2023-06-12 12:34:00
SShe was a courtesan, illegitimate daughter and later mother, actress on stage as in film and in life, writer, painter, sculptor, director, theater owner, rights dealer, influencer, it girl, businesswoman. She was just about everything that went. She was a star, probably the first to become famous around the world. Because she experienced and shaped the work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility. The artifact was herself, and she was at the forefront of a turning point in the art business that she advanced and gleefully exploited.
The sculptor Sarah Bernhardt
What: Petit Palais Paris
She was and is Sarah Bernhardt. Died a hundred years ago and buried pompously. Most of her deeply emotional roles between tragedy and socialite are now only known as opera roles. Alexandre Dumas’ “Lady of the Camellias” became Verdi’s “La traviata”, Puccini set Victorien Sardou’s “Tosca” to music. “L’Aiglon” by Edmond Rostand, about Napoleon’s son, the Duke of Reichstadt, who died early, was set to music by Arthur Honegger; today the work is a rarity, for Sarah Bernardt it was the most momentous role – in pants, of course. Just like she did on stage – as Musset’s Lorenzaccio, Hamlet or, at the very beginning, in 1869, as the juvenile troubadour Zanetto in François Coppée’s “Le Passant”, where she confused her audience with her shimmering androgyny; in the cloakroom then men and women.
The Parisian Petit Palais is now the ideal place to revive the fascination of this woman, amidst foamy plaster-beaten Belle Époque stucco, who outdid every man on stage herself. An amazing amount of material – 400 exhibits – has made for an opulently rambling, quoting, showing Exhibition receive art and artificial fabrics, memorabilia, advertising products, souvenirs of this rich, also fetishized woman’s life beyond any normality and norm.
Georges Clairin painted Sarah Bernhardt in the garden of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours
What: Petit Palais Paris
Today, the pathetically heavy Bernhardt style of representation between bombastic backdrops, lavish costumes and mostly half-silk pieces would be completely out of fashion. She became famous above all for her sprawling death scenes. During her lifetime, Bernhardt fascinated royalty and artists of all kinds, who portrayed her or turned her into literature (above all Marcel Proust in the character of La Berma in “In Search of Lost Time”). After the exhibition, however, she will be remembered as a self-determined, emancipated woman in a man’s world.
In the 19th century, actresses were (almost) inevitably badly paid, even worse in repute, mercenaries at the mercy of rich men who protected, exploited, and at best promoted them. And so it was with Marie Henriette Rosine Bernardt, born in Paris on October 22, 1844, mother courtesan, father unmasked only in 2022 as Édouard Gustave Viel, lawyer in Le Havre. Girls’ boarding school and convent school made her want to become a nun.
The not only paternal Duc de Morny, lascivious half-brother of Napoleon III, sent her at the age of 14 to study acting at the conservatory. Four years later she made her debut at the Comédie-Française as Racine’s Iphigénie.
In front of Nadar’s camera: Sarah Bernhardt
What: Petit Palais Paris
Sarah Bernhardt quickly found it too cramped there, she was destined to be a soloist, although she had to organize everything around her throughout her life. Just like the first portrait session for a still obscure art form, photography, in 1864, but with one of its kings – Nadar. Young, unused, open, malleable, that’s how she sat for him with a bare shoulder. She’s not here yet, what distinguished her throughout her life – eccentric staging; whether allegedly asleep in a coffin, in the midst of an exotic pet menagerie or in the new art of poster lithography, especially by the Czech Adolph Mucha, art nouveau tendrils intertwined, have even become art-historical.
Sarah Bernhardt had her son Maurice from the Belgian Prince Henri de Ligne, and worked as a nurse for wounded soldiers in the 1870-71 war. Victor Hugo celebrated her as “La Voix d’or”, but she married a Belgian embassy attaché with unsuccessful acting ambitions.
When she was broke, she went on a world tour, again and again, for decades, all the way to the Wild West. Queen Victoria, Tsar Alexander III. and Wilhelm II were among her fans. In between she directed several Paris theaters, especially the Théâtre de la Renaissance and from 1899 until her death the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet (today: Théâtre de la Ville).
Photography by Sarah Bernhardt with Georges Clairin
What: Petit Palais Paris
She became an advertising icon for basically everything, arrived in Paris right after the Eiffel Tower, and vehemently took the side of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus affair. She translated plays, wrote novels and a book about acting; she published her memoirs in 1907.
In 1900 she made her first feature film, “Le Duel d’Hamlet”, and also spoke on phonograph cylinders. In 1906 Sarah Bernhardt became a professor at the Paris Conservatory and in 1914 a member of the Legion of Honour. From 1915 she played with a prosthesis or was carried onto the stage in an armchair. She died on March 26, 1923 and was buried by thousands on Père Lachaise.
A goddess, an icon, to this day – and, as this show testifies, has remained surprisingly modern in her marketing methods and views, despite her contemporary relevance as an actress. Now that you’re a star for nothing, Sarah Bernhardt would easily be a hit on Instagram – with millions of followers.
“Sarah Bernhardt. And the Woman Created the Star.“ Bis zum 27. August im Petit Palais in Paris; Catalog 40 Euro
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