Shea post 4

“To be German is to be clear.” (Adolf Hitler) To be an authoritarian, to be a fascist, to be Hitler is to be clear. Of course it does not follow that to be clear is to be Hitler, but I digress. It is absolutely incontrovertible that Hitler and, consequently, The Third Reich, held firmly to unambiguous beliefs. You are either with us or against us; German or Jew, Aryan or degenerate, respectable or insane. Such harsh and unforgiving divisions leave no room for overlap or compromise. Rules like these make clear the obvious styles of art that must be censored, but when in proximity to such art, it may almost be said that it is the art that does the censoring and not the regime. Let me explain. “What was at issue was art as the expression of supposedly unchanging values in a society in search of those values.” (Mosse, 25) It can be said that most authoritarian states are in a condition of want at the time preceding their conversion. Entartete Kunst was a necessary step in the Nazi party’s ascension to power because it set up a series of guidelines by which not only the German public, but also the government itself, could define clean values. “Modern Art” was chaotic and confusing. With a revolution of industry and thought, came a rebellion against traditional artistic styles as radical liberties were taken with color and shape. The bourgeois and government officials alike were intimidated by the complexity of these intellectual abstractions. To have your people lost in the stationary pondering of interpretation is no good for a dictator. It leads only to the “confusion of natural concepts…destroying the general wholesome feeling.” (Adolf Hitler) So after gathering for itself all that art which inspired no such pondering, the National-Socialists presented it to a disoriented public as corruptive rubbish and reaped the benefits.

Now to generalize. Art threatens the power of regimes because it inspires individual thought. It may challenge conventional authority by suggesting an alternate source of power or by renouncing power as a worthwhile consideration. It may completely flummox the viewer by presenting something incomprehensible, thereby inspiring him/her to delve into new intellectual territory. Whether spurred to renewed action or stunned to speculative contemplation, one’s unpredictable response to unchecked art is rarely beneficial to society’s “output”. It is most important that the viewer has options, nebulous options, and so the threat escapes quantification.

Max Pechstein, a 20^th century German Expressionist, creates humans as complements to their environment.

The figures in the first painting, Sommer, exist within a tumult of brushstrokes as a gathering of brushstrokes. I don’t say this absentmindedly. It is true that any painting is technically a compilation of brushstrokes, but within this painting the strokes exist both as themselves and as people, grass, sky. They are meant to be seen both apart from one another and in cooperation with one another as a statement on the connection between humans and nature. The message is this: Take some bits of life (brushstrokes) and mold them into something that lives (humans). They are shapely but without exact definition. Their facial features are not distinguishable and it is not clearly demonstrated whether or not they all have the expected body parts. They resemble each other. Shadowing on the bodies is exaggerated while light seems favored by the surrounding grass. It is pleasant to look at, I think. But the beauty lies within the concept of oneness among humans and their earth.

Circus presents humans in a different atmosphere and therefore as different types of beings. The angles are harsher and the strokes throughout are less evident. The work even seems less impressionistic because the moment being portrayed is observably fleeting, the subjects are in motion so the artist need not depict reality as deceptive. In a sense, with motion, or with change, comes truth. This truth allows for a slight increase in physical detail. The faces are nearly recognizable. Clothes separate genders and identities. The bodies are given distinct form and function. These figures are more aesthetically beautiful than those of Sommer. The crowd, stationary and therefore disconnected from truth are granted only the simplest of forms. They are almost transparent. They are deprived of the beauty bestowed upon the performers because they are not connected to the truth of life’s evanescent, motile nature.

a) Degeneracy is the uncontrollable, the ever changing. Hitler condemned Modern art as worthless because it was “isolated from its ethnic origins”. His theory was that art from a time period rather than a people was irrelevant on the grounds that it would be “un-modern tomorrow, since it will be outdated.” The importance placed on a connection to ethnicity also labels that which is universal or trans-racial as degenerate. The term is used to describe anything that differs from what is common or expected. All that is ‘abnormal’ or ‘unnatural’ is degenerate and consequently acts as a corruptive force.

b) Hitler saw degenerate qualities in the disorderly and indefinite nature of Pechstein’s work. The colors would have been too bright and not realistic enough to be considered truly German. These alternate perceptions of reality would have been thought of as lies or “misrepresentations” that served to deceive and mislead the body politic.

c) “National Socialism is the political expression of our biological knowledge.” Hitler presents Germany as an “already diseased body”. He uses this model to get the point across that even the slightest malformations or abnormalities within individual German people can cause total “inner decomposition” of their race. He seeks to “purge” Germany of “those influences that are fatal and ruinous to its existence.” This means finding those whose brains or eyes are faulty and removing them for the good of the people.

d) George Mosse exposes the effort by the Nazi party to separate the nude form from its sensual connotation as to avoid the flaring of passion among viewers. Tedious attention to detail removes an element of mystery that adds to the eroticism of nudity and replaces it with admiration or respectability. Nude men manifested the maintenance of order while women were often clothed as not to “deaden their natural shame.” It is this shame that leads to restraint, a Nazi ideal.

This painting by Jesse Riggels displays a man of abnormal and therefore degenerate physical shape. He is in a business suit and has mechanical, almost robotic features that imply a lack of original brain activity. It could be said that this is a comment on the lessening of humanity in the face of business and profit. He has become a machine to for his work. This raises questions over what ethical system ought to be followed by those seeking profit.