The Dancer Anita Berber
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
(Difference between revisions)
| Revision as of 18:51, 28 April 2011 Jahsonic (Talk | contribs) ← Previous diff |
Current revision Jahsonic (Talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| {{Template}} | {{Template}} | ||
| - | :''[[Unheimliche Geschichten]], [[Mel Gordon]], [[Weimar culture]], [[Dr. Mabuse the Gambler]], [[Different from the Others]]'' | ||
| - | '''Anita Berber''' ([[June 10]], [[1899]] – [[November 10]], [[1928]]) was a German dancer, actress, writer, and [[prostitute]] who was the subject of an [[Otto Dix]] painting. She lived during the [[Weimar period]]. | ||
| - | Born to divorced bohemian parents (a cabarét artist and a violinist), she was raised mainly by her grandmother in [[Dresden]]. By the time she was 16, she had moved to [[Berlin]] and made her debut as a [[cabaret]] dancer. By 1918 she was working in film, and she began dancing nude in 1919. She was scandalous, [[androgynous]] and infamous, quickly making a name for herself on the Berlin scene. She wore heavy dancer’s make-up, which on the black and white photos and films of the time came across as jet black lipstick painted across the heart-shaped part of her skinny lips, and charcoaled eyes. | + | ''[[The Dancer Anita Berber]]''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anita_Berber_Briefmarke_1991.jpg] (1925) is a portrait of [[Anita Berber]] by [[Otto Dix]]. It hangs in the [[Kunstmuseum Stuttgart]]. |
| - | Her hair was cut fashionably into a short bob and was frequently bright red, as in 1925 when the German painter Otto Dix painted a portrait of her, titled "[[The Dancer Anita Berber]]". Her dancer friend and sometime lover Sebastian Droste, who performed in the film ''[[Algol (film)|Algol]]'' (1920), was skinny and had black hair with gelled up curls much like sideburns. Neither of them wore much more than lowslung [[loincloth]]s and Anita occasionally a [[Corsage (bodice)|corsage]] worn well below her small breasts. | ||
| - | Berber's [[Cocaine dependence|cocaine addiction]] and [[bisexuality]] were matters of public chatter. She was allegedly the sexual slave of a woman and the woman's 15-year-old daughter. She could often be seen in Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos, naked apart from an elegant [[sable]] wrap, with a pet monkey and a silver brooch packed with [[cocaine]]. Besides being a cocaine addict, she was an [[Alcoholism|alcoholic]], but at the age of 29, gave up both suddenly and completely. According to Mel Gordon in ''The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber,'' she was diagnosed with galloping [[tuberculosis]] while performing abroad. She died on November 10, 1928 in a [[Kreuzberg]] hospital and was buried at St. Thomas cemetery in [[Neukölln]]. | ||
| - | A 1987 film by [[Rosa von Praunheim]] titled ''Anita - Tänze des Lasters'' centres around the life of Anita Berber. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The band Death in Vegas named a song after her, and is on the album Satan's Circus. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | ==Bibliography== | ||
| - | *Capovilla, Andrea. "Berber, Anita." ''Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II.'' Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, eds. New York: Routledge, 2001. 50-51. | ||
| - | *Fischer, Lothar. ''Tanz zwischen Rausch und Tod: Anita Berber, 1918-1928 in Berlin.'' Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1996. | ||
| - | *Funkenstein, Susan Laikin. "Anita Berber: Imaging a Weimar Performance Artist." ''Woman's Art Journal'' 26.1 (Spring/Summer 2005): 26-31. | ||
| - | *Gill, Anton. ''A Dance between the Flames: Berlin between the Wars.'' New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993. | ||
| - | *"Legendary Sin Cities [series]--Berlin: Metropolis of Vice." Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. www.cbc.ca/documentaries/sincities/berlin.html | ||
| - | *Richie, Alexandra. ''Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin.'' New York: Carroll and Graf, 1998. | ||
| - | *Toepfer, Karl Eric. ''Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. | ||
| - | |||
| - | *''[[The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Depravity]]'' | ||
| {{GFDL}} | {{GFDL}} | ||
Current revision
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Dancer Anita Berber[1] (1925) is a portrait of Anita Berber by Otto Dix. It hangs in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Dancer Anita Berber" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
![[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anita_Berber_Briefmarke_1991.jpg){kind=link}