Yesterday, I took a pleasant trip with my family to see the Paula Modersohn-Becker exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture. Titled “A Short, Intensive Festival” after a description Modersohn-Becker penned in her diary about what would prove to be her own short life (1876–1907), this excellent exhibit featured some of the artist’s best studies of the human body. On every hand, I saw flashes of Gauguin, Van Gogh of the dark period (or Goho as the Japanese call him), and Munch, but handled in a more delicate, inward-turning fashion. Her portraits of the poor farm workers and their children–particularly of the young girls–were incredibly moving. The quiet suffering that radiated from one in particular–”Worpswede Peasant Child Seated on a Chair” from 1905–will stay with me for a long time. There were other favorites: “Self-Portrait before a Window with a View of Paris Houses,” a study in back-lighting, “Sleeping Child (1904)” with its dramatic design which reminded me of Oskar Kokoschka’s portrait of two lovers in a boat adrift at sea, and her “Woman in a Red Blouse” from 1898. We see Modersohn-Becker’s movement towards a kind of gorgeous abstraction in this exhibit, and we wonder, had she lived, what she would have ultimately accomplished. The biggest surprise of the exhibit was a great portrait of Rilke–apparently a friend of the artist, and a frequent visitor to the Worpswede arts community where she spent a good part of her creative life.

Afterwards, we visited relatives, and we all had delicious cream-puffs! A great way to end the day.