Art Criticism - The State University of New York
Art Criticism - The State University of New York
Art Criticism - The State University of New York
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help <strong>of</strong> the Combat League <strong>of</strong> German Culture.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Degenerate <strong>Art</strong> Exhibition that opened on July 19, 1937 in Munich<br />
had begun to be planned only three weeks before. On the last day <strong>of</strong> June,<br />
Goebbels had authorized Adolf Ziegler, a painter <strong>of</strong> realist nudes and a member<br />
<strong>of</strong> the jury for the Great German Exhibition, to select and secure for an exhibition<br />
works <strong>of</strong> German degenerate art created since 1910. Ziegler and his crew<br />
would acquire 15,997 works <strong>of</strong> art by 1,400 artists that were now deemed unacceptable<br />
and un-German.17 650 <strong>of</strong> these works would appear in the Degenerate<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Exhibition, including works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Robert<br />
Delauney, Andre Derain, James Ensor, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily<br />
Kaninsky, Femand Leger,EI Lissitzky, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Georges<br />
Rouault, and Maurice de Vlaminck. 18 Though Ziegler and his crew were supposed<br />
to pickpost-1910 German works, many works predated 1910 or were by<br />
artists outside <strong>of</strong> Germany; however, this was authorized after the fact by<br />
Goebbels.<br />
Over the four months that it was on display in Munich, two million<br />
visitors passed through the Degenerate <strong>Art</strong> exhibition, with another million<br />
visiting it during its following three year tour <strong>of</strong> Germany and Austria. This<br />
was five times as many visitors as would see the Great German <strong>Art</strong> Exhibition. 19<br />
Like previous exhibitions <strong>of</strong> degenerate art, the Munich exhibition presented<br />
paintings without their frames, works being arranged in as cluttered a fashion<br />
as possible. Pictures were hung as close to each other as possible, and stacked<br />
up to the ceiling. Next to each work was the title <strong>of</strong> the piece and its artist, with<br />
many works being misattributed. This information was handwritten, along with<br />
the year the work was bought and the price it was acquired for. <strong>The</strong>re was no<br />
mention that these prices were in the post-war inflated mark, when one US<br />
dollar equaled 4.2 billion marks.20 <strong>The</strong> astronomical prices <strong>of</strong> the works were<br />
meant to enrage the public who was already suspicious <strong>of</strong> the avant-garde.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re were also quotes on the wall from Hitler and others:<br />
One thing is certain, under no circumstances will we allow the<br />
representatives <strong>of</strong> the decadence that lies behind us suddenly to<br />
emerge as the standard bearers <strong>of</strong> the future.2\<br />
We shall now wage inexorable war to eliminate the last elements <strong>of</strong><br />
our cultural decay/2<br />
All the artistic and cultural blather <strong>of</strong> Cubists, Futurists, Dadaists,<br />
and the like is neither sound in racial tenns nor tolerable in national<br />
terms. It can be best regarded as the expression <strong>of</strong> a world view that<br />
freely admits that the dissolution <strong>of</strong> all existing ideas, all nations,<br />
and all races, their mixing and adulteration, is the l<strong>of</strong>tiest goal <strong>of</strong><br />
their intellectual creators and cliques <strong>of</strong> leaders. 23<br />
vol. 17, no. 1 77