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Hitler’s Art Theory today also as a reason to reject any interpretive discourse on art as a falsification of art, that is, as a falsification of the spontaneous reaction of the spectator’s body to the artwork. And quite a number of modern and contemporary authors would agree with the opening statement of one of Hitler’s speeches that he made in the year 1937: “One of the signs of the decay of culture we have experienced in the recent past is the abnormal growth of art theoretical writing.” 6 For Hitler, establishing the eternal value of art could be reached only by stabilizing the racial inheritance that would guarantee the correct reaction of the future spectator’s body to art. Here lies the true originality of Hitler’s theory of art: He moved the discussion from the level of the artist’s production to the level of the spectator’s production. For him, therefore, it was less about producing good art—that already exists, after all—than about producing the mass of viewers who will react correctly to this art even in the distant future. The true artwork that the Third Reich wanted to produce was a viewer of art who was in a position to recognize and appreciate the heroic element in art. For, once again, Hitler by no means understood an artwork to be a passive depiction of the hero. For him, and in this respect he is a child of modernity, the artist is a hero. The act of artistic creation is in itself an active, heroic act, no matter whether it is the creation of an artwork or the creation of a State. The more magnificent this creative act is, the more clearly evident is the heroism of its creator, since such an act is, as we have said, not a spiritual act but a purely corporeal one. The creations of a heroic race can be observed and admired in the monuments produced by the bodies that belong to that race. The ultimate artwork, however, is the viewer whom the heroic politics makes into a member of the heroic race. The true art of politics is, for Hitler, the art of the continuous production of heroic bodies. The practical consequences of the artistic efforts that Hitler made in this direction are well known, and little need be said about them. Perhaps this will suffice: In terms of art, this work presented itself exclusively as a work of reduction, of destruction, of regression. To put it another way, as soon as he had an opportunity to operate with the body of the Volk and with the State in an artistic way, he immediately began to follow the very program that, on the theoretical plane, he had polemically blamed on modern, “degenerate” art. The true activity of the Third Reich consisted in the constant annihilation of human beings or the continuous reduction of them to 138 139
Hitler’s Art Theory the level of “bare life,” as Giorgio Agamben called it. All of the constructive intentions, all the programs for centuries of racial breeding that were supposed to produce a heroic race remained pure theory in the end. Historically, Hitler embodies exemplarily the figure of a loser who was unable to bring to conclusion anything he started—not even the work of reduction and annihilation. Amazingly, Hitler succeeded in losing utterly, not only politically and militarily but also morally—something that is almost unique as a historical achievement, for defeat in real life is usually balanced by moral victory and vice versa. As an absolute loser in this sense, Hitler holds a certain fascination for our time, because modern art has always celebrated the figure of the loser—this is the very penchant for which Hitler condemned modern art so vehemently. We have learned to admire the figure of the poète maudit and the artiste raté who earned their places as heroes of the modern imagination not by victory but by spectacular defeat. And in the competition among losers that modern culture has offered us, Hitler was exceptionally, if inadvertently, successful.
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Art Power
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© 2008 Boris Groys All rights rese
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Introduction The first thing one le
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Introduction zero as its sum, could
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Introduction propaganda. The amount
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Introduction that all avant-garde a
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Introduction international biennial
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The Logic of Equal Aesthetic Rights
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Equal Aesthetic Rights of equal aes
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Equal Aesthetic Rights that these i
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Equal Aesthetic Rights have undergo
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Equal Aesthetic Rights afford him o
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On the New In recent decades, the d
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On the New museum’s walls. Our im
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On the New monotonous rituals of lo
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On the New Kierkegaard, no such thi
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On the New in reality we find only
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On the New into its own—is for th
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On the New other, for the different
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On the New that they may be exhibit
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On the New dissolved, deconstructed
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On the New that deconstructs all id
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On the Curatorship The work of the
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On the Curatorship convince the spe
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On the Curatorship should be aimed
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On the Curatorship are regarding no
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On the Curatorship objects included
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics defin
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics be re
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics in tu
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics docum
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics aesth
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics is ov
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device co
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device de
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device In
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device Sp
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device th
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device do
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device tw
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From Image to Image File—and Back
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Art in the Age of Digitalization ap
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Art in the Age of Digitalization im
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Page 101 and 102: Multiple Authorship Duchamp the aut
Page 103 and 104: Multiple Authorship of contemporary
Page 105 and 106: Multiple Authorship participated bu
Page 107 and 108: Multiple Authorship is constantly o
Page 109 and 110: The Age of Touristic Reproduction b
Page 111 and 112: The Age of Touristic Reproduction d
Page 113 and 114: The Age of Touristic Reproduction t
Page 115 and 116: The Age of Touristic Reproduction m
Page 117 and 118: The Age of Touristic Reproduction o
Page 119 and 120: Critical Reflections public. At tha
Page 121 and 122: Critical Reflections But this “ot
Page 123 and 124: Critical Reflections pluralism. And
Page 125 and 126: Critical Reflections The next artis
Page 128 and 129: Art at War The relationship between
Page 130 and 131: Art at War we are speaking here abo
Page 132 and 133: Art at War But it seems to me that
Page 134 and 135: Art at War investigation. Their fun
Page 136: Art at War war and terrorism that o
Page 139 and 140: Hitler’s Art Theory passion that
Page 141 and 142: Hitler’s Art Theory This is why H
Page 143 and 144: Hitler’s Art Theory hence the que
Page 145: Hitler’s Art Theory indeed only a
Page 149 and 150: Educating the Masses in the Soviet
Page 151 and 152: Educating the Masses Did the Centra
Page 153 and 154: Educating the Masses Alexander Dein
Page 155 and 156: Educating the Masses and, at the sa
Page 157 and 158: Beyond Diversity This is the origin
Page 159 and 160: Beyond Diversity Listening to postm
Page 161 and 162: Beyond Diversity communication. Rat
Page 163 and 164: Beyond Diversity pressures dictated
Page 165 and 166: Beyond Diversity in the Russian cap
Page 167 and 168: Beyond Diversity by all subsequent
Page 169 and 170: Beyond Diversity which is what cons
Page 172 and 173: Privatizations, or Artificial Parad
Page 174 and 175: Privatizations formed from the remn
Page 176 and 177: Privatizations has already seen in
Page 178 and 179: Privatizations political protest, b
Page 180 and 181: Europe and Its Others In recent yea
Page 182 and 183: Europe and Its Others however, are
Page 184 and 185: Europe and Its Others things have b
Page 186 and 187: Europe and Its Others which can nev
Page 188 and 189: Europe and Its Others Even the art
Page 190 and 191: Notes The Logic of Equal Aesthetic
Page 192 and 193: Notes to pages 70-133 Iconoclasm as
Page 194: Notes to pages 153-154 Beyond Diver
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Sources “Educating the Masses: So
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