Why is it so often that what or whom I want to
see is somewhere else
or somewhere I just left? Two friends who
had not been in Santa Fe for quite a while, one from New York and the other
from Dallas finally came within the same 10 days that we were in New York. When there is an opening in Santa Fe
inevitably I will be in New York or somewhere else and so it goes.
Now, there is an exhibition that seriously
interests me at the Neue Galerie in New York.
As you know the museum concentrates on late 19th and first
half of the 20th century art from Austria and Germany. The current exhibition is about what the
Nazi’s referred to as Degenerate Art.
This was the avant-garde, the new art of the 20th century in
Germany. Like artists of every
generation, they were trying to break the mold and produce something new.
Max Beckmann (1884-1950) "Departure" from MOMA New York |
Hitler, however, who had failed to make it
into the Austrian Academy of Art in
Vienna, thought it decadent and only wanted to see classical and medieval art, He
believed paintings and sculpture should look like what they
were supposed to represent and not be distorted. He had no patience with abstract art nor
atonal music for that matter.
This is the first major exhibition on the
subject since the 1991 show in Los Angeles.
In 1993 Muse Film and Television, on whose board I served at the time,
produced a film called “Entartete Kunst (Degenerate
Art)” directed by David Grubin. The
narrators included the art historian and curator Peter Selz and the author who
made art and social criticism come alive, Robert Hughes. It is based on the exhibition at the Los
Angeles Museum of Art
which endeavored to reproduce the exhibition
that Hitler arranged to show the art that he felt was unworthy before selling
or burning it.
The Neue Galerie goes a step further. It looks at the time in which the original exhibition
is set. Hitler has just had his Museum
called the House of German Art built in Munich to show the art that is healthy
for the state. Immediately thereafter he opened his
degenerate art exhibition to contrast for the citizens what was good for
them and what was not!
The show lasted for 3 years starting in Munich in 1937
touring throughout Germany and Austria and by the time it closed it was the
most viewed exhibition ever, totaling 3 million visitors. Of the total 16 to
20,000 modern works eventually confiscated by the 3rd Reich from the
German people, 650 works were crammed together in small rooms and at the wrong
heights. One witness to the exhibition
described graffiti with derogatory comments written on the walls. The condemned art was not just that of the Expressionists
but started in 1910 including all the isms, such as Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism
etc.
The Neue Galerie often has very dramatic exhibitions and
this is no exception. The curator Olaf
Peters uses all sorts of juxtaposition, photographs, posters etc. in order to
give full effect to the moment. For
instance, he shows on two sides of a gallery, examples of both 1937 exhibitions,
both
what Hitler disdained and what he approved of. There are also dramatic examples of empty
frames where the works
have been ostensibly torn from their frames.
It is a propaganda exhibition to show
the evils of the Nazism. The sinister
way they went about influencing the populace on what was good and
what was bad art.
Though we all have our own opinions, we are influenced, as
well, by the authorities of the day.
Today it is usually the better-known critics and collectors, but since
the critics were censored in 1937 Munich, and it was dangerous to speak out
against the Reich, there was only Hitler and his henchmen to say what was
acceptable.
The Neue Galerie is showing examples of all the greats of
the period such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Erich Heckel's, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka's, Emil Nolde and a number of others. It demonstrates the great art of Germany that
was destined for destruction, just like the book burnings, which had already started
in 1933. It was a strange kind of luck
that in 1939 Hitler decided to sell many of the paintings that he had stolen at
auction in Switzerland in order to pay for his war effort.
Adolf Ziegler (1892-1959) "The Four Elements: Pinakothek der Moderne" from Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlugen |
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) "Berlin Street Scene, 1913" from Neue Galerie/Private Collection |
Many of the artists left Germany when they found that their art was
disdained and emigrated abroad. One
interesting fact is that of the 112 artists exhibited in the Degenerate Art
show only 6 were Jewish. Being a member
and supporter of the Nazi Party was also not a free pass. One such artist at the forefront of the
Expressionist Movement was Emile Nolde, and though he did not leave Germany, he
was relegated to the hinterlands to do small landscapes and paintings of
nature.
In the light of all the works of art that were recently found in the
possession of Cornelius Gurlitt,
this exhibition gives hope that other works of art that were thought
to be destroyed might again come to light.