Degenerate

Being in decline; having fallen to an inferior or undesirable state, especially in mental or moral qualities. Also, a depraved, corrupt, or vicious person. Because modernism was so counter to the fascist aesthetic, Adolf Hitler (German, 1889-1945) branded modernist art entartete ? degenerate or degenerative. The fascists favored a strongly classicalstyle in contrast to the prevailing artworld styles of Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Dadaism, and modernism in general. Rather than censor modernist art, the Nazis confiscated it. In 1937 they removed more than 20,000 such works from the collections of German individuals and museums ? works by more than 200 artists, including Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, K?the Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Pablo Picasso, and Kurt Schwitters. With 650 such works, they mounted an exhibition titled Degenerate Art ("Entartete 'Kunst'"). The exhibit opened in Munich and traveled to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria. In each installation, the works were poorly hung and surrounded by graffiti and hand written labels mocking the artists and their creations. Over three million visitors attended making it the first "blockbuster" exhibition. The Nazis expected Germans to recognize these works as presenting "negativity and the incomprehensibility of the world," which pitted modernist aesthetics against what fascists characterized as their own positivism, progressive goals, and noble ideals ? an ostensibly hopeful Weltanschauung (world-view) that led to their ruthlessly forcing their "solutions" on the world.(pr. adjective: də-JE-nər-ət, verb: də-JE-nər-AYT)Works by some of the artists called degenerate: Ernst Barlach (German, 1870-1938), The Avenger, 1914, bronze, Tate Gallery, London. Also see Expressionism. Barlach's work was condemned as "degenerate" by the Nazis, who in 1937 confiscated or destroyed all his works in public collections. See German art.Quote: "Anybody who paints and sees a sky green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized." Adolph Hitler, German dictator and perpetrator of genocide, and, as a very young man, a painter. Related links: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust has a page about degenerate art. The Hitler Historical Museum is dedicated to the presenting various texts and images produced by Germany's National Socialist Party, more familiarly known as the Nazis ? who, led by Adolf Hitler, led the "Axis" powers against the "Allies" in World War II, and created the Holocaust. This site exhibits images of architecture, drawings and paintings (some by Hitler himself), sculptures, and wartime propaganda posters. Unfortunately individual images are rarely labeled. A database listing Nazi looted art can be found at the Lost Art Internet Database. These are artworks that may have been looted by the Nazis from Jewish owners. The site put together by the German government is intended primarily to push German museums to go through their collections again in search of missing treasures. Also see aniconic, gender issues, iconoclast, iconomachy, iconophobia, propaganda, ugly, and xenophobia.