Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Beauty is in the eye of Hitler-I mean the beholder...

Good art and Bad art in the Third Reich is distinguished like all art: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If the person whose eye it is is Hitler or his photographer. The art is picked by what can most represent the party line. Pastoral scenes of the everyday man? Beautiful. Enslaved peoples? Not so much. Ironically, even the "bad" modern art of the 3rd Reich was "good" because it might not be "beautiful" or becoming in terms of the nature of the peoples of Germany, but it still served a function in Germany at the time.
I think that this is how Cohen's film is a form of poltical art, as it shows the purpose of all art pieces be they "good" or "bad" in the greater social construct at the time. It was not that Hitler commissioned modern artists to create works of the disproportioned or malformed as much as show the effect of showing just what an exhisting piece at the time could do in the right context.
If those modern pieces of art did not become political as they were used to show weights upon society, than so to is Cohens film. The look of Rubens or DaVincis do not change depending on who owns them, but in the context where they are shown. So Cohens piece is not a string of political messages as much as a message that takes on political meaning as it is put together.
The good art and bad art might only be in the eye of the beholder, in the end the only true statement is that every picture is worth a thousand words.

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