Friday, October 17, 2014

"Oh sure...how could that be?"

So.  I've been researching each artist listed as having been in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show in 2007 and I am now to the artists on the list who's last names begin with the letter "B".

If you have just come across this blog and want to start in the A's, then just click here and you will go right to that entry.

Magdalena Abakanowicz is the first artist I talked about.  She was born in Poland in 1930.

The artist we are speaking about today is Mary Bauermeister who was born in Germany in 1934 and lived in Frankfurt.  Her mother was a singer and her father a professor.

Mary Bauermeister

For those of us who have read Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, (Anne was born just 5 years before Mary in Frankfurt also) - or even those of us who haven't - we have a pretty good idea that living in Frankfurt was devastating for the Jewish population...a colossal understatement if there ever was one. 

What was it maybe like if you weren't Jewish?...growing up there and then?

Hitler came into power in Germany in 1933, one year before Mary was born.  So her childhood - until the war ended anyway - had the Nazi propaganda machine buzzing away in the background. 

If you want a better picture in your mind what that could have been like, here is a good overview from the History Learning Site.

I wanted to mention the propaganda machine because says in the interview (portion) that I will have for us tomorrow:  "The soldiers were not aware of the Hitler regime's human crimes.  Only after the war had they seen the photos of the concentration camps."

In my head I'm thinking "Oh sure...how could that be?" 

But after reading about the propaganda the Germans were subjected to and understanding that it was far easier to be cut off from the rest of the world - back then - than it is today, I can see how that could have been the perception of someone who was a child during that time...

I think the adults (as the majority of them wouldn't have voted Hitler into office had they the choice) living in Frankfurt then were not so fooled...but. 

You know.  I wasn't there.

So I have tried to set the stage somewhat for Mary Bauermeister who turned 80 years just last month.  
I want to share with you a portion of that transcript (where I read that quote).  It's from an interview between Timothy Cahill, editor of Art Conservator magazine and Mary Bauermeister...but it will have to wait for tomorrow's post - as today I have droned on long enough.

But - tomorrow you will see why I found this portion fascinating.  I think it gives such a wonderful picture of what she was thinking and feeling through years of the creation of much of her work.  And.  I will search for and insert photographs of the works she mentions in the transcript because I wanted us to have a visual too.

Doesn't that sound like great fun?

Okay!

'Til tomorrow then!  Hope you are enjoying your FRIDAY!

~Alex
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