Venus, End by Rebecca Birrell review – art, passion and the rise of the Third Reich | Fiction

MeIn the summer of 1937, two Nazi-sponsored exhibitions opened in Munich. At the Degenerate Art exhibition, hundreds of confiscated works by banned modern artists – including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso – were gathered: a satirical display of the anti-German spirit of modern culture. The show was also interpreted as the opposite of the first The Great German Art Exhibition, mainly works of art approved by the government, was held every year until 1944. The official style of Aryan art was cultural neoclassicism; Popular subjects were female genitalia, pastoral scenes and military scenes. Hitler was among the biggest buyers. You probably haven’t heard of any of those artists.

What if one of them was secretly a Jew, working under a false name? Rebecca Birrell’s debut novel is about this, telling the story of a fictional Jewish artist who comes of age in Berlin during the last days of the Weimar Republic. Hannah Sherman works as a seamstress in the family business when she learns that she is about to get married. He escapes, finds a place to stay using Schmidt’s “important Christian” name, and begins to realize his artistic ambitions. A free-thinking New Woman, she also takes on two lovers: Saul, a museum curator, and Charlotte, a dancer at the gay bar where Hannah likes to take pictures.

We all know where history is going. Economic and political turmoil – which Hannah, our narrator, likes to point out bluntly – includes what would otherwise be a straightforward story of the artist’s progress. As the Great Depression begins, Hannah turns to an old client to fix a job. Elke Grese, a very beautiful old woman, saw Hannah’s talent and offered to help her so generously that it would have been crazy to refuse. But Hannah soon realized that there were strings attached. How long will they survive?

Birrell is a historian by training; in 2021 he published This Dark Worldan unusual mix of social history and cultural criticism of female artists working in the early 20th century in England. His deep understanding of artists and their work is evident here. Hana’s inner thoughts and her conversations with others are filled with thoughtful and insightful thoughts, including but not limited to old art photos at Saul’s workplace (Kaiser Friedrich, a museum whose equipment was destroyed by fire in 1945) and postcards of famous works that she repeatedly sells with relatives, friends.

For example, when painting her mother, Hannah was inspired to focus on Rembrandt’s portraits of an elderly woman she believed to be her mother.

Hana also sees the world through the lens of an artist. On the car ride: “On the taxi windows, the clouds were white as zinc, fresh paint from his tube.” This makes him an interesting narrator when he talks about visual description – although the touch is more ready with metaphors and metaphors: are the leaves really “like little hands in the storm”?

In contrast, his emotional features are not well portrayed. Without giving away too much of the plot – there are good twists and turns – it’s not clear why Hannah connects with other people, who seem more like cartoons than people. When talking about his feelings, he likes to use vague names: “the fear that came to my chest”, “the shock was embarrassing” and so on. You realize that they don’t understand what they want. “I didn’t ask why I wanted the part,” he admitted at one point, explaining his decision to cast himself as a background figure in someone else’s painting. This is not true: he is an artist, not a novelist. But it can make for frustrating reading.

At the end of the book, Birrell gives a glimpse of his series of narratives with a sudden change, and for the first time he enters the mind of another person. Elke – until now a distant and strange image – sitting in a car on a street in Munich, about to visit the Great German Art Exhibition of 1942. It’s a strangely welcome moment in Birrell’s nonfiction style: a reminder that literature, like art, is at its best when receiving its full potential.