continue her artistic work in Arnsdorf. After the Nazi-régime came into power in 1933, she was "asked" to agree to a voluntary sterilisation. She didn't agree and, as a consequence, lost all her "privileges". In 1935,  she was declared mentally incompetent, her marriage with Kurt Lohse was separated, and she was sterilized by force under the Nazi Euthanasia Program.

Defamed as "degenerate art" in 1937, Lohse-Wächtler's work was in part destroyed. She herself fell victim of the Nazi régime and died in the gas chamber at Pirna-Sonnenschein under the regulations of the "T4" euthanasia program..."

- Excerpt from a 2010 article about German artist Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler found here. The photo (inset left) of Lohse-Wächtler was found in this excellent article from which I sourced several significant facts used in this post.

The Art Police, circa 1937... Hitler arrives at the
Nazi's “Degenerate Art” Exhibit. 

"On May 31, 1938 the 'Law on Confiscation of Products of Degenerate Art' was decreed:

'The products of degenerate art, which have been seized in museums and publically accessible collections before the passing of this law and have been identified by authorities appointed by the Führer and Reich Chancellor can be seized without compensation on behalf of the Reich provided that they were guaranteed to be owned by nationals or domestic legal entities.' With this the conditions to sell the confiscated works were created."

- Found here.

"Hitler's rise to power on January 31, 1933, was quickly followed by actions intended to cleanse the culture of degeneracy: book burnings were organized, artists and musicians were dismissed from teaching positions, and curators who had shown a partiality to modern art were replaced by Party members. In September 1933, the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber) was established, with Joseph Goebbels... in charge. Sub-chambers within the Culture Chamber, representing the individual arts (music, film, literature, architecture, and the visual arts) were created; these were membership groups consisting of "racially pure" artists supportive of the Party, or willing to be compliant. Goebbels made it clear: "In future only those who are members of a chamber are allowed to be productive in our cultural life. Membership is open only to those who fulfill the entrance condition. In this way all unwanted and damaging elements have been excluded...

A large amount of "degenerate art" by Picasso, Dalí, Ernst, Klee, Léger and Miró was destroyed in a bonfire on the night of July 27, 1942, in the gardens of the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. Whereas it was forbidden to export "degenerate art" to Germany, it was still possible to buy and sell artworks of "degenerate artists" in occupied France. The Nazis considered indeed that they should not be concerned by Frenchmen's mental health. As a consequence many works made by these artists were sold at the main French auction house during the occupation."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Degenerate Art.

"I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen, only to be able to see others. Unfortunately one was seen."

- Quote from German artist Jeanne Mammen found here. Her "degenerate" paintings (inset right and left, above) were sourced here.

"The Nazis wanted to blacken the name of modern art and to convince the German public that it was not proper and true art. To this end, they prepared the famous exhibition in Munich, which in the course of five months attracted over two million visitors. Some of the visitors certainly came in order to part forever from important works, but there are reports that most of the visitors actually agreed with the Nazi opinions and complained about what in their eyes was not art, and for the fact that prior to 1933, large sums had been paid for acquiring them. The exhibition featured 600 works by 112 artists, including only six Jews. At the same time, the Nazis opened the formal art exhibition, the “The Exhibit of Great German Art,” also in Munich, attended by 600,000, a number that is less than one third of the number of visitors to the “Degenerate Art” exhibit."

- Excerpt from an article found here regarding the infamous “Degenerate Art” Exhibit. The photo above was found here. Inset left is an original poster for the exhibit.

"Today one needs simply to visit a German museum to see how the art of the Nazis has ultimately failed to make its mark or last as a valued contribution to its artistic heritage. Avant-garde artists permeate Berlin’s galleries and the vibrant atmosphere of creative impulses that the Nazis attempted to obliterate, now flourish. Hitler’s dream temple still exists, after modifying its name to simply Haus der Kunst. Inside, the works shown there now are contemporary and installation art, the antithesis of what Nazi art was. And magically enough, the remnants of certain modernist works buried by the Nazis have literally started ascending up from the ground. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, 11 sculptures once designated as “degenerate art” recently were discovered in the ruins of a cellar in Berlin, dug out by archeologists and are now placed in the Neues Museum. All were part of the Entartete kunst travelling exhibition. It seems modernism and “degenerate art” has triumphed after all."

- From the Paraphilia Magazine article The Triumph of Degenerate Art by Tom Garretson. Inset right is a photo of the remains of one of the "degenerate art" sculptures unearthed in 2010 - Maternité (Pregnant Woman), terracotta,1918, by German sculptor Emy Roeder (1890-1971). See: Germany: Missing “degenerate art” works rediscovered.

***

Any discussion about censorship has to include the word "Fascism" as a matter of course. After all, Fascist regimes - specifically the Nazi Party under Adolph Hitler - had censorship down to an exact science. To convince the German people that they needed a higher authority to protect them from "bad" art, the Nazis had to come up with their own sort of "hashtag." Entartung - degenerate art - was a derogatory term coined previously by art critic, Max Nordau, who hypothesized that (turn-of-the-century) modern art and literature were, for the most part, created by corrupt, enfeebled and deranged minds. Voila! "Degenerate art" became the new scourge of modern society.

Ironically, Max Nordau was Jewish... and Jewish "nature" was one of those traits deemed "undesirable"  by Nazi standards, inevitably separating pathological art from "true art;" that is, Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil), the genre preferred by the authentic Aryan... and most especially Hitler, who considered himself an artist. (See this BBC article.) In contrast to Blut and Boden, the list of degenerate characteristics (found in the Wiki entry), was as follows:

• Deliberate distortion of nature.
• Derision of religion.
• Bolshevist and anarchist implications.
• Political indoctrination, including propaganda of Marxism and anti-war sabotage.
• Moral depravity and interest in prostitution under the guise of social criticism.
• Loss of national (racial) consciousness and interest in the exotics of primitive peoples.
• Idiots, morons and paralytics presented as the human ideal.
• The desire to depict only Jewish nature.
• Absence of common sense due to sickly imagination.

The corresponding "degenerate" art styles and movements were the following: Bauhaus, Cubism, Dada, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), Surrealism, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), Die Brücke (The Bridge) (also here), and, lastly, Magic Realism.

Although art by Jewish painters was not directly addressed, and, although very few Jewish artists were actually represented in the famous Degenerate Art exhibit of 1937, the larger picture was far more sinister. There was, after all, no necessity for censoring the artwork of artists one intended to literally and physically eliminate.

And, so, we have another list: the list of Jewish artists who died in concentration camps. Among them are the three women whose artwork I've included here: inset right above, Malva Schalek (self-portrait); inset left, Charlotte Salomon (self portrait), and below, a painting ("Girl") by Nathalie Kraemer. All three died between 1943-44... murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

"Girl" by Nathalie Kraemer.

But, in reality, very few "Degenerates" were actually physically exterminated by the Nazis in the name of art alone. Some of them, like the artists Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jean Metzinger went on to, ultimately, thrive.* The artists Jeane Mammen and Emy Roeder (mentioned earlier) and Maria Caspar-Filser were also able to continue their careers after the war. Prolific German sculptress Marge Moll - two examples of her work are shown inset right, and left below - produced many acclaimed pieces which survived, up to and including Dancer, one of the "degenerate" sculptures unearthed in 2010. We also have the sculptress Milly Steger whose studio bunt down towards the end of the WWII. She died in 1948 but many of her beautiful figurative pieces survived like the one inset right below. Lastly, we have Expressionist Gabriele Münter, who  single-handedly saved the entire Blaue Reiter collection from the Nazis, donating it - at age 80 - to a museum in Munich.** Sadly, Expressionist ( and degenerate) print-maker and sculptress, Käthe Kollwitz, died a mere 16 days before war's end. (A sampling of her work can be found here.)

There was, however, an exception to this rule... because, tragically, there were those "degenerate" artists who happened to display some variety of actual physical or (alleged) mental deficit for which there (allegedly) was no cure. For these individuals, the Nazis developed a convenient euthanasia program named "Aktion Tiergartenstraße 4" (or Action T4).

Via the Wiki entry:
"Certain German physicians were authorized to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death"...

The killings took place from September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945, and 275,000 to 300,000 people were killed at various extermination centres at psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, along with those in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic). The number of victims was originally recorded as 70,273 people, but this number has been increased by the discovery of victims listed in the archives of former East Germany. About half of those killed were taken from church-run asylums, often with the approval of the Protestant or Catholic authorities of the institutions."

"Paar" (Pair or Couple), 1930, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler.

Which brings us to the "degenerate" German painter Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (1899-1940), who died, not so much due to the quality of her art, but for her unfortunate position within an obscene, merciless system. She was, after all, a woman living in the earlier half of the Twentieth Century. After the failure of her marriage to Kurt Lohse - a singer/artist/art teacher who reportedly gave his wife's finished paintings to his students for scrap-canvas (the unhappy couple are featured inset left) - Elfriede found herself homeless and living on the streets of Hamburg.*** Hopeless, disempowered by poverty and both emotionally and physically traumatized and exhausted, she returned to her parent's home in Dresden in 1931, only to be met with a hostile reception. Shortly thereafter, she was committed to an asylum by her father. While we do not know the exact reasons for her father's betrayal, readers of this blog should know a thing or two about "madwomen" and mental asylums by now. I blogged about sculptress Camille Claudel (1864-1943) two years ago... an artist who was (permanently) institutionalized for dubious reasons by her mother and brother (see Into the Madhouse in this post).

But, It almost goes without saying that, in the early half of the Twentieth Century, a majority of (alleged) "madwomen" were institutionalized for reasons unrelated to their mental health. Often, the act of committing a woman to an asylum was merely a tactical maneuver to get her effectively out of the way... or to silence her. In writer Alan Moore's cousin Audrey's case, she was institutionalized by her parents to prevent her from alerting authorities to her father's sexual abuse. And, while there is no proof that Elfriede's story might be similar - judging by her two paintings featured in this post - she seemed to have had a rather harrowing view of sex and intimacy... and we might ask ourselves why.

In the first painting,"Act of Love" - found at the beginning of this section, and detailed inset right above - we have what looks like a demon-like head of some leering, parasitic incubus literally emerging from a woman's torso. The woman's disfigured face, on the other hand, looks bruised and battered. In other words, this is/was not an "act of love." Perhaps, the real title of the painting was lost in translation. Certainly the title of the second painting, "Paar" (detail inset left) seemed to be. Its title, when translated from the German, means Pair or Couple, but I've seen this painting's title translated to "Lovers" several places online. It's subject, however, is not love. From the victim's left foot buried in her assailant's groin, to the defensive position of both her arms and hands, this image can only portray attempted rape. Note the deep red color - the color of blood, rage and pain - used on the woman's nipple, lips, and shaded throughout her body. Click on the image and look closely at her face; her expression is not softly erotic; it is dismayed and alarmed.

No, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler was not a happy, carefree woman... and eventually she became a totally destitute woman. But, was she mad? Not long after she was institutionalized she wrote to her parents:

”… I don’t want to completely deteriorate mentally. Do you really want to send me into sickness and decay?”

Actually, by committing their daughter, her parents were inadvertently handing her a death sentence. First, she was forcibly sterilized, and, not long after, exterminated in a gas chamber like so many others... condemned under the Action T4 euthanasia plan. The only "silver lining" of her traumatic life is that some of her work survived... and, just as importantly, her story survived. She was not, in the end, completely silenced... and her life not utterly erased. (Inset right, a self-portrait found on her Wiki page.)

There is one more "degenerate" artist I'd like to include here and one who happens to have been been influenced (and empowered) by the "New Woman," a radical feminine archetype who actually made her debut around the turn of the 19th/20th century, but, whose influence lingers to this day. I will explore more about the New Woman and her achievements in the next and last post of this series, but, for now, I'd like to mention German artist Kate Diehn-Bitt (1900-1978).

No, there is, as of yet, no Wiki entry for her in English. And, her paintings were never exhibited until several years after her death. But, in its own quiet way, her work - especially the painting below, a self-portrait of Diehn-Bitt and her son - is  probably one of the best examples of female and feminist empowerment in this post. And, of the paintings shown in this post, it is also, oddly enough, the most modern.

Selbstbildnis mit Sohn (Self-portrait with Son), 1930, Kate Diehn-Bitt. 

In her 1999 publication, We Weren't Modern Enough: Women artists and the Limits of German Modernism, Marsha Meskimmon singles out "Self-portrait with Son" as a veritable game-changer. She begins by addressing the painter's androgynous appearance - the New Woman's garçonne look - which implied a "masculinization" of women that was perceived as "a physical and visual manifestation of the changing order of gender hierarchies" which, in turn, threatened the status quo.

Then again, Diehn-Bitt appeared to be (possibly) a lesbian and that was reason enough for the Nazis (and post-war Germany) to suppress her work; the modernist aspect being secondary.

Meskimmon then goes on to say: "Diehn-Bitt merged the traditional and the radical in this work; she set the figures of herself and her son in 'nature', yet used the stylish pictorial fragmentation associated with cubist-inspired, avant-garde painting to remind the viewer of 'culture'...

... In this work, a woman living the complexities of changing gender roles found a visual form through which to interrogate her own situation as artist and mother, public and private, creative and procreative. Rather than asserting an essentially one-dimensional stereotype of 'woman', the work speaks of the negotiation and reconfiguration of gender identity perpetually undertaken by women artists..."

There are probably many ways of interpreting Self-Portrait with Son, but, in any case, Diehn-Bitt has dispensed with the stereotypical sentimentality. This is not a "Mother's Day" greeting card (although it should be). It's a depiction of an independent woman with her son and their organically symbiotic relationship which strengthens both of them... a far cry from the cliche-ridden images of motherhood traditionally pushed down our collective throats. Diehn-Bitt is a person with a son.

Inset left (above) and inset right are two more paintings by Kate Diehn-Bitt found here.

***

And, so much for a post which inevitably became centered on the word "censorship," something I did not initially intend. No empowerment there! Not for anybody. And, neither was there empowerment in the telling; but once the idea got under my skin, well, I was obligated to follow it to its conclusion. Not that censorship won't rear its ugly head again in the next "empowerment" post, but, by then, (hopefully) there will be enough of other material to cancel it out.

Censorship, however, will always be the bane of an artist's existence; a truly dirty word elucidated by the "degenerate art" period in human experience. And, yet, there are some feminists who really feel that censorship is the way to go... as if, by suppressing art - specifically that created by the male gender - the playing field will somehow be changed. It won't. As I said: No empowerment there! Not for anybody. There is only one way to mitigate offensive art... and that is to create better, truer art. Moreover, disempowering men is not a productive feminist goal... empowering women is... but, more about that next time.

___________________________________________

* A list of degenerate artists can be found both on the Wiki entry page, plus here and here. A complete listing of the 16,000 degenerate works confiscated by the Nazis can be downloaded from this page.

** There was, however, one Blue Rider painting which was confiscated but never seen again and it's whereabouts continues to be a mystery: The Tower of Blue Horses by Franz Marc. The image (inset left) is a 1913 preliminary sketch in the form of postcard currently housed in Munich.

*** Husband Kurt, on the other hand, found himself a new breeder and fathered three children.

***

Well, that should've been all she wrote, and would've been had I not just found this headline:
The Vote Is In: Hillary Set To Be Cut From Texas History Lessons.

And I quote:


"The Texas Board of Education says it's trying to "streamline" the social studies curriculum in its public schools, and one way it plans on doing so is by getting rid of two big names from the required learning plan.

The Dallas Morning News reports that on Friday, the board held a preliminary vote and decided to nix Hillary Clinton from high school history class.

As the first woman to nab a major political party's presidential nomination, Clinton appeared alongside Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O'Connor, among others, in a "citizenship" section of the curriculum in which students were tasked to "evaluate the contributions of significant political and social leaders in the United States." A work group made its recommendations to the board based on a rubric it created on how "essential" it was to learn about certain historical figures.

Also cut, but from the elementary school curriculum: Helen Keller.

'Helen Keller does not best represent the concept of citizenship,' the group wrote. 'Military and first responders are best represented." By the group's gauge, Clinton received just 5 points out of 20; Keller got 7.

The work group estimates cutting Clinton will save about 30 minutes of teaching time, while yanking Keller will free up 40. What the BOE voted to keep in the state curriculum: references to "Judeo-Christian values" and "a requirement that students explain how the Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict' in the Middle East,' per the Morning News."


WTF? Anyway, for any fool out there who imagines that feminists are exaggerating when they conclude that women's achievements have been systematically erased from history, well, there's the phenomenon in action. And, that's exactly how it works and is one way it's done proving that misogyny in the public sector is hardly a thing of the past.

Should there be a law? Yes, there should.

And, I say this with great sadness: no, a feminist's work is never done.