As we all wonder (in a state of total wonder!) about the latest cache of “degenerate” art Hitler banned in 1938, please notice a forgotten detail. As Hitler, his favorite architect Albert Speer, and his favorite (if unknown) sculptor, Arno Breker, drove together into Paris victoriously in 1940, he declared he wanted to have a German museum as great as the Louvre.
The art dealer Gurlitt who was preparing that Museum in Linz, Austria (where the dictator grew up) was also the one whose secret cache was just uncovered in Munich: (It pays to know the Boss!) I serendipitously “discovered” Breker in Schwerin, where my new German wife was celebrating a relative’s anniversary.
This was the exhibition that the poster designer Klaus Staeck, who is the current Head of the Academy of Art in Berlin, boycotted! BERUF VERBOT! When Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, hassled the apolitical Dusseldorf sculptor, the failed artist Adolf told Arno not to fret: Artists don’t understand politics, as he bestowed a great ranch on him to expedite his sculpturing! The soft, benign side of Adolf!
But I came not to
praise Hitler (although the failed artist had a soft place in his
heart for artistic beginners) but to say what we may be missing
because of his Entartete Kunst campaign in 1938. For example, George
Grosz (1893-1959 ). Lutz Becker has just written a lively take on
his career in Germany, America, and returning to Germany in “George
Grosz: Drawings from two portfolios: “Ecce Homo” and
“Hintergrund” THE BIG NO (Hayward Publishing (2012).
My wife
Hildegard has scanned this black and white collection of Gross’s
(he de-Germanized his last name when he fled Hitler to New York in
1933.) Hilly’s visual selections begin with his Dada premiere. Get
the whole book. It’s the grossest Gross I have yet seen. NO has
never been so beguiling. “Degenerate”, my ass! Say a big YES to
his shrewd NO’s.
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