Nora Schultz

Nora Schultz is a Berlin-based artist. Here, she focuses on works of an autobiographical nature.

1. MICHEL LEIRIS, L’AFRIQUE FANTÔME (PHANTOM AFRICA), 1934

   “October 27—The mask that I had taken, during the large post-funeral rites, to be the ‘marabout’ mask is in fact a caricature of a European woman. Her long loose hair, impeccably parted at the top of her head by cowry shells, her hood made of black fibers, her blue bubu, her notebook representing an enthusiastic tourist taking notes, distributing banknotes to the dancers, wandering all over, going into ecstasies, etc. . . . At the beginning of our stay, the people didn’t dare tell us. Now that they are more familiarized, we’ve learned it.*

   ‘Ambibè Babadyi misses the golden age before the French occupation, when masks were much more numerous, stronger and more beautiful.’

   *A third crosscheck ultimately taught us that this mask was indeed the ‘marabout’ mask, and not the ‘European woman.’”

2. FERDINAND KRIWET, TRANS-SCRIPT 2005–2007

   Kriwet produced this body of work, which consists of eighty “book-objects” in three wooden containers, after a production break of almost thirty years. Combining reproductions of early works, texts, photographs, and personal documents, Trans-Script is both an artistic archive and a personal diary. The reproductions, made by the artist mostly on transparent paper, are bound together in a manner that takes into account theme and pictorial interaction; such attention to order also informs the placement of the books within the containers. The specific decisions a work like this requires when presented in a gallery space were visible recently at BQ in Cologne: The gallery exhibited pages of Trans-Script as a digital animation on monitors hanging next to the containers—a presentational choice that doesn’t hide its influence on the work’s reception. For a small accompanying publication, several pages from Trans-Script were chosen and set into still another order that in this case was defined by the gallery in cooperation with the artist, thus further extending Trans-Script’s specific systems of order for its showing at BQ.

3. A BIGGER SPLASH (1974)

   A quasi-documentary, directed by Jack Hazan, about David Hockney’s life and his decision to move to Los Angeles, this film features, among others, Hockney, Peter Schlesinger, fashion designer Ossie Clark, and his wife, Celia Birtwell, all “playing” themselves. The best biographical movie about an artist I’ve seen.

   Jack Hazan, A Bigger Splash, 1974, still from a color film in 35 mm, 106 minutes. David Hockney (left).
4. JOSEPHINE PRYDE AND SARAH STATON, “HOW THEY MET,” GALERIE BLEICH-ROSSI/GALERIE GABRIELE SENN, VIENNA, 2008

   An exhibition in two parts about the history and friendship of the two artists. Titled as states of mind (Ambivalence, Motivation, Aching), Pryde’s photographic portraits are, given the specificity of their pictorial qualities, themselves active characters. By not only indicating but also acting (aggressively, in a positive manner), these pictures stretch portraiture in a very material way. Staton’s sculptures, which screw and cut their ways through space—massive and elegant, handmade and distant—partly remind me of furniture depicted in images of past environments, abstracted through memory, roughly rematerialized, and magnified. The communication between these two artists’ works is too complex to capture within a gallery’s confines and is literally growing beyond them.

   View of Josephine Pryde and Sarah Staton, “How They Met,” 2008, Galerie Bleich-Rossi, Vienna.
5. MARYANNE AMACHER, GRAVITY—MUSIC FOR SOUND JOINED ROOMS SERIES, 2006

   A vertical sound installation in different chapters that took place in Singuhr-Hoergalerie, a sound-art gallery housed in a former church in Berlin. Sound began inside two stone lions, dashed up the staircase, shot into the dome, ran along its inner side as if within a helmet, and returned to the listener’s ear. Amacher’s signature “ear-tones,” which seem to be produced and located precisely within the listener’s head, could in this case be modified by one’s own movement through space. This ultramodern, sharp-edged acoustic choreography was comic and cinematic; it dealt with the architecture with fine humor, while maintaining tension in preciseness and physicality.

6. FRIEDA GRAFE, FILM FÜR FILM (BRINKMANN AND BOSE, 2006)

   Originally published in the newspaper (Süddeutsche Zeitung), as book entries, and on film programs from 1964 to 2000, Frieda Grafe’s collected film critiques are not autobiographical notes, but they provide a range of observations on her personal selection of films from the period in which they were written. Grafe builds and names relations among art, filmmaking, color perception, and cultural and social considerations in the most generous and complex way.

7. CHARLOTTE SALOMON, LEBEN? ODER THEATER? (LIFE? OR THEATER?), 1940–42

   Hundreds of watercolors and drawings illustrate Salomon’s life in Nazi Germany before her deportation to Auschwitz. Depicting the conversations of her family members as well as inner monologues that she animates in her special way of repeating and transforming single images, her personal “life-memories” offer a view of her thoughts about political, cultural, and personal issues and embody a unique testament to the time.

   Charlotte Salomon, Leben? Oder Theater? (Life? Or Theater?) (detail), 1940–42, mixed media, dimensions variable.
8. JOSEF STRAU’S POSTERS

   Strau’s posters provide space for his assembled writings. As text-images they allow text to seem like blocks of voices; often drawings enhance this abstraction and build another layer onto it. The posters distribute critical writings as well as autobiographical bits. Made to be taken away by visitors, they leave their original location, the installation. Through this movement, the text remains autonomous, whereas its voice can continue to develop within the environment in which the poster finds itself.

   Josef Strau, The Dissident–Art Action Group, 2007, fabric, plastic, lacquer, metal, silver leaf, aluminum foil, paper, thread, electrical components, wooden plinth, and framed photograph. Installation view, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne.
9. MONIKA SCHWITTE, ANAGRAMM, 2006

   Schwitte’s works juxtapose film and painting. She diffuses and extends the confines of the filmic medium by making direct manual interventions on found filmstrips from various origins, using painting techniques in order to hide or accentuate specific color tones and to accumulate and condense the most elementary visual parts that make up the photographic/filmic image. Working process and everyday life define and construct each other mutually.

   Monika Schwitte, Anagramm, 2006, still from a color film in 35 mm, 26 minutes.
10. SAUL STEINBERG, ALL IN LINE (PENGUIN BOOKS, 1947)

    Mostly known for his New Yorker cartoons, Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) also made a series of drawings based on his international travels as a US Navy apprentice seaman. Caricatures of his daily life and the places to which he was sent (China, India, North Africa, Washington, DC), they reflect how these societies and the military observe each other, while depicting his alienation from either side. Drawing itself, as an occupation, is also caricatured.