Adolf Hitler was not a great artist.
He had failed to be accepted into Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts on two separate occasions.
His illustration skills deemed to be unsatisfactory.
Nevertheless, the young Adolf doggedly pursued his dream, copying local postcards, painting derivative oils and water colours of landscapes and local architecture.
Now the old story goes that Adolf’s antisemitism arose from his failures in the art world and the repeated rejections. But, one of the few people to actually fund his work was a Jewish shopkeeper.
Now we all know what happened next...and after he gained his notoriety, the last remaining pieces of his work suddenly shot up in value – and of course there were forgeries.
Except, it’s very difficult to spot a forged Hitler, due to the style that he employed – which was described akin to a “moderately ambitious amateur.”
i.e. it was so crap and unremarkable that anyone could have done it.
An accusation that often gets leveled at modern art, and you know what?
Hitler really hated modern art.
Bauhaus, Cabaret, Expressionism.
The interwar period in Germany was an absolute hotbed of artistic dynamism.
The country led the way in modernism. Germany is arguably the greatest producer of modern art in the world, and much of the groundwork for this accolade was laid in the 1920s.
However, to the Nazi Party all of this work was decidedly unpatriotic.
Seen to be obscene, the mixture of avant-garde, the American influence – particularly jazz, and heaven forbid, the celebration of work by non-Germans was anti-cultural and a threat to the Aryan way of life.
People were fired; books were burned; music, films and plays censored; thousands of artworks confiscated from public collections.
The purge targeted anything that came under the umbrella of what the Nazis called Entartete Kunst – ‘degenerate art’.
But it’s what happened in 1937 that really takes das biscuit.
In possibly the greatest backhanded compliment of all time, Hitler authorized the first Degenerate Art Exhibition. With over 600 pieces of degenerate art on display by some of the most famous artists of the period.
Let’s do the list:
Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, Gauguin,Van Gogh, Klee, Chagall, Kandinsky.
There were Otto Dix’s harrowing paintings inspired by World War One which were seen as too depressing and not heroic enough for the German people to get behind.
There was an entire section devoted to Dadaism which was despised by the Nazis for its intentional irrationality.
There were rooms devoted to the mockery of Jewish artists like Chagall, or pieces that were accused of subverting the majesty of Christianity.
The works were handled in a purposefully crude way. Hung up lopsided and in ramshackle spacing, as if they were hanging in a junk shop.
Threatening graffiti accompanied each section – mocking the artistry and pointing out why they were bad.
For example: “An insult to German womanhood” , “Madness becomes method” and “Nature as seen by sick minds.”
The exhibition lasted four months and then went on to tour the country.
In Munich alone, it attracted more than two million visitors, an average of 20,000 people per day, making it the most popular modern art show of all time.
The most popular modern art show of all time – designed to be a public shaming.
A sort of naughty dessert that one could hate-eat after visiting the Nazi approved House of German Art which displayed a monumental array of uber-patriotic pieces that really captured the sort of national heroism Hitler and Goebbels were really into.
Instead of painted prostitutes, there were celebrations of motherhood.
Instead of meaningless abstract paintings, they were naturalistic landscapes.
And, instead of weird disproportionate sculptures, there were the good old fashioned sculptures of antiquity – in proper proportion and everything!
But nobody cared about that stuff.
Three times more people went to the degenerate exhibition.
Was it because it was the last time they might see the work in public?
Were they just aligned with Hitler’s views and wanted to get angry at inanimate objects? Or, more likely, did most people just want to go because of the scandal – to say they’d seen it.
And so the Nazis would go on to relentlessly plunder and confiscate artwork throughout their reign of terror, and as well as burning it they also sold it for profits.
They flooded the art market, with Goebbels noting that their ill-gotten gains were being exchanged by US collectors for 10 cents a kilo.
Pieces of art looted by the Nazis can still be found in Russian and American institutions: The Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed a list of 393 paintings that have gaps in their provenance during the Nazi Era, The Art Institute of Chicago has posted a listing of more than 500 works that could be described as similar. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a public list of art items within their collection that were stolen by the Nazis.
Yes, there will just always be something so diabolically amusing about Hitler, a painter of banal farmhouses, being incensed by one of Kandinsky’s iridescent patterns or the witty hieroglyphs of Paul Klee’s Around The Fish – which was described as an “insane childish drawing.”
I suppose that’s why Art School isn’t for everyone…
If you ban it, they will come
The thing about banning stuff, is that it never really works does it?
People just want to hear more about it.
Getting your advert, your song, your movie or your product banned is probably one of the greatest PR gifts you can get as a brand.
Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!
These ads all got banned, and it didn’t do them any harm whatsoever.
Stupid is as stupid does👖
The horn 📯
Shrooming 🍄
Life is short 👶
Typically, shot by the disgraced Terry Richardson ⛷️
Typically, shot by the distinguished Tom Ford for YSL 💅
Floating 🍺
Bollocks 🚙
Bugger 🛻
Is nothing sacred?
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Thanks for reading,
Jonathan ✌️
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