The exhibition of Paula Modersohn-Becker's paintings, and of artists associated with her, at the Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, is titled, "A Short, Intensive Festival." The overall emotional atmosphere generated by these paintings, however, is closer to a wake or a funeral than a joyful celebratory event.

Part of the cultural showcase "Deutschland in Japan 2005/06," the exhibition treats her as an artist of outstanding importance -- partly, I suspect, because she is a woman and we are living in politically correct times. However, Modersohn-Becker's portraits and self-portraits can make depressing viewing. The subject in "Seated Old Woman with Handkerchief" (1903) looks frankly suicidal, while "Seated Girl in Left Profile" (1899) looks as if she has just been arrested for shoplifting. But perhaps the scariest work is "Bust of Lee Hoetger with Flower" (1906) in which the artist's friend delicately holds a tiny blossom with a look of unspeakable evil.

Modersohn-Becker is generally considered to be part of the Expressionist movement, although she died in 1907, three years before the term was actually coined by the Czech critic Antonin Matejcek, who defined an Expressionist as someone who "wishes, above all, to express himself." A key to expressing the self was shutting out, at least temporarily, the external world and painting from deep within. "Impressions and mental images pass through [the Expressionist's] soul as through a filter," Matejcek explained, "which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence."