The Rebellious Heart Behind Degenerate Art

The Rebellious Heart Behind Degenerate Art “German Volk, come judge for yourselves!” Adolf Ziegler proclaimed (Levi 41). As the National Socialist President of the Reich Chamber for Visual Arts, Adolf Ziegler was given the assignment (along with Joseph Goebbels the Reich Minister of Propaganda) of introducing the masses of Germany to the idea of Degenerate Art. Degenerate Art was the blanket term given by the Nazis operatives to works of Modernism and German Expressionism. The Nazis disavowed the Modernist ingenuity and the avant-garde, viewing art created before the Weimer Republic to be more traditional, respectable and pure. Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism and the Abstract aesthetic all thrived during the Weimer Republic, a period

Adolf Hitler had pursed a career as an artist in the times before achieving success as a politician and he categorically rejected art that could not be easily understood. Prior to the war examples of this type of art were in emergence and would include the styles of Cubism by Picasso and Georges Braque, as well as Expressionist and Symbolist movements by other artists. One artist, for instance, who exemplified the Modern technique and style, was the great painter Max Beckmann. In examining the works of Beckmann the styles that were deemed “Degenerate” and in contrast to Hitler and the Reich’s views can be better understood. “The sole justification for our existence as artists… is to confront people with the image of their destiny,” Beckman wrote (Lacayo 71). He developed a unique perspective by working as a medical orderly in the trenches in Flanders and this can be seen as perhaps the motivation for Beckman to depict the times in at times terrifying detail. Beckmann incorporated vibrant color palettes, “harsh modeling and angular postures that he would adopt as semaphores of anguish and terror (Lacayo 71).” These attempts to reckon with the events that had previously transpired in Europe

The artworks were presented as “chaotically arranged and housed in a disorienting, overfilled environment designed to showcase their debauched, depraved nature to the public (Petit 101).” By arranging the works of art, which included sculptures, in this way they were desecrating them, and deconstructing the avant-garde art culture. That was not the only deconstruction that the Nazis were planning with the art exhibition however. The democracy and democratic ideas fostered by the Weimer Republic would need to be squandered as well and the Degenerate Art Exhibition provided an arena for showcasing and reinforcing the Nazi Fascist ideology. This turned out to be the best move for the Nazis. The Degenerate Art Exhibition was held as the antithesis to another exhibition, a showing of Great German Art, and “the Munich exhibition of Degenerate Art was reportedly visited by more than two million people, far more than went to see Great German Art (Levi B2).” The popularity of the Degenerate Art Exhibition in contrast to the Great German Art showing did not concern the Nazis however and they deemed the Degenerate Art Exhibition a success. They felt the exhibition had enforced their ideology and indicated to the masses what the future, fascist German representation should look like. In regards to art, the “Munich