tfw yet another of your favorite art blogs turns out to be run by an nrx/ethnonationalist/whatever.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT REPRESENTATIONAL ART AND NAZIS
Hypothesis: They gave good taste in art because unlike liberals they attach a high moral importance to aesthetics.
But why is the left wing better at internet memes?
“high moral importance to aesthetics”
it turns out you can just make words mean whatever you want!
Funny story about fascists, ‘moral aesthetics,’ and public appreciation for art:
In 1937, the Nazis decided to make an example of the artists they hated- work by Commies (or lefties in general), work by Jews, non-representational art, abstract art, art featuring Black people, art by gay people. Everything was cluttered together in a big exhibition, called Entartete Kunst, or ‘Degenerate Art.’ Entarte Kunst was meant to be a bad example, the Goofus to the Gallant of fascist heroic realism. Appropriately, across town, the Nazis set up an exhibition called Kunstausstellung, or ‘Great German Art Exhibition.’ The Kunstausstellung was full of acceptably Teutonic fare– Arno Breker and Josef Thorak, Albert Heinrich and Adolf Wissel. Big beefy nude dudes and wholesome Aryan peasant women, all free of imperfection. The ‘degenerate’ exhibit was set up to induce maximum discomfort in the viewers, and the ‘great German art’ exhibit was meant to inspire feelings of patriotism.
Entartete Kunst was so popular that it became a traveling exhibition– over 3 million people showed up. It had a higher attendance than any modern art show ever. Meanwhile, Germans derided Kunstausstellung as kitschy bullshit.
Now, you can argue for ‘trainwreck entertainment’– maybe jazz music, Kandinsky, Metzinger, and Grosz are so awful that they crossed the line into beguiling. Maybe they were ‘The Room’ before ‘The Room’ existed. But Germans at the time were not shy about heaping hatred on not-’’’’Aryan’’’’’ people. Expressing disgust would have been socially acceptable and even admirable. Whereas calling Oiled-Up War Hero Posing Goyishly With Innocent but Still Safely Sexy Wife and Blond Infant or whatever ‘kitschy bullshit’ was, you know, a sign you were a degenerate. So not only did Germans love degenerate art, they loved it and REJECTED ‘traditional’ art. You don’t go see ‘The Room’ but then fail to see your unironic favorite movie.
What I’m trying to say is that fascists, compared to their degenerate cuck counterparts, are not actually good at art (if public opinion is how we are defining ‘good’). They are, in fact, bad. Their aesthetics are tacky. There is historical precedent here.
If we’re going to play along with your post and associate moral rectitude with good aesthetics as determined by popular opinion and codified standards, I’ll say this and this only: Hitler failed the art school entrance exam. Twice.
I own a huge ass book on the Entartete Kunst. It is one of my prize possessions. Many of my favorite artists were included in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition. And if your art was in that show, it meant you needed to get the fuck out of Germany.
Self portrait by Elfriede Lohse Wächtler, who was forcibly sterilized and later murdered by Nazis.
Self portrait by Max Beckmann, who fled to Amsterdam. Nazis tried to draft him into the army even though he was in his 60s and had suffered a heart attack.
Max Ernst, arrested by the Gestapo on multiple occasions before escaping to America.
Self portrait as a soldier by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nazis destroyed over 600 of his paintings, and he committed suicide.
Self portrait by Emil Nolde. Nolde supported the Nazis and was openly antisemitic, but his “degenerate artwork” led to him being banned from purchasing art supplies or creating new paintings.
Edgar Ende, banned from painting or purchasing art supplies. Conscripted to serve in the Luftwaffe.
Marc Chagall, he and his family fled occupied France with the help of American art dealers.
Vassily Kandinsky, taught at the Bauhaus before it was closed by the Nazis and he fled to France.
Cain, or Hitler in Hell, by George Grosz. Fiercely Anti-Nazi, Grosz and his family immigrated to America in 1933.
The Skat Players, by Otto Dix. A depictions of WWI veterans, forced to play cards in the backroom of a bar so that other patrons wouldn’t have to look at their injuries. Anti-war and anti-Nazi, Dix was forcibly drafted in WWI and WWII.
“It is not the function of art to wallow in dirt for dirt’s sake, never its task to paint the state of decomposition, to draw cretins as the symbol of motherhood, to picture hunchbacked idiots as representatives of manly strength”. – Adolf Hitler, speech at the Nazi Party Rally in Nürnberg in 1935.
Hitler liked simple, pretty pictures. He loathed modern art, “niche” art, art that was predicated on an understanding of art history and theory, “Jewish” art, art that critiqued social mores and/or the government.
Fuck the “moral importance of aesthetics,” fuck the fetishization of Nazi aesthetics, fuck fascism, fuck you.
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