Personality clash
Let us make it clear from the beginning
that we are talking about a painter
of multiple personalities. We are not
talking about crazy geniuses who cut
off their ear-lobes, such as Van Gogh, or
who painted the carcasses of dead cows,
such as Chaim Soutine, but about someone
who combined the best and worst artistic
personalities of her age, Dorothea
Schmierer Roth. Or Lola to her friends.
The first Lola was born in 1893 to a
rich Jewish family of ship owners and
merchants in the port of Galati on the
Danube. Her home was a sumptuous
residence of the consul of the Netherlands,
her father Leopold Schmierer.
Lola was a happy kid, as she appears
in the photos of the time, with long ribbons
in her hair, among uncles with
huge moustaches and aunts with big hair
buns. She receives an education appropriate
for her status in high society. She
speaks German, French and English,
has private piano lessons and studies
drawing with Venetian academic Antonio
Zumino. She takes photos with her
girlfriends, all clothed in long dresses,
riding bikes and smoking. Travelling to
Austria, Germany, France, Greece, Italy
and Switzerland, she attends art classes
and exhibitions wherever she goes.
Whatever she sees, she takes in and she
is well informed about all the European
art trends of the time.
In this guise, she paints in water colours,
painting friends playing the piano
in well-lit salons.
But then another personality kicks
in. She is attentive to details and paints
as though she were seeing her subjects
through a magnifying glass. The lines of
the portraits are over-sized, over-grown,
like characters in feverish dreams.
Then come the male nudes - in charcoal on cardboard with edgy, aggressive
lines and female nudes with continuous
and fine linearity. She takes in and takes
on Egon Schiele’s expressionist intensity,
troubled and loving it.
Another personality - a belated discovery
of cubism. Portraits of little girls
and boys and still life fragmented into
squares and triangles.
Then a further style, self portraits in
the manner of Van Gogh in vibrating
and sharp colours. Next up is an inspiration
from Kandinsky, a more pure form
of abstraction, before she becomes Romantic
and Surrealist like Chagall.
With the rise of Communism in Romania,
she loses her native house to the
state and seems to have no more personalities
left to play with. She continues to
paint, but the works of her last years are
lifeless. It is as though she is expressing
that all she has achieved has been
taken away by a new system which does
not leave her space and air. She dies in
1981.
Lola Schmierer Roth has days of genius
and of amateurism, takes up all artistic
trends of her time and has fun with
them. This exhibition, at the National
Art Museum, will introduce the crowds
to a fascinating woman of many colours
and shades.
Anca Pol
‘Lola Schmierer-Roth. Paintings and
graphics’ is at the National Art Museum
of Romania, Calea Victoriei 49-53. Until
26 February
Out of their heads
Like watching modern artists get water
chucked in their faces?
Then you will enjoy this exhibition of
Bulgarians Nina Kovcheva and Valentin
Stefanoff at the National Museum of
Contemporary Arts, because this pair of
video art veterans specialise in filming
themselves engaged in a variety of mundane
and tortuous activities.
Five of their works now dominate the
giant ground floor space in and outside
the Parliament Palace-based museum.
‘Wet Contact’ has filmed portraits of
the two artists staring at the camera.
From either side, a strong slap of water
comes hurtling into their faces. They
stand, stoic, for a further two minutes,
before it happens all over again. It is
painful to watch.
The film ‘How near so far’ shows naked
legs running through grass in yellow
sandals to an electronic soundtrack
for four minutes. What are we meant to
question? What is the pursuit for? Why
is the person naked? Where is this going? Is there a point? Why I am I watching
this? When will this end?
Far more compelling is a brilliantly
arranged video loop in the gloom of a
separate annex to the museum’s main
hall. A visitor walks into a room of darkness,
except for the huge disembodied
heads of the two artists projected onto
a slope, opening and shutting their eyes
and mouths.
However this eerie and arresting image
is undermined by a soundtrack of
a lilting Scottish voice issuing tedious
musings on creative responsibility. ‘Are
artists superior to society?’ intones the
fey Braveheart. ‘The foreigner is generous
to the artist, but the artist is a foreigner
as well.’ This contributes to the
view that there is nothing less inspiring than listening to artists talk about their
own work. Kovcheva and Stefanoff, stick
to the visuals. Don’t tell us what to think
and feel. We can find out for ourselves.
We’re adults.
When the Bulgarians dump the aesthetics
and stick to politics there are better
results. ‘0.039225’ is a video loop of
different percentages, decimals and ratios
of the territory of the Balkans to the
rest of the world (if interested, it’s 1: 30).
Meanwhile a soundtrack reads out these
numbers in the different languages of
the Balkans, including Romanian.
It shows that, maybe, the single element
that unites all these countries is a
statistic. Now there is an idea.
Michael Bird
‘Au-dela de ce qui est visible’ by Nina
Kovcheva and Valentin Stefanoff at the
National Museum of Contemporary
Arts (MNAC) Palatul Parlamentului,
Calea 13 Septembrie entrance, Wednesday
to Sunday 10:00 to 18:00 hrs. Until
7 March