Art Criticism - The State University of New York

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shown distrust in the new styles. This was certainly a consideration, but there was also the real belief that art reflected, and even determined, the moral life and value of the nation and its people.13 If the "corruption" was allowed to exist, it was believed it would infect the essence of what it meant to be German. The Nazis had perceived that the modern world was pathological; it was not healthy for the individual. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had already written it was the business of the state to prevent people from being driven to madness by removing from culture "what is bad or unsuitable and continue building on the sound spot that has been laid bare."14 The period between 1933-1937 would be seen by Hitler as a four year grace period for artists, dealers, and those working in the arts to reform themselves to meet National Socialist standards of decency'. However, the methods that the Nazis planned to use to reform had already been experimented with during the last years of ideological consolidation. In 1930, the director of the Zwichau Museum was fined for "pursuing an artistic policy affronting the healthy folk feeling of Germany."15 The Nationalgalerie was criticized for buying a van Gogh instead of German works. These protests were not connected with the Nazi movement, but after 1933 the Reichskulturkammer would use the resentment shown by these protests to their advantage. A director of another museum was fired for purchasing modern works, such as a Chagall. The works were paraded around the town on a truck with the picture of the director and how much he had paid for the work written on the side of the truck. Many of the avant-garde chose to leave, and those who stayed were often not allowed to work and were subject to periodical surprise inspections by the Gestapo. They were not included in the production of a manifesto that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's second in command, oversaw in 1933. The manifesto expressed what artists expected from their new government, but, as it was written mostly by non-avant-garde artists who were angry that the art world had passed them by, it was an expression of party policy, stating that: one, all cosmopolitan and Bolshevik art should be removed, but first shown to the public who should be informed about its acquisition, and then the art should be burned. Two, all museum directors who wasted public money on "un-Gerinan" art should be fired. And three, there should be no Marxist or Bolshevik connections in the arts.16 It became a time when opportunist artists who would kowtow to party policy could gain recognition and become successful while those who would not were in serious danger. In the period between 1933 and 1937, the Nazi organizations in the arts began to consolidate, become organized, and gather energy. It was a fouryear period of tightening the clamps that would end with Hitler's opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich, his temple of art. It was also to be the year of the Degenerate Art Exhibition, though this exhibition was to be the last and final exhibition of a type that had been maturing si~ce 1933 with the 76 Art Criticism
help of the Combat League of German Culture. The Degenerate Art Exhibition that opened on July 19, 1937 in Munich had begun to be planned only three weeks before. On the last day of June, Goebbels had authorized Adolf Ziegler, a painter of realist nudes and a member of the jury for the Great German Exhibition, to select and secure for an exhibition works of German degenerate art created since 1910. Ziegler and his crew would acquire 15,997 works of art by 1,400 artists that were now deemed unacceptable and un-German.17 650 of these works would appear in the Degenerate Art Exhibition, including works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Robert Delauney, Andre Derain, James Ensor, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kaninsky, Femand Leger,EI Lissitzky, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Maurice de Vlaminck. 18 Though Ziegler and his crew were supposed to pickpost-1910 German works, many works predated 1910 or were by artists outside of Germany; however, this was authorized after the fact by Goebbels. Over the four months that it was on display in Munich, two million visitors passed through the Degenerate Art exhibition, with another million visiting it during its following three year tour of Germany and Austria. This was five times as many visitors as would see the Great German Art Exhibition. 19 Like previous exhibitions of degenerate art, the Munich exhibition presented paintings without their frames, works being arranged in as cluttered a fashion as possible. Pictures were hung as close to each other as possible, and stacked up to the ceiling. Next to each work was the title of the piece and its artist, with many works being misattributed. This information was handwritten, along with the year the work was bought and the price it was acquired for. There was no mention that these prices were in the post-war inflated mark, when one US dollar equaled 4.2 billion marks.20 The astronomical prices of the works were meant to enrage the public who was already suspicious of the avant-garde. There were also quotes on the wall from Hitler and others: One thing is certain, under no circumstances will we allow the representatives of the decadence that lies behind us suddenly to emerge as the standard bearers of the future.2\ We shall now wage inexorable war to eliminate the last elements of our cultural decay/2 All the artistic and cultural blather of Cubists, Futurists, Dadaists, and the like is neither sound in racial tenns nor tolerable in national terms. It can be best regarded as the expression of a world view that freely admits that the dissolution of all existing ideas, all nations, and all races, their mixing and adulteration, is the loftiest goal of their intellectual creators and cliques of leaders. 23 vol. 17, no. 1 77
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Volume 17; Number I ART C.RIT1C1SM
Page 4 and 5:
Art Department State University of
Page 6 and 7:
4 Art Criticism
Page 8 and 9:
Breaking the Picture Plane: Reflect
Page 10 and 11:
whale saga (more recently Hesse or
Page 12 and 13:
and many of whom were born in Europ
Page 14 and 15:
printed a bullet track fired into a
Page 16 and 17:
music that (like the Mona Lisa) has
Page 18 and 19:
causing by neglect a bitterness amo
Page 20 and 21:
preserved some of the exuberance th
Page 22 and 23:
which inspiration was stabilized. 5
Page 24 and 25:
pain in the eyes of the cripple giv
Page 26 and 27:
Bruckner did in his music) was not
Page 28 and 29: mortify into hard edges and mushy c
Page 30 and 31: with the sleep of reason. In the Am
Page 32 and 33: cent. Its fluidity of happy acciden
Page 34 and 35: And yet I can imagine these atrocit
Page 36 and 37: erature the not very evocative work
Page 38 and 39: maiden" of Marxism (unless things g
Page 40 and 41: ic he realize that artists suddenly
Page 42 and 43: The little nonsense that wise men r
Page 44 and 45: desensitized by the imitated means
Page 46 and 47: symbolism? If the arts only exist t
Page 48 and 49: The Femme Fatale as seen in the wor
Page 50 and 51: Huysmans parallels the life of De R
Page 52 and 53: ask for the unreasonable and receiv
Page 54 and 55: ennui or physical distress leads th
Page 56 and 57: ences cited herein, the femme fatal
Page 58 and 59: period."2 He traced the tradition b
Page 60 and 61: suggestion to the artist and the po
Page 62 and 63: of Moreau's works is vague and myst
Page 64 and 65: ing her as the femme fatale, or sub
Page 66 and 67: The subtitle Satanic Decameron evok
Page 68 and 69: completely mythical. Coupled with a
Page 70 and 71: Moreau was very much a man of his t
Page 72 and 73: themes and images are often decaden
Page 74 and 75: p. 7-8; cited in Pierre Louis Mathi
Page 76 and 77: Between World War I and World War I
Page 80 and 81: These passages were meant to help g
Page 82 and 83: man public was voicing disapproval
Page 84 and 85: y old masters that were more suitab
Page 86 and 87: Notes 1 Alfred Barr, "Art in the Th
Page 88 and 89: From Diagnoses to Decadence: A Brie
Page 90 and 91: ate effort to reproduce fully an im
Page 92 and 93: patients. Charcot was often to be f
Page 94 and 95: Breuer attributed the presence of A
Page 96 and 97: still is traditionally associated w
Page 98 and 99: is not always recognized as such. H
Page 100 and 101: generation on which the multitude o
Page 102 and 103: 2 Elaine Showalter, The Female Mala
Page 104 and 105: 36 Freud and Breuer, 37. 37 Su'ch a
Page 106 and 107: Recasting the Art History Survey: E
Page 108 and 109: mode of self-consciousness that bes
Page 110 and 111: student-as-Other "calls" us to teac
Page 112 and 113: thesis of such descriptions into an
Page 114 and 115: In this final section of the essay,
Page 116 and 117: image-world, the picture opens up a
Page 118 and 119: history must itself be rethought in
Page 120 and 121: 15 Two of the most prominent propon
Page 122 and 123: power: from the premodern exercise
Page 124: ~fJed in the Unikd Smtc, .• 9 ~]~
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Art Criticism - The State University of New York

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