Why Do Fascists Despise Modern Art?
And why do they still present it to the public?
If you hate something, your first instinct might be to destroy it, to make sure nobody ever has to be plagued by the sight of it again. That is not what the nazis did with what they labelled as ‘Degenerate Art’ — art offensive to their racialized concept of the ‘German Spirit’. Instead, they made sure as many people as possible could see and mock it in equal measure. They turned it into the most popular exhibition of the nazi period in Germany.
Why did they despise it so much?
And if they despised it so much, why show it off in an elaborate exhibition?
Let’s talk about that, and how it relates to the core of fascist ideology.
The Exhibition for ‘Degenerate Art’
‘Horrible examples of art Bolshevism have been brought to my attention[…]I want to arrange an exhibit in Berlin of art from the period of degeneracy.’ — Joseph Goebbels, Diary, June 1936
Only a few days ago I visited the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. It’s an impressive and varied modern art gallery, somewhat famed for having one of the largest collections of Picasso’s work in the whole of Europe. Something else caught my eye though:
A signification section of their permanent exhibition was formerly part of the travelling ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition the nazis organized all over Germany. There is something distinctly disturbing about this connection, especially when the impassive biographical dates of various artists mark their exile or death during the nazi regime.
An early death in New York, thousands of miles from the artist’s country of birth, or an uncertain date simply marked as ‘Soribor’ is never far. In that sense, the nazi regime is almost inseparable from a collection covering this many pieces of Weimar Era avant-garde art.
On the other hand, the exhibition stands in defiance of it. The museum engages with this history and takes it as a point of pride that today these pieces have once again found a well-deserved place among newer works. The fact that they were targets of nazi derision speaks for their subversive and innovative nature.
The ‘Degenerate Art’ Exhibition was a result of the nazi propaganda ministry’s intention of reshaping German culture around the ideals of the national socialist movement. Artworks previously removed from museums were displayed as evidence of a ‘judeo-bolshevik’ perversion of culture, either in style or through the background of the artist.
Next to the artworks, they displayed signs, showing the ‘shocking’ prices they were initially bought for, and racist propaganda linking their style and topic to the alleged racial features of their artists. The purpose was to elicit shock and anger, and maybe to a certain degree glee that they were removed from public display and ‘put in their place’.
Generating political outrage over supposed cultural transgressions has a familiar ring to it, from today’s perspective. The nazis certainly didn’t invent it, but they are part of an ongoing reactionary tradition in that sense.
What is ‘Degenerate Art’?
‘What you are seeing here are the crippled products of madness, impertinence, and lack of talent[…]I would need several freight trains to clear our galleries of this rubbish[…]’— Adolf Ziegler, President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, July 1937
Do these words invoke a certain feeling in you? They do for me. The sheer level of obsessive disgust communicated by them is disturbing in some ways but mainly elicits anger. It is hard for me to comprehend on an emotional level how anyone can look at these works, and denigrate them this way. Adolf Ziegler himself was a classically trained portrait artist.
Let’s take a look then, at the so-called ‘crippled products of madness’ Ziegler was referring to:
Oskar Kokoschka’s impressionist works were among the first to be banished from German and Austrian museums. He fled Vienna into exile in 1934. When the nazis annexed Austria in 1938 many of his works were confiscated and destroyed. He was a dedicated anti-fascist all his life.
Paul Klee’s surrealist works were defamed as ‘insane childish scribbles’ by the nazis. In 1933 he was dismissed from his teaching position at the Düsseldorf Academy. He left Germany behind, after having his house searched and refusing to produce an Aryan Certificate when a nazi agitation paper accused him of being a ‘Galician Jew’.
George Grosz was reviled by the German right for his intensely political works, and casual affiliation with the Communist Party. He emigrated to the USA in 1933 after his atelier was stormed by the SA shortly after Hitler seized power. The majority of his works were destroyed or confiscated, and he was among the first to be stripped of their citizenship by the nazis.
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler had the majority of her body of impressionist works destroyed as part of the campaign against ‘Degenerate Art’. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia following a mental breakdown, she was forcibly sterilized by the nazi regime in 1935 and finally murdered in 1940 after being classified as ‘permanently mentally disabled’.
Do you feel scandalized? Shocked? I do — not by the art obviously, but by the way the nazi regime treated these artists and their works. That is also the answer to the question of what was classified as degenerate art.
What these artists and their works have in common is a defiance of the social norms the fascist regime attempted to enforce. They simply couldn’t be tolerated as part of their vision of society.
So they had to be destroyed, taken away, and then mocked in a vain attempt to discredit the very act of their creation as something abnormal. Modern Art is an attack on the fascist’s attempt to monopolize culture.
Art is also personal. You can dislike every single one of the pieces shown here. You can dislike the whole style and movement they are part of. The point is this:
It is not for you, me or anyone else to decide what defines art.
The Fascist Monopoly on Culture
‘Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.’ — Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism, 1995
For fascists, art doesn’t really exist as a form of expression, be it collective or individual. For them, art is merely an extension of their desired control over the cultural landscape. It is not something to be created, but rather something to be regimented and produced, to enforce a cultural ideal.
Labelling something as ‘Degenerate Art’ or ‘Filth’ isn’t about art at all. It is about power over culture.
It is easy to mock modern art for its strange forms, for its tendency to turn the mundane into the pretentious and for its insistence on standing apart from popular culture.
The issues arise, when a society, or more likely a certain section of society, attempts to control what can be displayed as art in the first place, and what has to be removed from the public eye.
When the modern-day inheritors of fascism scandalize transgressive art and uphold the European masters as the only legitimate form, they aren’t doing it to save art. Their purpose is to identify those outside of the cultural norm, and open them up to mockery and ultimately destruction.
I won’t end this article with an appeal for you to go to a modern art museum, and let yourself be enlightened by the glory of what is considered artistically valuable these days. Instead, I’ll end like this:
Let there never be another ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition. If we let it come to that, the fascists have already won.
This is great, If you can add, don’t forget the nazis closed the Bauhaus and Franco assassinated Federico Garcia Lorca,
They fear them, may they guide us
Thank you for detailing this important history. I appreciate your inclusion of some of the works. Each speaks to me and is beautiful and extraordinary.