"Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) is renowned for her monumental Life? or Theater?, which comprises 784 paintings the artist created in France between 1941 and 1942, before she was sent to Auschwitz where she was killed in 1943. In this in-depth monograph of the iconic work, Griselda Pollock offers a complex reading of Salomon's unique combination of image, text, and music. Without underestimating the tragic violence of her death in the Holocaust, Pollock seeks to reveal the artist's place within European modernism. In addition to discussing how Salomon's project resonates with the work of those who shared her situation of menaced exile, such as Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, and Hannah Arendt, Pollock reveals how Life? or Theater? raises the issue of sexual abuse of women within the artist's family. Full of close visual analysis, this groundbreaking book offers new insight into Salomon's powerful work in its historical and cultural moment"--