Art Criticism - The State University of New York

man public was voicing disapproval of the avant-garde helped consolidate the
racism that Hitler was brewing. So not only was Hitler rewriting art history
without the avant-garde, but he was also taking energy that was opposing the
avant-garde and channeling it into his own racial-political agenda. The German
people were uniting as what was acceptable and unacceptable was becoming
clearer. The two exhibits served to take the ideas and theories of Nordau,
Schultze-Naumburg, and Rosenberg, and make them into concrete realities
that were understandable to all.
As should be apparent, a discussion of art under the Third Reich is
impossible without discussing Hitler's attitude towards art. As the dominant
personality of Nazi Germany, he imposed his ideas of art upon the nation. The
two exhibitions discussed exemplify these ideas. He was deeply concerned
with art, having made his living as a painter and having applied several times to
art school. He saw art as a reflection of German culture, but also having the
ability to determine the morality of a culture. It was his belief that German art
was decaying, and because of the importance he placed upon it, he wished to
remove this decadence and replace it with art that contained the same elements
contained in classical works and nineteenth century naturalist works, believing
these to be the highest points in culture. In doing so, he was attempting to
counter the decay. He had realized that the modern world did not help the
individual, but instead of seeing art as a reflection of the modern world's
disregard for the individual, he saw art as a catalyst for the destructive elements
of the modern world. He saw modern art as unnatural and as degenerating
progressively, and he desired to save his culture from death. But in doing
so, he was fighting death, which would be the ultimate unnatural feat. Hitler
distinguished German ideas form modern ideas, and wished to prop up traditional
forms of expt;ession that related traditional values so that they would
resist time. He wished to fight time, and this is itself a sign of decadence: to
continue to use methods after they have ceased to be innovative. Instead of
encouraging new methods to blossom, he wished for artists to recycle old
methods as they grew stale. The Degenerate Art exhibition was a removal of
the new, a removal of progress; the Great German Art Exhibition was a return to
the old, an attempt to fight nature's law of death and to prolong the life of
Hitler's idea of German culture.
After the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich, Hitlerlegalized the
confiscation of degenerate art from state collections. This meant that the government
did not have to compensate the collections for the work that was
taken. This law was passed in August, after the Degenerate Art exhibition had
been received by the public who agreed with its condemnations. 35 Hitler had
waited to make sure the people agreed with the Nazi Party's actions before he
claimed responsibility for them publicly. The exhibition having received the
public's support, it became time to remove all the degenerate art from muse-
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Art Criticism