Podcast:

Introducing Paula Modersohn-Becker

Script

Paula Modersohn-Becker is one the most underrated and influential female artists of the modern era.  She influenced everyone from Pablo Picasso to the Bay aArea figurative painters to the School of London Post War group (Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, R.B. Kitaj, Frank Auerbach), to many young artists today.  She painted the earliest known nude self portrait by a woman.  She explored themes of motherhood in her work in ways that female artists never had done before and tragically foreshadowed her own death as a result of complications from childbirth.  Her charcoal drawings are exquisite in their academic techniques and in her paintings, you can see how she pushes away from her academic foundation, in a time when there was no Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, Jenny Saville or Tracy Eaman.  She predates Frida Kahlo, who is the next painter that explores motherhood and self-portraiture to the same degree as Becker.  She was formally experimental and radical.  Sculptural, almost wood-carving like, and then suddenly atmospheric like Albert York, notes of Balthus, fast forward to Alice Neel.  She is right there with Matisse and Picasso - the two biggest names of the 20th century.  But she was a woman, and she died.  Born and raised in Germany, she died at the age of 31 in 1907 (Picasso was 26 at the time).   

Reflection…

I wanted to share the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker with you because, like many others, I had never heard of this artist until recently.  The images included in this video were sourced from a book titled “Paula Modersohn-Becker”, published by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.  My goal in making this video was to give you an idea of the scope of her work - which was vast - despite the fact that she died at a very young age.  This video can be thought of as an introduction of Becker’s work, rather than a biography of her life story.  I find her paintings to be endlessly inspirational, and I relish in the thought of her influencing the many great (and often male) contemporary artists that we so revere in today’s society. 

I struggled with finding the right music to go with the narration, but once I decided on a song, adding the images became much more intuitive.  I used Garageband to edit the narration, and I found that program easier to navigate than audacity. The song that I chose is from Bensound, which I had never used or even heard of before this project. Video editing was done with imovie.

This project would be a great addition to a high school photography course. It can be incorporated as something to culminate all of the work that a student has done throughout the semester. I think high school students would be highly motivated to learn the skills and the process of creating a video that can ultimately be uploaded to youtube or a website. As a teacher, I am inspired to incorporate these newly acquired skills into lesson planning and class demos. I’ve always dabbled in video editing, and now I have the confidence to follow through on making my own instructional videos.