After seeing artist Charlotte Salomon’s work in an exhibition before the first lockdown, So Mayer started to reflect on the evolution of Salomon’s innovative, word-strewn paintings. Here, they consider how Salomon’s work conjures and embodies a unique voice, a bold assertion of self that defies curatorial and art historical prejudices.
Delving into the rich traditions of gothic literature, sentimental fiction and old folk tales, Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, 1782, appears from another world. But not so, says Miriam Al Jamil, who recognises in the painting an awareness of human psychology foreshadowing that found in modern psycho-analysis, dream theory and psychiatry.
