The Story of Art Without Men

by Katy Hessel

Never before has such a vast work dealt with so much immediate and traumatic imagery, which physically collapses as she tries to tell her stories: bodies falling vertically and horizontally, monstrous figures towering in tight hallways, the young Charlotte gazing up longingly to the angels in heaven expecting to receive a letter from her deceased mother. Exactly as titled, the barriers between life and theatre are indistinct, and despite the imagery of death throughout, there are scenes evoking the joy of life, with glimpses of beauty in luscious gardens, declarations of love, music, painting by lakes, with Salomon exclaiming at the end, ‘I will live for them all.’ The most confronting, intimate and powerful visual record of a life ever told, Salomon’s Life? Or Theatre? reveals a woman who used art to deal with her feelings of terror, love, passion, rage and survival. In 1943, Salomon’s life was cut short. Along with her new husband, she was rounded up in France and deported to the extermination camp at Auschwitz, where she died aged twenty-six, five months pregnant.