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.

"Jump." "How high?"

Since I couldn't quite formulate my thoughts into coherent sentences Tuesday in class, I will try to redeem myself here. On the scene the "cellars of the victors:"  

Just the fact that we think Cohen is showing the portrait of Hitler to glorify him, to me, shows how the use of images and other forms of propaganda can manipulate how people view something. The concept of beauty and health being linked together is not a hard one to understand. However, this idea that anyone who wasn't 'pure' - who was physically or mentally ill, who was Jewish - was not acknowledged as a German is extremely hard to come to terms with. Today some people might fall for Schultz-Naumburg's method of juxtaposing images of deformed and mentally ill people with modern art, or the Nazis publicly having disgust with art by Jewish people, but I can guarantee an entire country would not be swept up in Hitler's mind games. No matter how many times you hear the same information about what happened under Hitler's command, no matter which angle you analyze it from, you will never be able to explain why. Why didn't anyone see what Hitler was doing? In the last bit of narration, Gray says, "It was not enemies who were liquidated, nor opponents of the regime. But innocent people whose very existence was in conflict with the Nazi dream." Why didn't anyone question why these killings started happening? Was there not one educated person in the masses that could see through the images and paintings of degenerates the Nazis displayed to what was really going on? There were educated persons, and the brightest ones were high officials in the Nazi party. Why couldn't Hitler ever give a concrete reason for his actions? The answer is simple: "from the first murders of mental patients, to the mass murders of Jews, there is no real political motive," there was just an overwhelming amount of pictures and reports signed by distinguished doctors as being medically proven and true. If you're not a doctor, you don't question them because they are professionals in that field- though, you may get a second opinion. But Hitler had second, third, and fourth opinions to back up his fantastical ideas. He appeared to be legitimate.  The last words of the documentary couldn't have summed up the film better: "Hitler went from words to deeds. Without restraint, he transformed an absurd ideology into a hellish reality." These portraits that pan across the screen don't look destroyed, or old, because what these men did will always be fresh in our minds, no details will be blurred as time goes on. The last picture of Hitler looked like a political cartoon you might see in the Sunday paper; the Nazi flag looks as though it is much larger than Hitler. To me it symbolizes the absorption of Hitler by his own ideology, how wrapped up and obsessive he became with the Nazi party to the point that he was carried away. To end the film, the image doesn't fade to black as a whole--rather the blackness takes over the Nazi flag in the painting first, then Hitler and continues to fade down until all is black. This mimicked that of a curtain dropping at the end of a show. 

 

*Sam Gray was the narrator for the English version of “Architecture of Doom.”

fascists are realists?

The Nazi regime didn't really like the modernist movement  very much. Academic realism was more their style, assuming the content was agreeable to Hitler. The aesthetic taste of the regime was largely dictated by Hitler. Hitler fancied himself an artist, but he was largely retrospective in his work. Technical skill aside, Hitler was doomed as an artist, because he was out of touch with the avant-garde art endeavors, in this case, the modernists. His intolerance for this art which deviated from the normal depiction of the world as we know it led to the Entartete Kunst [degenerate art] exhibit, once he was in power. The degenerate art exhibit was filled with art of the Modernist movement as well as Surrealists and Dadaists. 

Although realism is seemingly characteristic of fascism, the Italian fascists' headquarters [casa del fascio] was a modernist building, directly contrasting the inflated classical references that Nazi architecture insist on making. Another problem with characterising realism as fascist is that communist Russia used very similar art, both stylistically and contextually. The imagery of both the far left and far right during the second World War is principally propagandistic- showing the perfection of human form, and glorifying the worker. 

Although Hitler's artistic values were retrospective; looking back to antiquity, the Nazi party used the imagery as an effective invocation of the great German history, elevating the grandeur and esteem of the party. Though it may not have been the avant-garde, the artistic identity of the Third Reich was very effective. [i.e. good.] 

Modernism can be very effective as political art [consider Guernica by Picasso,] but it is ill suited to the Nazi cause. [i.e. bad] 

Distinguishing the "Good" from the "Bad"

Much like every facet of the Nazi German lifestyle, the quality of artwork was directly dictated from Hitler and his trusted committees (which merely stood in for Hitler when he was not available to hand-pick the art himself). If the piece of artwork helped push the image of a "perfect" Germany, the it was likely to hang on the walls of Hitler's public art showings. These included images of what a "good" German would both do and look like. On the other hand, modern art were deemed "bad" because they looked abnormal and were not representative of what the new German nation was. To this point, Nazi propaganda connected the modern art with pictures of people with abnormal features in order to reason that both should be permanently removed from the new German world.

So much like film, literature, etc., the transformation of what defined German artwork was just as much propaganda as anything else used to distribute to the masses. The political message of this new German artwork is also quite parallel to that of Nazi politics as well. The "good" art was more so about flash rather than substance, to the point that many of the pieces of art could be categorized as kitsch (especially portraits of Hitler); like the politics, there was little meaning behind the message. The pieces of modern art, labeled as "bad," were confiscated and destroyed for their irregularity and differing style rather than analyzed for what the deeper meaning really was. So whereas the "bad" pieces of art may have had a meaningful message or purpose behind their style, the "good" pieces of art were glorified because they played into the theatrics of the Nazi party.

Cohen's film was absolutely political in meaning. It is understandable to only include certain aspects of years of information in order to make a point (as I have done by narrowing down 2 hours of film into a couple of paragraphs), but the way he shaped and ordered the information shows a political directive. By presenting the highlights of a political message, Cohen's film becomes political, in turn.

Social Class in Art and Literature

According to Cohen's film, the Nazi's saw the propagation of the Nazi aesthetic as means of freeing the laboring workers from their social class. The general idea circled around the lower class comprehension of the basics of the civilized classes (i.e. the socio-cultural behaviors of the upper and middle classes) and after this has occured, Die Gemeinschaft would reach a state of social equilibrium. This social trickle down effect is interesting to me on two fronts. First, as fully detailed (almost to a suspicious fault) in Cohen's film, is the tenacity with which the Nazi's ascribed to the aesthetic. Secondly, a similar line of ideology was developed a few years earlier in England after WWI. In the post-industrialist society of England, intellectuals were centered on the problem of social class. One possible solution to this problem came from the rising field of literary criticism, particularly from the newly forged literary magazine, Scrutiny. Out of the rise of English Literary Studies and Criticism came the idea that if the laboring class could become educated in the great works of the English Nation, given that the 'great' works embodied the ideal of the higher classes, there would be a surge in English nationalism and the barriers between the classes would fall. This differed little from the Nazi idea that through the rigorous education of the working class in the 'German' aesthetic, the classes would equalize and Germans would again, be proud to be Germans and to the point of death. The jingoistic thinking behind both the ideology of the Nazi regime and of the Post-industrialist English academia is strikingly similar, and perhaps a parallel not to be missed.

Art de jour

For the good of the German people, Hitler took it upon himself to expose the Germans to the best art possible, and shield them from the atrocities that he saw committed upon canvases. The good art, he discerned, was art that exhibited the purest and most perfect human forms; the art that celebrated the serenity in days of past; and the art that inspired hope for a renewed German culture. Additionally, he sought out paintings and sculptures that depicted distorted faces or forms. Even paintings with distorted perspectives were considered wrong. Works of art by Jewish artists were the most condemned of all the “bad” art. Hitler was not alone in this endeavor, either. Others sought to vilify “bad” art by comparing the distorted faces to photos of disfigured men. The artists, they argued, must be sick themselves to have painted the likenesses of such people. To further make his point, Hitler arranged for a gallery of these confiscated works to be put on tour before they were eventually burned. Although Hitler may have actually been offended by the artistic style of some of these works, it is abundantly clear (partly in thanks to Cohen’s work), that his treatment of art was very political.

(However, before we get too deep into analyzing Hitler’s political motives and the tragic end of many of these pieces, we should consider this: what exactly is bad art? Frankly, I don’t know. We can assign value to the perfection of a drawing and its relative likeness to the real thing, or we could look for the subtle distortions of the subject that artistically bring our attention to something less obvious. We could also evaluate a work in relation to its era—was the work stylistically before its time? Does it demonstrate three dimensional perspective? Or we could assess how the work makes us feel. For that matter, who says that art even is meant to be good or bad? Maybe its only meant to please the artist. My point is, leaving aside Hitler’s political motives (I’ll come back to those), art is too subjective for us to judge whether Hitler’s choices of good and bad had any merit. It is entirely possible that what he chose was actually what he thought was good. As for his political motives, he is hardly the first ruler to have dictated his opinion about good and bad art. For centuries, artists (including authors and musicians) have been banned for political reasons.)

Now what of Cohen? I will argue that his film was definitely a form of political art. In the same way that Hitler chose pieces which would best support his argument against the Jews, Cohen chose pieces which best support his argument. Certainly it would be difficult to choose film clips that didn’t illustrate Cohen’s point and I am not suggesting that Cohen is biased. However, Cohen’s work has an intent to inform and to persuade, and is therefore political in nature.

Nazi Art

Going off of what was presented in the A.o.D., "Good Art" by the Nazi party's standards seem to be highly connected with both the party/Hitler's obsession with antiquity and classicism as well as their fundamental belief in the idea of a perfect race. In the slide shows of art purchased by Hitler which were included in the film as well as the clips from the art shows there is a heavy emphasis placed on both realism and beauty. The sculptures and paintings are all of perfectly proportioned figures... etc.

Also apparent in the Nazi ideology is not merely the concept of emulation of the classical, but surpassing it in grandeur. Every undertaking has the purpose of becoming better than everything that ever existed before hand and overshadowing all other existing civilizations and there art and in this we come to understand the massive sculptures being erected as well as the incredibly lavish and artistically designed blueprint envisioned for Berlin. In the Hitler's mind, he was building a new and improved Rome or Athens or Sparta while simultaneously ushering his "perfect" civilization into a "new and improved" artistic Renaissance.

Art in the Third Reich

Art in the Third Reich is based upon Hitler’s conception of the state as a work of art in itself. Hitler makes a concerted effort to mold German society into an embodiment of his artistic ideals - beauty, perfection, and purity. These ideals become the distinguishing characteristics of ‘good art’ during this period and subsequently define Hitler’s fascist aesthetic. By placing emphasis on the beautification of society, the Third Reich seeks to purge Germany of its perceived imperfections and impurities, namely the Jews and mentally ill. Thus, ‘bad art’ in the Third Reich becomes synonymous with all art that conflicts with Hitler’s resolute ideals. The Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937 aligned ‘bad art’ with modernism, drawing parallels between the mentally ill and modern art in order to portray such individuals as detriments to the purity and strength of German society. As a result, ‘good art’ was limited to Hitler’s canonical standards of perfection, effectively inculcating his fabricated, fascist propaganda into the minds of a nation.

Nazi views of art and history

To the Nazis, good art was created according to an ideal form in the classical tradition. In other words, ‘good’ art consisted of idyllic landscapes, perfect healthy bodies, or representations of an idealized Germany. ‘Bad’ art was basically anything that did not conform to these traditions, and included such traditions as cubism and surrealism. To simplify, the National Socialist view of art corresponded to an overall longing for some sort of ideal past, however unrealistic, that was free from the corruption of contemporary society. It seems as if the Nazi’s opinions on art were closely related to their opinions of history, and it would be difficult to see where one influenced the other or vice versa.

In history, the Nazis thought the German Empire’s loss in the First World War was caused by subversive elements in Germany, rather than by the victories of the Entente powers. They saw that late in the war, Germany had defeated Russia and penetrated deeper into France than ever before, and yet shortly thereafter was forced to capitulate. The real reasons for Germany’s loss are more complicated to explain than the myth that the Nazis and other right wing groups came up with: that they were “stabbed in the back” by Jews and Socialists. Thus, one of the goals of Nazism was to remove these elements from Germany. Artistically, the Nazis thought these ‘subversive’ elements to be destroying Germany as well. Instead of learning why new artistic styles were valid, they berated them as Jewish and Bolshevik perversions of ‘true’ German art.

The Definition of Good vs. Bad Art under the Third Reich

Throughout the Third Reich era, the NSDAP consistently asserted that any art, literature, or music that did not fit its careful mold of what was acceptable was not art at all.  The Nazi regime particularly disdained any artistic form produced by a Jew, even if such a work would have been revered by the Nazis had it been produced by someone of Aryan descent.  Cohen uses his film the Architecture of Doom to illustrate the way in which Hitler and the Nazi propagandists used art and aesthetics to justify the destruction of people in order to create a beautiful and homogenous society.  The Nazis saw art as a vessel to inculcate the German people with their ideology of racial purity, which becomes the ultimate definition of good art and bad art during the Third Reich: art was considered “good” insofar as it furthered Nazi ideals, and was “bad” or degenerate if it did not extol the characteristics that Hitler considered beautiful and pure.  One example of the Nazi classification of art is the inability of Hitler and his contemporaries to see the value in modern art.  As we saw in the movie, Paul Schultz-Naumburg even juxtaposed pictures of the mentally-ill with paintings of modern, or “degenerate,” art.  Furthermore, and not surprisingly, Hitler seemed to like all art to be grandiose.  From his elaborate plans for the new Berlin to the monstrous painting of the Alps he purchased, Hitler seemed to see art as a reflection of the grandeur of the Nazi party and himself.  For this reason, Hitler saw the state itself as a work of art, and this abstract and idealistic idea most likely contributed to the eventual downfall of the Reich.

I think Cohen definitely meant for this to be a piece of political art, although it is unique in that he is not trying to convince the audience of something, but rather to illuminate something that they may not have known.  In other words, Cohen doesn’t need to prove or argue in his film that Nazi ideology was backwards and irrational.  He most like assumes that the majority of his audience already knows that.  But I do think that he made this film in an attempt to show us how the Nazis utilized art and aesthetics in an attempt to infiltrate society with his racial ideology.  While it could have possibly gone undetected by contemporary Germans, it is easy to see in retrospect how subtle some of the Nazis’ messages through art were.  

Fantasy vs. Reality

The part of the film that I found most interesting was the effect of Karl May’s books on Hitler and his grasp of reality. May’s books were intended to be fictional romantic stories about far away places for young boys to use their imagination. According to the documentary, Hitler took May’s words seriously and even went as far as to plan his military strategies around May’s invented techniques for battling Indians that he had never encountered nor tried to defeat. The documentary goes on to explain that Hitler believed that imagination could provide the basis for knowledge and that one need not know unfamiliar people in order to assess them, so long as one has imagination and insight.

It amazes me that a nation of people would follow the direction of a man who takes military strategy from a fictional children’s book. This infatuation with a fantasy world seems to be directly correlated with his idea of “good” and “bad” art. Hitler wanted to live in a fictional reality where every person resembles the perfect faces and bodies represented in the portraits and sculptures that he put in his exhibit. He wanted to rid the world of the deformed, handicapped and the Jews because they were impure and dangerous to the Aryan race. The very fact that Hitler did the same picking and choosing that he did with the characters in his art as he did with the actual people that were allowed to live under his regime demonstrates his blurry sense of reality. In both his selection of art and his military tactics, Hitler made decisions without any knowledge or expertise, with only his own imagination and a fictional reality to guide him.

Only Hitler's art was good art in the Third Reich

"Good" art in the Third Reich was a means of representing the type of worldview, lifestyle, mentality, and so-called physical health that Hitler and the Nazi Party demanded the German people adopt. Art stopped being a creative force because it was only allowed to express one viewpoint, and anything deviating from that was labeled "degenerate" and destroyed. This "bad" art was anything unique or innovative in style or content, in terms of not being aligned with Hitler's ideology or notion of beauty. If Hitler would not have painted it, it was deemed unacceptable. Thus art in the Third Reich ceased to be a means of personal expression and became mere political propaganda: the art that was deemed acceptable also let the people know the ideas that were deemed acceptable, and anything different was seen as an abomination. In this way, the leaders of the Third Reich treated art much the same way they treated politics/society, in that they held everything to a rigorous standard of so-called purity and uniformity. It is interesting and relevant to this point that "bad" art was so explicitly equated with bodily deformity and inferiority-- the "bad" art was burned, and the people labeled inferior were murdered, all as part of the obsessive purging process. With these parallels in mind, one can begin to see how Hitler would have thought of his regime as a work of art that he was creating, and this of course would have been labeled "good" art, which makes the entire notion of "good" art in the Third Reich seem even more perverse.

Convincing a Nation Through Art

I found that one of the most appalling, yet interesting clips came from the movie produced by Goebbels about the “dangers” of the handicap population. The clip from his movie threatened the German population about the hazards of the ineptitudes of harmless, innocent souls. I understand the goal of the Nazi party in trying to perfect man through a psychopathic perception of the Aryan race, however the clip of the movie is extremely disturbing. Showing the faces of helpless individuals and criticizing the care given to them due to their disability was some of the most extreme of the propaganda I’ve encountered thus far. In terms of conveying the message of needing to do something to solve the “problem,” Goebbels does a brilliant job by showing the amenities while the rest of Germany suffered through a depression. Additionally, using the conspicuously skewed statistics that fifty years from that date the “useless” burdens of people to Germans would be one to four in ratio clearly has an impact on the naïve viewer. The art itself, a propaganda movie that looks to oust a group of people who have no choice on their inabilities, coincides with the entire Nazi movement of creating the perfect race, and doing so through such impressive and beautiful mediums such as a motion picture. While the most disturbing aspects of what happened in the twelve-year regime of the Nazi party in power are prevalent in the film, one cannot be unimpressed by the creativity and style in accomplishing a change in mindset of an entire nation through art. Portraying the sick and disabled as a dangerous threat to society seems impossible and horrific, yet through propaganda art Goebbels and the Nazi party were somehow able to accomplish this horrific feat. The main message I found Cohen was trying to convey to the viewer was that one of the greatest tragedy’s of all time happened in the twentieth century due to insane men who’s gruesome beliefs were turned into action and through their defeat, accomplished many of their goals.

Its too bad Hitler wasnt better in the Post Card Industry, could have saved a lot of people a lot of energy...

The word “good” in references to art is commonly associated with quality. However, the interpretation of “good” and consequently “bad” art under the third reich had nothing to do with quality, but rather with subject matter. That is not to say that the paintings and sculptures embraced by the Third Reich were not impressive or of high quality by traditional standards. Rather, the emphasis was not put on characteristics like stroke length and spatial usage, but instead, the content of the art was emphasized. To Hitler art was good if it stressed the longevity and virtuosity of traditional German life, particularly focusing on the penchant for basic agrarian labor as a primary tenant of the ideal human. Picturesque scenes of men tilling their fields or of women tending to a garden were considered examples of “good art” not because the paintings were unique or impressive, but because they embraced the view of Germany’s history that the Fuehrer dictated.

Similarly, the party leaders placed an emphasis on the grandeur of antiquity. Whether it was the perfect body structures of ancient Greek and Roman statues or the enormous columns of the Parthenon or the Circus Maximus the grandeur of this time period and its art and architecture appealed to Hitler in a utopian sense. In the art of antiquity Hitler recognized the lasting influence of these cultures on the world. He craved such a lasting influence, and saw the means to achieve such permanence by emulating the art forms of what he deemed to be the two most pure societies ever to walk the earth (prior to the Germans).

Furthermore, he demanded that art imitate life, not mutilate it as he accused modern art of doing. Hitler’s concept of humanity was perfection, and any deviation from such perfection was wrong and inherently not pure. While we today recognize the emotionally charged creations of Picasso to be masterpieces, to Hitler they were nothing more than the corruption of the human image. Such art needed to be destroyed not praised.

A shift from the beauty of real life (or rather the Nazi’s skewed view of it) made a piece of art “bad.” Art was “good” if it embraced traditional Germany or antiquity and praised the essence of Hitler’s ideal humanity and its physical and emotional flawlessness.

Art in the Third Reich

I think that the determination of what was considered "good art" and "bad art" was solely based on the views that Hitler had. Through the art that was considered to be good and bad we get a look into Hitler's characteristics. For example his obsession with the Roman empire was not only evident with in the art that was considered to be good art, but also because he obtained numerous pieces of of art that were representations of the Romans. He also began ordering statues to be created that resembled the big and strong statues that were seen very often within Ancient Rome. It coincides very well with Hitler's ideology of the arian race. These statues were built to represent very strong and powerful people which is what Hitler wanted the people of Germany to be like. In a lot of the paintings that he selected the people within them seemed to be very clean, which was also very important to Hitler. Stepping into the realm of what was considered bad art is very disturbing, in the sense that most people would still consider that art good art. Any art that was created by a Jew was put off as bad art. This is obviously not something that a normal person would do, but we all know that Hitler wasn't exactly normal. Hitler also seemed to not car for modern art too much or anything that was abstract. His obsession with perfection in turn limited his opinion of what good art really was. It is very unfortunate that in this time because of Hitler so many artist's did not get the respect that they deserved, and their works were destroyed all because one man was so narrow-minded.

Art had a direct correlation with Hitler's Preferences

 The art that was deemed acceptable, appropriate, and "good" was of course judged by the man who already had a horribly skewed vision on life. "Good art" directly correlated with what the Third Reich's them of life. Pure german was good and anything else... was bad. Art depicting young german men with toned bodies and chiseled features were highly praised. Women were depicted in artwork as beautiful damsels who would soon become proud mothers and wives of the strong german men. Light verses dark also played a significant role. Dark was meant to represent a dirty, uneducated, and unworthy society... in essence, the Jew. White, however, represented the brave, clean, refreshed, Christian... German. Just as Germans opposed modern technology, they also opposed modern art. They saw modern art as a form of individualism, a concept that was unacceptable to the Party. To the Third Reich, individualism represented the idea of putting yourself before your country and being selfish and terracing. Art and what is approved as 'good art' is always a product of society and society's views. The party that was in control had no desire to view modern art as 'art' because they didn't view modernism as a way of life.

Establishing Artistic Standards in the Third Reich

Art has the unique ability to conger up emotions among its audience. The Third Reich used this fact to its advantage, explaining to its followers how one should perceive various forms of artistic representation. According to the film, the officials of the Third Reich were predominantly art advocates, at least in the sense that they appreciated certain types of art. Their ability to exert their corrupt interpretations of art would eventually help them establish a societal expectation of a unified aesthetic. Good art and bad art were labeled early on in order to emphasize the importance of understanding what they understood to be stemming from artistic works.
Good art, for them, was a relatively limited term. It consisted of art that reflected works of the Roman and Greek empires. Cohen relates Hitler’s interest in and respect for these ancient societies to his liking of their artistic productions. Statues and paintings of glorious figures with white skin and “ideally” strong physiques were at the forefront of their artistic desires. These types of images helped portray to the masses what exactly they “should” be, namely, physically fit and certainly not deformed.
This idea of deformity brings us to the emphasis placed by the Third Reich on exploiting the corruption of bad art. The party rejected modern and abstract approaches to representing the human body, denouncing such artistic works as dangerous due to the fact that they display humans that do not fit the physical descriptions demanded by the Nazi Party. I found this to be both nonsensical and evil. I found it to be nonsensical for two reasons: 1) a figure in a painting may be represented abstractly in a way that does not even accurately portray its physical characteristics, thus implying that not only were the people under the Third Reich expected to appear a certain way, but their imaginations and efforts to view the world differently were limited, and 2) because the idea of a pure and beautiful unified aesthetic is something that inherently excludes more people than it includes due to diversity across the globe. I found this idea to be evil, because limiting self-expression is something that a government should never do. It is easy to retrospectively see how such manipulations lead to the creation of an atmosphere in which a single totalitarian authority has complete control. Limiting artistic expression limits personal expression, which forces people to choose sides either in support of or against a powerful military regime.

How are good and bad art distinguished from one another in the Third Reich?

The Third Reichs's distinctions between good and bad art are parallel to the distinctions between good and bad in Germany. It seems these distinctions in art, at least at first, were more a reflection of Hitler's personal tastes and beliefs than a strategically planned form of propaganda. Hitler had a true passion for art and his viewpoints came out in his selections of favorite and hated pieces. This however did turn out to be a wonderful way for his ideas to be spread and to, in a way, brainwash the people into sharing his ideals through the use of aesthetics. 

The Third Reich's dreams for Germany stressed beauty and purity. The portraits Hitler viewed as good depicted bodies that were in prime physical form, beautiful, strong, and healthy. He chose images that showed the bodies he wanted his strong men to have, and the soft female figures that seemed prime for motherhood. This goes along perfectly with his efforts to keep his men fit and clean and have women prepared to be wives and mothers.

The Third Reich wanted a Germany that recalled old values and resisted technology and modernism, as well as one that was rid of anything unknown and different. He likewise labeled modern and abstract art as "bad art". Modern art images were correlated with disfigured or mentally ill people, who the Third Reich made an effort to eliminate. 

The Third Reich's opinions on artworks were easily demonstrated through what was presented in museums and shown to the public and what was eliminated or put in the show of degenerate art. The Third Reich was based highly on aesthetics, and this basis didn't extend only to the monumental architecture and imagery used, but also to the artwork that was acceptable and viewable. 

Hitler's desire for Purity and Antiquity

Hitler takes art during the Third Reich's regime as yet another way to demonstrate his internal desire to create a German nation based on "old world" values. The values that Hitler stood behind, however, were manipulated by his desire to wipe out any racial and social impurities that threatened his ideal Germany. By choosing art as a means of depicting what was acceptable and inappropriate for the German nation, Hitler was able to influence the masses and reach across classes. In order for Germany to be united under Hitler's agenda, Hitler needed to define what exactly they were to fight against, and by using art the country now had a "face" to put with Hitler's "enemy.

Hitler defined "bad art" in some very simple terms. The art had to embody a modern and innovative ideal, mainly through the abstract images in the paintings. When faces of mentally unstable individuals were placed next to these painting in the degenerate art exhibit, the masses were bombarded with images of what they should be fearful of and fight against in order to preserve a pure Germany.

For Hitler's "good art", antiquity, purity, health and strength resonated throughout the exhibitions. The paintings illustrated through concrete images this cookie cutter ideal - similar to what was witnessed in Riefenstahl's pans of the masses of soldiers - clean streets, clean and racially similar families, all coming together as one in this purified nation. There was to be nothing out of place, nothing that offended or threatened Germany.

The statues of naked men illustrated the emphasis Hitler placed on natural strength, agility, and health. There as no room for mistakes inside Hitler's regime and by reinforcing the standard of good health and hygiene the masses knew the exact expectations they needed to meet. Overall though it is their innately pure race and healthy mind which would keep them from being placed alongside the degenerate art pieces, allowing them to follow Hitler on his path to a traditionally sound and pure Germany.

Art and the Human Body

How are good and bad art distinguished from one another in the Third Reich? Stemming from the film's claim that all of the Nazi heirarchy are artists, it seems that good and bad art are judged on the criteria of Hitler's view of racial superiority. Everything from paintings and sculptures to the actual human body are fair game for the Nazi regime's critique. This obession with "good" art, i.e. Aryan specimens and symbols, and "bad" art, i.e. diversity, consumes the cultural revolution created by the Reich. The film does a wonderful job of explaining the beginning of the Nazi state's involvement with the average citizen's body through the segment on German physicians. By gaining the loyalty and support of the medical class, the Nazi's are able to control the public view of health and the human body. Since doctors are generally trusted (or at least in the beginning of the Reich they were), then when they spout off the party ideology concerning Aryan medical supremacy, they sway the national view on health. This new view of Aryan = health and Diversity = unhealthy directly translates to the Nazi belief of the body serving as art for the state. All of the propoganda films we have seen thus far corroborate this claim; many of the men and women in the films are strong, Aryans who serve as art. This takes us back to last week's discussion on mass ornament, in that these "perfect" Aryan specimens depicted all together provide the Third Reich with overwelming artistic shots and pictures in their proganda films.

Art in Hitler’s Reich
Hitler’s heart belonged to antiquity. In his eyes the world was beautiful back in that time, but race-mixing and degeneration had polluted it. For example Sparta was the racially purest state in history. They did not only not mix up with other peoples but also discarded weak and deformed babies right after their birth; a policy Hitler also pursued, to clean his people of the disabled and mentally challenged and of the racial impureness. He wanted to form a people shaped after the antique ideal.
Thinking about good and bad art in this context, good is the beautiful, the perfect and the pure whereas bad art is everything that somehow degenerates these ideals. Regarding his art exhibitions this ideals become obvious. Statues of the perfect body were common, an ideal that was also very present in paintings together with beautifulness and cleanliness.
What he considered to be bad art was exposed at the exhibition of degenerate art. This exhibition already anticipated his plans for the Jews and the handicapped. It was full of Jewish art and paintings of degenerate bodies which were to be destroyed at the end of the gallery, a fate that should also later meet the “participants” of the exhibition themselves.

Art in The Third Reich

How are good and bad art distinguished from one another in the Third Reich?

What makes a discussion about good art and bad art in the Third Reich so difficult is that the aesthetic value that was given to the art work was based on an ideology of purity that was, inherently, aesthetic. Each day, every one of us will make countless aesthetic judgments and decide what is good art and bad art. Historically, this has taken place in a number of different periods throughout Western history. Consider how what has constituted good art and bad art has changed and been debated from periods such as the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, Realist, Modern, and Contemporary. Yet, what distinguished good art from bad art in these periods was based on stylistic differences. In the Third Reich, good art and bad art was evaluated by considering not the brush strokes, perspective, different shapes and forms that were used and how they were used, but rather on the inherent ideal of purity that was inherent in the artwork. So when one considers the good art in the Third Reich, one notices that all of the art upholds the ideology of purity of the German people by the nature of it looking aesthetically pure. This might be presented with countless artistic styles, but the style that mattered was the one that presented and upheld this ideology. In turn, bad art was art that detracted from this purity. This was no more apparent then in the fact that any art that was created by Jews, communists, or enemies of the state of Germany was considered to be bad on the basis of the artists lack of purity. Bad art was also evaluated by the lack of an artistic style that upheld the purity of form the Nazis were pushing. Although this was not presented in the film, one can surely assume that the Nazis would have disliked Surrealist art for its lack of upholding this aesthetic of purity.

As stated at the beginning, discussing this topic is difficult because the Nazis had a particular way of evaluating the artwork. Yet, what is difficult to reconcile, and what one must ask, is were the Nazis allowed to evaluate art the way they wanted too? This is certainly not a question that can be answered in this short consideration, but it is one that must be on the table regardless. If I can decide what I find aesthetically pleasing, are Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and all the rest not allowed to do the same? I will not answer this question for the sake of allowing one to consider it and struggle with it on their own.

Porträt

One of the most prominent impressions that I felt from the final (now infamous in class) "cellar of the war leaders" scene is the remarkable ordinariness of the portraits, particularly in comparison to the men themselves in the paintings, whose leadership throughout the events of their time period had such dynamic and immeasurable impact on the Nazi era. From officers that hardly any of us recognize to Adolf Hitler himself, each action of each man changed something in the constant, rolling action of the chain of events. There was so much packed into the personal history of every figure, yet here they now lean passively, in a form and place most strangely harmless for how much harm they inflicted in their time.

When I see the mute spotlight pass across each stolid face that I recognize, I experience a brief sensation of a life metaphorically flashing before my eyes. It's not my own life, but the life of the person staring back from the picture. And it's not a life from his own birth to death, but a life from the start of his history and span in the Nazi regime to the close of it. In my mind I see glimpses of wherever that one figure is in the repeatedly used film footage and photographs that are strung into countless World War II documentaries. The background story of each portrait suddenly stretches out for miles behind the flat canvas in a moving, twisting collective of actions and events, and when the light moves on, everything slips back into the silent, motionless painting once again.

Art as Symbolic Propaganda

In my opinion, the classification of some types of art as degenerate and others as beautiful is an example of a subliminal yet powerful form of propaganda. Operating under the assumption that Hitler’s goal was the unification of his Volk to further his end, one must understand that such unification is best achieve when the Volk has something to unify against. This mass hatred of a particular group (in this case Jews and mental patients) occurs most easily when there exist clear delineations between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong. These delineations become much clearer when physical examples can be presented to the population. Grouping all works of modern or abstract art together and labeling them “bad” and grouping all works of classical and folkloric art and labeling them “good” creates that delineation. This, coupled with the strong (although forced) relationship created between “bad art” and inferior races, created the ideological propaganda that pervaded the German Volk through art.

Art in the Nazi Regime

The exhibit of degenerate art put on display for the Aryan nation provides one with an interesting question to ponder. If Hitler was so intent on excluding “degenerate” art from German culture and focusing entirely on the classical and folkloristic art Hitler declared suitable for the nation to observe, why, then, focus an entire exhibit on the art declared unfit for human eyes? In my opinion it is because Hitler recognized that most working class Germans would be unaware of the differences between what he declared “degenerate art” and art worthy of being a part of the German nation.

It is clear that any form of modern or abstract art is unfit in Hitler’s eyes. The massive sculptures shown in Cohen’s film are perfect examples of Hitler’s ideal art forms: perfect representations of the ideals of the Aryan nation. In the case of the sculptures, the perfect, chiseled bodies that tower over all who walk by are symbols of what every German should strive to be. The extremely realistic paintings of German homes, factories, and landscapes are put forth for the public to see what they could have under the Nazi regime. The degenerate art is the exact opposite of the realistic art Hitler finds most aesthetically pleasing. Aside from being created being Jewish artists, the degenerate art is abstract. Faces are distorted and dark, landscapes are fuzzy, and most paintings cannot be classified as “beautiful”. Hitler uses the degenerate art exhibit to specify what he deems unfit to be a part of German society, and it clear from the images in Cohen’ film that after seeing examples of degenerate art one would be able to differentiate between good art and degenerate art.

Cohen’s film is political in the sense that he makes some sweeping generalizations about the basis of Hitler’s entire empire. He focuses solely on the art and architecture that so enthralled Hitler, rather than on his anti-Semitism. While it is an interesting point of view to take when looking at the Nazi regime, it is certainly a large political statement to focus solely on the art Hitler so appreciated and not the other factors that influenced his planning. 

September 8-10: Cohen

*Please remember: you do not have to limit yourself to one of the questions, but can use your blog entry to explore an idea you noticed during the screening that did not get discussed in class.

For Film: How are good and bad art distinguished from one another in the Third Reich? Is Cohen's film a form of political art?