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THE BATTLE FOR MODeRN 1923


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degenerate art and propaganda

Like most Eu­ro­pean Ex­pres­sion­ists, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky was en­tranced by the pow­er of col­or. His ab­stract paint­ings fea­ture a cal­li­graph­ic style evoca­tive of mu­si­cal sym­phonies, fur­ther ac­cen­tu­at­ed by vi­o­lent­ly clash­ing shades that re­veal, in Kandinsky’s own words, ‘col­or is the key­board, the eyes are the har­monies, the soul is the pi­ano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touch­ing one key or an­oth­er, to cause vi­bra­tions in the soul.’”
Meilan Sol­ly, Smithsonian

The [1937] ex­hi­bi­tion hand­book ex­plained that the aim of the show was to ‘re­veal the philo­soph­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal, racial and moral goals and in­ten­tions be­hind this move­ment, and the dri­ving forces of cor­rup­tion which fol­low them.’”
Lucy Burns, BBC
 

Pro­pa­gan­da is all about “us ver­sus them.”

And the strat­e­gy of pro­pa­gan­da does not work with­out con­stant re­in­force­ment that the op­po­nent has be­come the en­e­my be­cause of its sup­posed cor­rup­tion, ide­al­ly, in all spheres of life.

The fastest and most di­gestible way to ex­plain this to the mass­es is through visuals.

Car­i­ca­tures al­ways played a big role in de­pict­ing the need­ed narrative. 

One does not have to spend time and men­tal pow­er to read or lis­ten to an ar­gu­ment – in­stead, it just takes a few mo­ments for eyes to scan and un­der­stand the im­age be­ing presented. 

This is the con: It is wide­ly known that the car­i­ca­ture was cre­at­ed by the op­pos­ing side and does not equal the reality. 

For­tu­nate­ly for Nazi Ger­many, Mod­ern Art could ex­pose its “sick­ness of the mind” by just existing.
 

The avant-garde of the time, with all its hon­esty, emo­tion and brav­ery had al­ready gained all the praise from the in­tel­li­gentsia of the 1930s. 

Works of Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Paul Klee and Hen­ri Ma­tisse were in high de­mand. But, just as now, the ex­pres­siv­i­ty of the pieces was not unan­i­mous­ly understood. 

Ger­many was high­ly aware of the neg­a­tiv­i­ty sur­round­ing the emerg­ing art movements …

While in pow­er, Adolf Hitler’s own per­spec­tive on what is con­sid­ered art shaped the years of vi­su­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion: A good artist makes paint­ings and sculp­tures that de­pict the re­al­i­ty: Not an hon­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cur­rent events, but a ro­man­ti­cized and pol­ished im­age of west­ern su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

Sub­jects de­pict­ed should re­fer to the in­her­ent beau­ty of the coun­try and its peo­ple.

Such style stood in con­trast with what the avant-garde de­pict­ed: Cor­rup­tion, sense­less war, thou­sands of mur­ders, home­less am­putees on the streets, des­per­ate pros­ti­tutes, and the ug­li­ness of the so­ci­ety – both men­tal and phys­i­cal – were just a few top­ics Ex­pres­sion­ists documented. 

And, nat­u­ral­ly, many bour­geoisie did not want to see the truth they tried so hard to ig­nore in the real life – and es­pe­cial­ly to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­hib­it­ed in the safe­ness of prop­er museums! 

Artists that were not ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the Re­ich were not executed. 

In­stead, they were pub­licly hu­mil­i­at­ed in a show that has be­come one of the most vis­it­ed dur­ing the en­tire 20th century:
 

Wel­come to the “De­gen­er­ate Art” ex­hi­bi­tion.

The col­lec­tion was care­ful­ly cu­rat­ed. The un­nat­ur­al, the dirty, the Jew­ish, the ex­per­i­men­tal: These were some of the few ad­jec­tives that would lead the art­work in this no­to­ri­ous exposition. 

It was im­por­tant for the or­ga­niz­ers to put the mes­sage clear to its brain­washed au­di­ence: This is the down­fall of our enemies!

Writ­ings on the walls only re­in­forced the thought, as few would try to pub­licly try to ar­gue with such say­ings as The ide­al – cretin and whore.

The sub­ject of paint­ings, if they were not too ab­stract, would of­ten de­pict mu­tat­ed pro­por­tions and the out­siders of the society. 

The artists them­selves – in their ex­plo­rations – were not afraid to play with colours, shapes and themes – but this was seen as a great sin com­mit­ted against the im­age of per­fec­tion of the Aryan Nation!

The cu­ra­tors did their best to ex­pose the avant-garde as a group of men­tal­ly ill, dan­ger­ous to the ethics and morals of a “nor­mal” society. 

Suc­cess was guar­an­teed as it was not only ac­cept­able to crit­i­cize art that one did not un­der­stand, but it was also seen as no­ble and righteous.

The ex­hi­bi­tion was vis­it­ed by al­most 3 mil­lion, trav­elled to sev­er­al Ger­man cities, and was judged by the rest of the Eu­ro­pean world. 

The goal was not just in prov­ing the rot­ten­ness of the op­po­si­tion, but to de­stroy the ris­ing tal­ents that dared to ex­press their dis­gust to­wards the authority. 

By the end of things, many fled the coun­try, some even com­mit­ting sui­cide af­ter re­al­iz­ing their help­less­ness against Hitler and his followers. 

Many pieces were of­fered to be sold abroad af­ter be­ing con­fis­cat­ed from the na­tion­al gal­leries, how­ev­er, west­ern art-deal­ers saw buy­ing from the Re­ich was equal to sup­port­ing it; Sad­ly, many mas­ter­pieces that could have been ac­quired for as lit­tle as the equiv­a­lent of 10 eu­ros were de­stroyed as a result.


 

The pow­er of pro­pa­gan­da lies with­in sup­press­ing any­thing that has any po­ten­tial of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing from the sta­tus quo, in this case, the new­ly es­tab­lished norm. 

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, if done sub­tly enough, the au­di­ence may not even re­al­ize that what is go­ing on. 

His­to­ry has re­peat­ed it­self nu­mer­ous times, and it is more than nev­er im­por­tant not to blind­ly fall into the wide open arms of a pro­pa­gan­dis­tic machine.

 

—pur­ples­finx

Flom­mist Veroni­ka Veziro­va, a.k.a. Pur­ples­finx, is an il­lus­tra­tor and graph­ic de­sign­er based in Barcelona. In­spired by cul­ture of all kinds, she writes on top­ics that in­clude art his­to­ry, cre­ativ­i­ty and folk­lore. Her oth­er works in­clude man­ga and psy­che­del­ic po­et­ry. Copy­right © 2022 Veroni­ka Vezirova.

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Der Tung
Posted
Mon 8 Aug 2022

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