Brynne Piotrowski, post 4

Brynne Piotrowski

1. The ability of art to influence—perhaps termed as art’s power—is what authoritarian thinkers or regimes find threatening. Individual cases may focus on certain aspects of art, but in the end it is essentially the power of art that causes consternation among authoritarians. To Plato, art posed a threat because of its ability to illicit emotion. In Book X of The Republic he singles out the art of poetry in particular for how it, “feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she [poetry] lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled….” Plato’s guise is that he is worried about art encouraging great emotion or sentimentality, but the root of his issue with art is still its power. In Stephanie Barron’s “1937: Modern Arts and Politics in Prewar Germany” the author states that the Nazi’s given reason for a near obsession in controlling art was “the purpose of clarifying for the German public…exactly what type of modern art was unacceptable to the Reich, and thus ‘un-German’” (Barron, p. 9). Hitler and his associates indeed acted under the auspices that they were encouraging the German race and German unity, but the basis of their fears still comes across clearly. Nazi Germany worried about art wielding influence on its population and therefore, like Plato and other authoritarian thinkers or regimes, found it very threatening and desired to turn the tables and wield its own power upon art.

2a. The concept of degeneracy is the idea of a decline. Degeneracy does not merely stall forward motion in a field; it actually results in a reversal of progress. There is a definite negative connotation to the concept of degeneracy and it is often used in a derogatory manner. The idea of degeneration or a degenerate may be used to describe a lowering of moral values, cultural accomplishments, or social civilization—along with people or things that contribute to this down/backwards momentum. Degeneracy is a subjective concept that depends upon the opinions of the person utilizing it. For example, according to Ursula A. Ginder’s paper, Hitler was greatly affected by the concept of cultural degeneration that became popular in the late 19th century and particularly railed against Dadaism, “as ‘the degenerate excess of insane and depraved humans’” (Ginder, The “Degenerate Art” Exhibition). However, works of Dadaism (and much of the other art Hitler deemed degenerate) also have garnered praise and have admirers who would hardly label them degenerate. Degeneracy is essentially a reversal of progress, but it is open to interpretation by each individual according to his/her own definition of progress and its reverse.

2b. I focused on Cubism, Picasso, and in particular his work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, seen below. I think Hitler would see degeneracy in Picasso’s portrayal of the human forms—the sharp angles, distortions, and “building block” (decompositional) approach to the human body. Indeed, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was an early departure from mimesis in art (Picasso painted it in 1907), so this distortion would have been a visual shock to viewers of that era. The “threat” of the work is that it twists reality. To Plato, just the fact that art was not reality (even if the art attempted to be a strict representation of reality) was enough to condemn art. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon exhibits a purposefully distorted reality and therefore takes on an increased level of “threat.”

2c. I believe that the use of the body in art as the main site for accusations of degeneracy stems from the body as a universally known and understood concept. Everyone has a body, people see other bodies, and therefore people are capable of judging bodies quickly and generally superficially. The body can be idealized, which makes it easy to point out bodies’ defects, shortcomings, and any “degenerate” qualities. Hitler’s speech to open the “Great Exhibition of German Art” includes a passage in which he forbids the “pitiful misfortunates who quite obviously suffer from an eye disease, to try vehemently to foist these products of their misinterpretation upon the age we live in, or even wish to present them as ‘Art.’” He understood the ability of the body (both in reality and in art) to be easily recognized by the masses and realized its potential utilization for accusations of degeneracy.

2d. George Mosse’s argument in “Beauty with Sensuality: The Exhibition Entartete Kunst” focuses on the ability of beauty to be respectable. If beauty can maintain a formal milieu, it meets the requirements of respectability regardless of aspects such as nudity or pose. Mosse elaborates on the necessity of propriety with his explanation that, “Respectability ensured security, order, and the maintenance of values, taming the chaos that seemed always to threaten society…” (Mosse, pg. 25). Sensuality stimulates emotion and became a problem because it threatened respectability, causing a domino effect: the introduction of sensuality and its accompanying emotion meant the dismissal of respectability which would inevitably lead to chaos. Therefore, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon contributes to chaos simply by inciting emotion or sensuality in the viewer and thereby beginning the above chain of events. This bears a rather close resemblance to Plato’s argument that art with emotion upsets the social order because it distracts from reality. Another possible case of beauty and sensuality is Leni Riefenstal’s Triumph of the Will. If one can argue that Triumph of the Will is beautiful and sensual (in the sense of emotion-inducing sensuality), one could accuse the Nazis of a case of endorsing beauty and sensuality and therefore not practicing what they propagated. Conversely, if one claims that no sensuality exists in Triumph of the Will (as there is no actual sexuality in the film), it may serve as the archetype of beauty without sensuality for the Nazis.

http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/blog/Feb2005.asp

3. This image is a political cartoon by Daryl Cagle commenting on voting in Iraq. The figures depicted have a certain “degeneracy” about them, although I would hesitate to label them “monstrous” by any means. I found two ways to interpret the political values displayed by Cagle’s cartoon. One possibility is a positive comment on the resiliency of the Iraqi people to vote despite evident hardships and obstacles. However, I personally interpreted the cartoon as a jab at Iraqi voters with an insinuation that they were naïve and/or ignorant of the situation in their country. My primary basis for this evaluation is the presence of wide-eyed, smiling expressions on all the faces of the people—they seem almost overly optimistic. Cagle’s cartoon places a form of “degenerate” connotation on the bodies present and definitely exhibits political ramifications.