Filmbuffs likely remember Valeska Gert for her performance as a reform school disciplinarian in the 1929 Louise Brooks film, Diary of a Lost Girl. She is the curious, short haired woman who orgiastically bangs a gong as her charges exercise to her rhythm.
Besides Diary of a Lost Girl, Gert had important parts in two other films by G.W. Pabst, Joyless Street (1925, with Greta Garbo) and Threepenny opera (1931, with Lotte Lenya).
Today, in Germany, Gert is the subject of a rediscovery of sorts – but not for her film work. Rather, a new book and gallery exhibit are making much of Gert’s pioneering work as dancer, performance artist, and inspiration to Germany’s punk rockers.
An article on the Deutsche Welle website, "Germany's forgotten performer Valeska Gert helped inspire punk," discusses a new biography and first ever exhibit about the actress and dancer at the National Gallery's Hamburger Bahnhof.
Just how ahead of the curve was this diminutive dancer? Consider this: In the late 1920s, Gert (already veteran of experimental theater a la Frank Wedekind and Oskar Kokoschka) unveiled one of her most enduring works of "performance art" - though it wasn't called that then. Entitled Pause, it was an interpretative anti-dance piece performed between films in Berlin cinemas. Gert came on stage, and largely just stood there. It was designed to draw attention to stillness and serenity. It anticipates John Cage's 1952 composition 4′33″, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played.
Gert's transdisciplinary art is paid tribute in an exhibit at the Hamburger Bahnhof. (There is also an accompanying catalog). Her art, according to the gallery, "probes the structures and effects of perception" – and there, it is placed alongside others that also tackle the phenomenon of perception, such as Marcel Duchamp. That’s heady context for a silent film actress.
According to the gallery, as far back as the 1920s, “Gert's conceptual works anticipated happenings, current trends in performance art, popular, small-stage entertaining arts, free improvisation and many other developments in contemporary art and modern music.” Including, the article on Deutsche Welle makes note of, Germany’s early punk rockers.
Gert’s life is no less remarkable. With the rise of Nazism, the Jewish performer made her way to England, where she appeared on stage and in an experimental short film directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. By 1938, she was living in New York City where she found work washing dishes and posing as a nude model. Then, she opened a ramshackle cabaret / restaurant called the Beggars Bar. In the 1940s, Julian Beck, Judith Malina, and Jackson Pollock worked there – and so did Tennessee Williams (as a busboy). She had to fire him because he refused to share tips.
Gert returned to blockaded Berlin in 1949 – largely forgotten and hoping to start over. She opened a cabaret called the Witches Den. By the 1960s, she was appearing in films by the likes of Fellini, Fassbinder, and Volker Schloendorff. A bit later, her avant-garde activities got the attention of Germany’s punk rockers - notably Nina Hagen – who drew upon Gert’s provocative theatricality.
Is Valeska Gert (1892 –1978) the great missing link in 20th century culture? She certainly has touched many currents in the arts.
Along with a five month exhibition and Wolfgang Mueller's definitive new biography, a 1969 vinyl recording of Gert’s Baby – her impersonation of a gurgling child alternating between rage and happiness – is to be released. Gert’s reputation may be reborn.
More info: The English-language Deutsche Welle article can be found at http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6007667,00.html
Thomas Gladysz is a longtime fan of Louise Brooks, so much so that in 1995 he founded the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and fan club devoted to the silent film star. Gladysz has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television, and introduced her films around the country. Recently, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl.
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