Banned Art & Artists: Entarte Kunst
Entarte Kunst The Massive Museum exhibit would have
astounded anyone. If one had not read the large noxious sign
on the entrance, one might have thought they were at an exhibition of some
of Europe's finest Modern Artists. Paintings of Klee,
Baumeister, and Chagall were displayed with the appropriate
lighting. Exhibits from the Bauhaus, coupled with thousands of
square feet of space covered in Contemporary paintings, graphics, prints
and posters, sculptures and free-form, seemingly the forefront, the
avant-garde in the Modern Art World of 1937 in Munich. Ziegler,
President of the Reich Culture Chamber, declared the
exhibition a display of the most vulgar, and vile art: degenerate
art. The Exhibit was called "Entarte Kunst", or
"Degenerate Art".
Why was this art more degenerate than the art of classic Germans? Many of the Artists, such as Chagall, were Jewish, and proclamations had already been made vehemently against Jewish Music and Writings. Four years earlier, the universities were purged of Jewish Professors, as the Nazis came to power, for the purposes of keeping German youth from exposure to 'Bolshevism' (early communism) and Marxist ideals. 2Jewish Music had been declared by the Reichsmusikammer (Reich Music Chamber) degenerate also: music without form and traditional harmony was expunged from German listening: the Third Reich would have only Musik of the "Volk": strong Nordic-flavored nationalistic Music, classic and contemporary, with a new aesthetic that undergirded the priniciples of the Reich and the coming War Effort. (See Music & the Shoah) Much of the banned Art, though was not by Jewish artists: the criteria for the art was based upon the new "Aesthetics": there would be no more experimentation with form and archetype, all form would be structured. There would be no more 'experimentation' and free-form: the new philosophy of Art considered most modern art that was not wyeth-like in expression to be depraved. Further, all Art was to be 'utilitarian', in other words, art was to serve some purpose, usually of the State, Art-for-Art's -Sake was not to be permitted: it corrupted the German mind and morale, and in the Reich's position led to decadence and chaos. While one's tastes may not prefer or even find prudent the chaotic expression in modern art, it is important to remember that Art and the 'Arts' often apart from an intrinsic moral quality, reflect the time and society, the zeitgeist, or "spirit of the times'. As the society becomes more chaotic and anarchic, expression in forms of art will follow: while it may hold likewise to the character and persona of the artist, it expresses the times and what the artist observes as well. By contemporary American standards, we would not seek to ban art on the basis of expression or form, but in the bold and brutal spirit of the third Reich, even Art was taken under Tyranny to bring it under the reign of dictatorial purpose. The Artists banned in the Third Reich "Entarte Kunst " Exhibition were the following: | Banned Artists
|
|
|
|
|
Elizabeth Kirkley Best PhD 2003 All Rights Reserved
FOOTNOTES/LINKS
1 h"Art We Don't Like": Olinda.Com
