Two exhibitions in Germany revolve around the sexualised woman. In Hamburg you can chat with historical “femmes fatales”. Helping Susanna in the bath in Cologne.
The type of femme fatale is out. That’s what the exhibition organizers at the Kunsthalle Hamburg think – and yet they devote an epoch-spanning show to the stereotype of the beautiful woman who devours men. What is special about it are not the footnotes on the themes of “gaze, power, gender”, which can be found in the paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Gustave Moreau, Franz von Stuck, Max Liebermann, Oskar Kokoschka, Valie Export and even queer feminist videos like “Salome 2019” by Nan Goldin.
When art history discovered this dangerous female species in the early 19th century, the subject was not a reinvention but a decadent revival of the characters Judith, Salome and Medusa. The late 19th century then projected these clichés onto real women – Alma Mahler, the dancer Anita Berber or the actress Sarah Bernhardt.
What the Pre-Raphaelites found exciting became objectified around 1920. Then, around 1960, feminists dealt the fatal blow to the femmes fatales. And in the MeToo era, they seem to have finally ended up underground. But the great heroines of art history cannot be silenced: the discredited beauties have their say in the exhibition in a funny, partly self-critical, partly autobiographical way.