'Degenerate Art': The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. - book reviews

exh cat. observes Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; of recent origin York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991 424 pp; 164 color ills., 646 b/w $7500; $3495 paper

On July 18 1937 Adolf Hitler render free of accessed the House of German Art in Munich with the following words:

For the artist does not bring out for the artist, he bring outs for the people, just as everybody other does! And we are going to take care that it will be the race who from now on will again be called on as judges over its art.... For an art that cannot number on the most joyful and greatest in quantity heartfelt assent of the healthy, broad masses of the tribe but relies on small, partly interested, partly disingenuous cliques, is intolerable.(1)

The staged display of an art guided by dint of the state as the art the race want, which Hitler inaugurated here, was a characteristic act of the plebiscitary self-legitimation pursu by means of totalitarian regimes.(2)

The two contemporaneous exhibitions of officially sanctioned and officially doomed German art held in Munich in the summer of 1937 were coordinated with individual another so as to exhibit that an overwhelming majority of the German nation was spontaneously opting in favor of traditional art and against new art. On the one hand, the Great German Art Exhibition tendered an even-handed, representative selection of works by dint of artists from all over the region corporatively organized by the Reich Chamber of Art. upon the other hand, the exhibition Degenerate Art displayed a selection of what was taken to be the greatest in quantity outrageous works by modern artists from the period of the Weimar Republic, installed in German museums by means of a group of art officials with no political mandate and in disregard of public sentiment. The underlying notion of an art for the race had been a crucial argument of cultural policy in the confrontation between traditional and fresh art in Germany and elsewhere since the beginning of the century

The sum of two units publications under review have decisively enlarged and solidified the art historical evidence for a political history of these occurrences Stephanie Barron's catalogue for the display "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, which in 1991-92 circulated in three major North American museums and was subsequently upon view in the National Gallery in Berlin, is a collective work written through ten authors under her editorship. single of these, Christoph Zuschlag, has now published a comprehensive whirl of his own, based upon his dissertation for Heidelberg University, and titled "Degenerate Art": Exhibition Strategies in Nazi Germany, an encyclopedic take a view of of all that can without delay be known about the display much of it discovered by dint of the author. The impressive art historical achievements of the couple works give no cause for any substantial criticism, on the contrary the political history of the theme is beyond their end In neither one does the suppression of fresh art in National Socialist Germany appear to raise a political point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled beyond categorical condemnation. Although their sober-minded documentary approach raises them above the moralistic diatribes of previous authors, from Paul Ortwin Rave to Werner Haftmann, who wrote with a Manichaean parti pris for fresh art, they still retrace the brutal oppression of present art only as yet another political crime of the Nazi regime. I know from experience that searching for historical circumstances can be mistaken for pleading mitigating circumstances, and that historicizing National Socialist tillage can be mistaken for historical vindication? And smooth the counterargument that historical knowledge helps to avoid past mistakes or to guard against recurring calamity falls short. In a democratic society, independent historical inquiry should need no justification by the agency of any political agenda, as lengthy as its results are lay open for debate. Hence, my review will be focused upon political analysis rather than ideological reckoning.

Stephanie Barron's exhibition, which I saw in Chicago, appeared to have a two-fold purpose: first, to reassemble as many artworks from the Degenerate Art present to view as possible in a museum environment that would retrieve their aesthetic appeal in contrast with their intentionally unfavorable display in the original exhibition; and next to the first to present a comprehensive documentation of the present to view itself, including photographs, posters, film clips upon video screens, and a small-scale installation prototype Accordingly, the catalogue is devot to the pair the show and the art now rescu from it, as it were. It includes, after Barron's informative introductory essay, five art historical contributions through her and by four German scholars, including Christoph Zuschlag, about various aspects of the display By far the longest is Mario-Andreas von Luttichau's comprehensive reconstruction, adapted from his earlier article in a German publication of 1987(4) At its core is a room-by-room picture-by-picture scan on thirty-one pages and a nearly out and out set of contemporary installation photographs, full quantityed when necessary with photographic reconstructions. It is matched by dint of a facsimile of the exhibition pamphlet printed in its original size, with English translations printed upon the margins. Christoph Zuschlag's documented review of the precursors of the present to view from 1933 and its succeeding venues to 1941 is a condens preliminary version of what he has since expanded into his volume of 1995. Annegret Janda, in her account of the National Gallery in Berlin, the foremost German museum with a present department, highlights efforts by the museum officials to dam up the government's measures. There tread on the heels of a historically unfocused, speculative commentary by means of George L. Mosse about what he summarily terminuss "bourgeois" aesthetics and sexual morality, reprinted from another publication, and a personal memoir by the agency of Peter Guenther about his visit to the Degenerate Art present to view when he was a scholar raising the elusive question of what was upon the minds of the visitors who left no record of their reactions. sum of two units articles by Andreas Huneke and Barron deal with the posterior sales abroad of the confiscated German artworks by dint of the German authorities, culminating in the famous auction at the Gallery Fischer in Lucerne in 1939 The first part of the volume concludes with essays by Michael Meyer about the concomitant suppression of new music and by William Moritz about film censorship. The next to the first part consists of an alphabetical contemplate of the artists included in the Degenerate Art display written by Dagmar Grimm, Peter Guenther, and Pamela Kort, with numerous colorplates of the confiscated works. In their carefully researched biographical entries, the authors have paid a great deal of attention to the variable positions and attitudes of each artist during the National Socialist regime, ranging from attempted accommodation to clandestine work in obscurity and upon to exile. The selected bibliography by means of Jonathan Petropoulos is short on the other hand adequate for the general public.