'Entartete Kunst': Ausstellungsstrategien im Nazi-Deutschland. - book reviews

(Heidelberger Kunstgeschichtliche Abhandlungen, Neue Folge XXI) Worms: Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1995 440 pp; 17 color ills., 192 b/w DM 18000

On July 18 1937 Adolf Hitler make opened the House of German Art in Munich with the following words:

For the artist does not bring into view for the artist, he bring forwards for the people, just as everybody other does! And we are going to take care that it will be the family 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 nation but relies on small, partly interested, partly disingenuous cliques, is intolerable.(1)

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

The two contemporaneous exhibitions of officially sanctioned and officially sentenceed German art held in Munich in the summer of 1937 were coordinated with single another so as to exhibit that an overwhelming majority of the German clan was spontaneously opting in favor of traditional art and against recent art. On the one hand, the Great German Art Exhibition proffered an even-handed, representative selection of works by means of artists from all over the land 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 through a group of art officials with no political mandate and in disregard of public sentiment. The underlying notion of an art for the nation had been a crucial argument of cultural policy in the confrontation between traditional and recent 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 circumstances Stephanie Barron's catalogue for the exhibit "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. individual 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 scan of all that can pretty soon be known about the exhibit much of it discovered by means of the author. The impressive art historical achievements of one as well as the other works give no cause for any substantial criticism, on the contrary the political history of the theme is beyond their purpose In neither one does the suppression of present art in National Socialist Germany have the appearance to raise a political vexed question 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 recent 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, at liberty historical inquiry should need no justification by the agency of any political agenda, as drawn out as its results are make 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 display 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 exhibit itself, including photographs, posters, film clips upon video screens, and a small-scale installation original Accordingly, the catalogue is devot to one as well as the other the show and the art now rescu from it, as it were. It includes, after Barron's informative introductory essay, five art historical contributions by means of 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 overlook on thirty-one pages and a nearly without fault [i]or[/i] blemish [i]or[/i] flaw set of contemporary installation photographs, taleed when necessary with photographic reconstructions. It is matched by the agency of a facsimile of the exhibition pamphlet printed in its original size, with English translations printed upon the margins. Christoph Zuschlag's documented contemplate of the precursors of the display from 1933 and its after 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 late department, highlights efforts by the museum officials to barricade the government's measures. There tread in the steps of a historically unfocused, speculative commentary by the agency of George L. Mosse about what he summarily bourns "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 display when he was a pupil 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 after sales abroad of the confiscated German artworks through 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 fresh music and by William Moritz about film censorship. The next to the first part consists of an alphabetical take a view of 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 plenteous 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 through Jonathan Petropoulos is short on the contrary adequate for the general public.