This short letter in my files I had rested for several weeks without special occasion for publication. Now, with the controversy raised by John and his concert in Cuba, I thought maybe recover her good memory about the experience of modern art under the Nazi regime. We'd argue about Juanes and other artists to give concerts and presentations in common soil. So remember a fraction of the experience of artists under Fascism is also to expand and contribute to the construction of what Gerardo Muñoz called the "total landscape"
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Ludwig Gie Christ Crucified (1921)
Below there is a note annexed by the Nazis ridiculing the piece "the horror graced the Monument to the Heroes of War"
This image opened the exhibition Entartete Kunst organized and sponsored by the "House of Culture of the Reich" of Hitler in 1937. The exhibition Entartete Kunst Degenerate Art or not the meeting was more than painting and sculpture considered as parts of the Reich "corrupt and polluted." Objects, according to the criteria of the Reich, who had no place under the new mentality of the German man who was in the process of manufacturing: this mentality include a return to traditional values, the proper and dignified place of the German woman, " blood and soil ", militarism and obedience among others.
Since 1933, Nazi officials had begun their campaign to rid of all the artistic expressions and harmful foreign elements for the German Volk. The most common categories under which these negative influences and foreign accommodated were the same suspect. On the one hand, according to the clarification of artistic movements: works given, cubist, expressionist, abstract (almost all modern art). Moreover, the influences of racial nature, any trace of a trend: Jewish, Roma and African. Were organized to control Josef Goebbels, several chambers of art, Reichskulturkammer , responsible for all the museums of Germany and Austria in order to "purge" Germana aesthetics of any of the above mentioned influences. More than 5000 paintings, sculptures, illustrations and books were collected from 32 museums. About 1000 paintings by Emil Nolde, about 800 of Eric Heckel, and 600 of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German Expressionist movement and affiliated with Die Brucke.
Similarly works by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh and Chagall. So were collected objects that were going to be the heart of the exhibition Entartete Kunst. The building which housed the exhibition belonged to a school where classes are taught previously archeology, was characterized by low input and narrow staircases-escojencia of Goebbels, as "for a larger building if parts should be in the cart garbage "
The first image that the viewer received when he reached the second floor of the Crucified Christ was Gie. Considered by the Nazis as a visual horror, it was chosen to produce a shock, a first impression on visitors. But something interesting happens with regard the figure of Jesus in the Nazi ideology. According to Reich, the German nation must rise up and re-appropriate their own traditions, we know that emphasized the Aryan element, Christianity over Judaism, and Greek and Roman heritage as the basis of a great Germany. According to this line, the church had to take its proper place, and the figure of Christ was re-established to deny (or eclipse) the validity of the individual Jew as part of this great nation. But Jesus was not a Jew at the end-over? If emphasized race and religion above all else, it was problematic that the messiah of the religion was part of the same tribe as the Reich and the loathed German people should be removed? It is said that this theological conflict was never fully resolved in the Germany of Hitler.
The same exhibition was an example of political propaganda of the second category. In that small space the 5000 pieces were dumped without any attention and without considering any kind of respect for the dignity or the wishes of its author. Part of the collection was stowed against the walls in an attempt to produce an atmosphere of chaos and represent the incomprehensible and repulsive of modern art. Other objects, paintings and illustrations, hung carelessly, had no frameworks and sometimes just idling of an improvised thread. Some Nazis were concerned to write short notes ridiculing the intent and meaning of the work: "Trick the Divine insolent," "insult to German Women," "deliberate sabotage against the national defense," [Nature] from point of view of a diseased mind. "
Many of the artists considered to be ill and unfit for the New Germany sought refuge in various countries. Others preferred to stay in Germany and work under the most stringent and repressive censorship Nazis, others, like Kirchner, took their own lives. Max Ernst and Paul Klee took refuge in the United States and Switzerland respectively. Emile Nolde and Edgar Ende decided to adapt to new conditions of Nazi Germany and sought refuge in the German countryside regions. Constantly monitored by the Gestapo, were forced to take extreme measures. A Nolde, was banned from paint and paint materials purchased. It decided to paint with watercolors, as they do not have a smell as piercing as the oils and their neighbors could not smell it or give him away.
much we would like to condemn modern art as part of a Zionist and Communist conspiracy to attack the German people or criticize the authorities more modern trends such as aberrations and signs of decay, the exhibition served, in part, to promote the very thing that the Nazis wanted to expose and destroy. It is estimated that the exhibition of Degenerate Art visitors went three times that of the traditional Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art exhibition) representing the ideal art according to the criteria of the Nazis and agencies was set up to show and teach the German people what was the real art. The role of exposure Entartete Kunst even studied and planned to produce a collective response on modern art, was also curiosity and feelings mixed in many visitors. You could say that somehow it was counterproductive for the regime and its new criteria vis-a-vis the role of the arts in the Nazi ideological framework. The responses continue to be heavily politicized in the following decades with the question, not a little complicated, "what is art and how it benefits / harms the system."
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Some images of the exhibition Entartete Kunst
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