“The Record Player” by Karl Hofer (1939)

Image: “The Record Player”– Karl Hofer (1939). Oil on canvas. Currently on view at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

One of my worst fears is being forgotten. I think there are books written about such things. I’ve not read them yet. I know there is depth to this that outside ears and psychological study could support.

But I am starting to realize that this fear is the very reason I desperately cling to objects. I’m known by those closest to me as an incredibly sentimental person. I save so, so many things. They have natural permanence that I don’t have, not in the same way.

And I even reclaim things and places. If there is a place I’ve been that causes pain, I go back and redo the moment, make it new. I reclaim it.

This painting was one of those objects. When I was in middle school my dad and I took a guided tour of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City with a group of art enthusiasts that we didn’t know. Long story, but normal for us.

We turned a corner on our guided tour and she happened to be hanging behind a short sidewall. I know now that even calling her “her” reveals how intimate it felt- to a painting. To an idea.

The painting is of a young woman in an attic next to an open window and dressed in a strapped undergarment that has fallen off her shoulder and exposed her right breast. She is holding a vinyl record and is in the act of either placing it on a record player or just browsing. The girl is looking directly at us, knowing we are there.

There’s no visible window and I’m just assuming she’s in an attic. My head can’t quite separate that particular version from the actual image. I just decided to fill in what wasn’t there. Classic me.

It seems there are two versions of this painting. They are quite different emotionally. It is unknown when the second was painted.

No one in the group was really impressed by it. They thought the painting was bland, dark or washed out, not a lot behind the eyes. But some thought it was charming, and cute.

I got angry. They don’t know her. They can’t see. Of course they can’t see, they are blind. But the desperately lonely young woman viewing her that day saw a desperately lonely young woman staring back at her.

Trembling, I spoke up. “She looks like she’s been used. Tired. Like she’s just come out of the rain or something. Like she’s been hurt. Like we aren’t supposed to see this.”

There were pauses and murmurs of interest and then the group moved on. I did not.

15 years later I googled the artist. I’d never once considered who’d painted it or why. Perhaps my own recent art-making made me hungry for connection to any like-minded soul. I found myself wanting to find a kindred spirit in the artist whose work had affected me so deeply.

Yeah, it didn’t go that way. Well, not in the way I’d expected.

‘The Record Player” was painted in 1939 by German expressionist Karl Hofer. He had become a prominent member of the German art community by the time this painting was created, and he had begun to teach at a respected German art school. He was outspoken against Hitler from the beginning, but also desperately wanted to remain in the good graces of not only the art world, but more importantly to his native Germany. He wanted to be known as a patriot artist.

His wife, Mathilde Scheinberger, was born to a non-practicing Jewish family. She later became a Protestant, and was one when they got married. Karl and Mathilde had three children together. They spent much of their marriage in his art success. Eventually they separated but did not divorce.

Hofer was becoming more and more popular and his work was being noticed. And he was being noticed. A Nazi propaganda poster proclaimed Hofer a Jew because his wife was Jewish. He adamantly denied it, saying he and his art were “Free of Jews”. In 1937, Soon after the poster incident, over 300 of Hofer’s works were confiscated by the Third Reich and then put on display during their “Degenerate Art” exhibition. In 1938 he lost his teaching position and was banned from selling art in Germany.

I’m going to copy the rest of my research, verbatim, to just get to it.

“In an attempt to maintain his career as a German citizen, he formally divorced Mathilde and married a woman whose background qualified her as of “aryan” descent, effectively lifting the ban. Mathilde, no longer protected under the “mixed marriage” laws instated by the Nazi regime, was sent in 1939 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she died in 1942.”

Hofer painted “The Record Player” in 1939.

“In March of 1943 his Berlin studio was bombed, destroying all of the work he had created upon his reinstatment into the German art world, and in November his apartment was also destroyed.”

“Once the war was over, Hofer became instrumental in creating the Berlin Academy of Arts and in promoting the work of German artists. By the time of his death of a stroke in 1955, he had recieved an honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1948, and was awarded the Order Pour le mérite for Science and Arts in 1952 and the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1953.” (Annex Galleries)

I don’t see myself anymore when I look at “The Record Player”. I just see her. Mathilde.

Did he know? Did he know what would happen to her? It’s a tragedy if he found out later. It’s a travesty if he knew and kept going. Did he know?

Karl Hoffer is remembered as an influential modern German artist. He got what he wanted.

What was this all for? What in the hell was this painting saying?

I cling to objects because I don’t want to be forgotten. Knowing the object’s story makes the object a ghost. If I can connect to it, then maybe I won’t become a ghost myself. If I honor the hand that created it or the hand that held it, maybe my hand will be felt too.

But this? How can I honor this? When there was her? At the end of his life, was Karl Hofer proud? Or was he just trying not to become a ghost?

What am I capable of if I become desperate enough to not be forgotten?

What do her eyes say?

Reference Material:

Nelson Atkins Museum of Art- https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/16655/the-record-player

The Annex Galleries- https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/4142/Hofer/Karl

https://smartify.org/artworks/karl-hofer-the-record-player

https://amycrehore.blogspot.com/2014/07/painter-karl-hofers-record-player-1939.html

Karl Hofer portfolio: http://www.artnet.com/artists/karl-hofer/

Karl Hofer biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Hofer

Mathilde Hofer biography: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathilde_Hofer (German)

I’m visiting one of my sisters in Rochester, New York for the month of December. I like to wander, and usually have a plan that never sees itself through the way I had intended.

Last week I found myself at Java’s, the Eastman School of Music, and then inside the Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo). Their 32nd Annual Members Exhibition was on display. Walls and walls of pieces in a small but bright industrial space of unsealed floors and exposed ceilings. I had my 11-month-old daughter with me, who was no longer asleep, and I knew I had very little precious, precious time.

Photos of the work were encouraged so I took full advantage. There were many works that caught my breath, but the following work is what I caught in my throat. I returned home feeling heartsore and yet well-fed.

“I can’t forget, okay?” No. 2- Julie Chen (2022)

Interactive audio sculpture
Vintage AT&T Trimline 210 telephone, electronics, wire, wood, and the artist’s mother’s cremains in a glass jar
3 × 9 × 3½ inches; 00:18

Description: Courtesy of Julie Chen and Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo), photo taken by Abbey Pitchford

The artist is Julie Chen, and the work is titled “I can’t forget, okay?” No.2 (2022). The work’s description per Chen’s website reads “Interactive audio sculpture, vintage At&T Trimline 210 telephone, electronics, wire, wood, and the artists’ mother’s cremains in a glass jar, 3x9x3 1/2 inches; 00:18.” The small tag next to the jar reads “Please have a listen.”

When I picked up the phone and pressed it to my ear I heard a recording of woman’s accented voice say, “Hi Julie, this is mommy call you. Happy birthday. I remember, I can’t forget, okay? This is the day I went to hospital. Bye.”

At first I wasn’t quite sure what I heard, so I replayed it a few times. I stood back and took it in again, realized fully that this was Chen’s mother’s voice, and listened a few more times.

I felt like I’d witnessed a secret. A very private moment. I felt uncomfortable at first. And even more uncomfortable when I realized they were cremains.

But then I realized this may have been the last voicemail, or even the last thing spoken to Chen. Chen would need to clarify my interpretation, but I don’t think that is their job. I think Chen wanted there to be more unsaid, leaving me to create the rest. Nevertheless I was experiencing Julie and Peggy Chen.

Experience– what I believe to be the most powerful purpose of not only art, but of contemporary art.

The piece is visual, aural and tactile. It fully affected the senses which then fully engaged my imagination. I wondered who Julie and Peggy were, and within my own contexts of motherhood. I recently became a mother, and considered the future passing of my own mother. To those who’ve lost a mother this piece could be a powerful salve, a safe space to grieve.

Experience breeds empathy.

Often there are jabs at contemporary art, joking that it was Art, (usually with accompanying air quotes) because the work it looks “easy”. And often is unusual compared to the larger history of visual art. This of course reflects how we equate skill and effort with one’s value.

And I’m saying that directly to myself because I am the one who needs to hear it most.

This piece isn’t two-dimensional paint or ink, but familiar objects that created something “anyone could do.”

I believe the larger public doesn’t want experience that contemporary art offers because we don’t like being uncomfortable. I don’t think this work was intended to be beautiful visually, it was meant to create beauty. And it did.

Often contemporary art is hard to swallow because our contemporaries are the artists. They are asking questions and creating conversation that is active and present. These aren’t old masters or accessible paint strokes. These are active conversations that often make us uncomfortable.

We don’t like to talk about death. And yet without confronting it I won’t know how to live.

It is true that anyone who had intent could put a phone to board and connect it to a jar of cremains to make a point. But that is the very point. We haven’t. We have other, less beautiful ways, of not forgetting. Or we choose to forget.

I see this work as courage and as an intentional act of love. Love has been cut, wired, poured, bottled, written, and mounted. Creation as an act of rebellion- as is love. Rebellion against standards, comfort, and, in this work, a rebellion against death.

This work entertains the long human fantasy of communicating with the dead. Furthermore Chen’s piece is an incredible preservation of a time and place- something art as a mode of communication, can uniquely honor.

What remains heavy with me is the complete trust that I, a stranger, would cherish Peggy Chen, and what remains of her here as much as her daughter did.

My own daughter is asleep next to me on the bed. What, at the end of my life, will my daughter choose to save? What will Olivia want to honor in me?

What voice does my daughter hear?

To Julie Chen,

Thank you for this experience. Thank you for your care and your creativity, your courage and clarity. We are thankful for your precious mother and the bond you shared with her. Thank you for sharing your heart with us and reminding me to cherish the voices of those I love.

And, just as your work’s title suggests, we know you won’t forget her- can’t forget.

And neither will we.

You can learn more about the artist Julie Chen and their work here and on their new Instagram page (@artist.juliechen).