Post Modernism- Hitler and Art

In one of our Post Modernism lectures, we talked about the Nazi's rise to power in relation to the designers they hired to manufacture their uniforms and propaganda, but also Adolf Hitler's view on art itself.

The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich,
Adolf Hitler, 1914

During a time of fairly revolutionary avant garde art movements in Europe, Hitler was very much an artistic conservative. He himself was an artist prior to becoming a politician, and he mainly specialised in realistic watercolour paintings of landscapes and buildings. He had intended to become a professional painter, but he lost that ambition after he was rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna twice. This, without doubt, would have created some sort of bitterness in Hitler, which would later contribute to his complete rejection of and ridicule modernism.

A Farmstead
by Adolf Hitler, 1914

In 1937, four years after his eventual rise to power, Hitler held two art shows at the same time in Munich, The Great German Art Exhibition, which would thoughtfully display artworks Hitler deemed were "worthy", i.e landscapes, paintings of soldiers and idealised nudes, and the Degenerate Art Exhibition, which was used to mock and scorn the modern artists and their abstract works, featuring the work of Paul Klee and Otto Dix, as well as 110 other artists. The layout and composition of the exhibit itself was arranged specifically to confuse and annoy anyone who came to see the art pieces, including graffiti on the walls around the works, criticising the artists, and the overall aim of the exhibition was to highlight and attack artworks that were thought to be blasphemous, and politically, racially and philosophically corruptive- art by Jewish artists were separated into their own category. Hitler seized thousands of artworks from public viewing over his years in power, and many were burned. 

"Works of art that cannot be understood in themselves but needs some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people."

Adolf Hitler, prior to the Degenerate Art Exhibition

The exhibition went on tour, and attracted over one million people, but despite the curators efforts to put as much of a negative light on the art featured as possible (they even hired actors to walk around making disapproving comments) most visitors were attracted to the show because they wanted to make to most out of being able to see these modern pieces of art they knew were slowly disappearing from Germany. 

I consider this a fantastic sign that no matter how hard you try to repress other's enjoyment of art, people will always find a way to delight in what they are passionate about, against all adversity. 

 

A display from the Degenerate Art Show