The Degeneration of Art

[Frau Holle]

Careful with your phrasing, the Nazi Party came up with the term Degenerate Art to describe modern art, particularly abstract expressionism. It was seen as "unGerman" and perverted by Jewish influences, whether or not the artist was Jewish.

DADA is not exactly Jewish art. It was heavily disliked by Hitler, but not because Jewish people made the art. Lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds made the art.

Hitler didn’t name them Degenerate artists, they named themselves that.

[WellPreserved]

Careful with your phrasing, the Nazi Party came up with the term Degenerate Art to describe modern art, particularly abstract expressionism. It was seen as "unGerman" and perverted by Jewish influences, whether or not the artist was Jewish.

DADA is not exactly Jewish art. It was heavily disliked by Hitler, but not because Jewish people made the art. Lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds made the art.

Hitler didn’t name them Degenerate artists, they named themselves that.

Nope.

[Olioxenfree]

Careful with your phrasing, the Nazi Party came up with the term Degenerate Art to describe modern art, particularly abstract expressionism. It was seen as "unGerman" and perverted by Jewish influences, whether or not the artist was Jewish.

DADA is not exactly Jewish art. It was heavily disliked by Hitler, but not because Jewish people made the art. Lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds made the art.

Hitler didn’t name them Degenerate artists, they named themselves that.

I acknowledged in my first reply that not all of the artists were Jewish. But, it was still labeled Jewish art because Hitler claimed the art style was influenced by the Jews and Bolshevics and that made it UnGerman and degenerate. Only six of the 112 artists featured in the Degereate Art Exhibit created by the Nazis were Jewish, but it was all labeled Jewish art and labelled a conspiracy by the Jews to harm the German people.

[Deleted User 1760]

Art is an expression for the artist be it a painting, music, photography, etc.
I see criticism of art the same way I do a TV show that may draw a lot of negative critiques...don't like the program, change the channel.

[Frau Holle]

Careful with your phrasing, the Nazi Party came up with the term Degenerate Art to describe modern art, particularly abstract expressionism. It was seen as "unGerman" and perverted by Jewish influences, whether or not the artist was Jewish.

DADA is not exactly Jewish art. It was heavily disliked by Hitler, but not because Jewish people made the art. Lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds made the art.

Hitler didn’t name them Degenerate artists, they named themselves that.

I acknowledged in my first reply that not all of the artists were Jewish. But, it was still labeled Jewish art because Hitler claimed the art style was influenced by the Jews and Bolshevics and that made it UnGerman and degenerate. Only six of the 112 artists featured in the Degereate Art Exhibit created by the Nazis were Jewish, but it was all labeled Jewish art and labelled a conspiracy by the Jews to harm the German people.

Not exactly, the art was not disliked because of Judaism. It was thought to be both a retelling of history shown from the usually Christian perspective and aided in the degeneration of German art, music and culture. Not because of Judaic reasons, but because Hitler was trying to form a German identity that harkened back to the Nordic ways and that included art and music.

BBC.com didn’t exactly get it right, as their interpretation of history stems from a British view.

[Olioxenfree]

DADA is not exactly Jewish art. It was heavily disliked by Hitler, but not because Jewish people made the art. Lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds made the art.

Hitler didn’t name them Degenerate artists, they named themselves that.

I acknowledged in my first reply that not all of the artists were Jewish. But, it was still labeled Jewish art because Hitler claimed the art style was influenced by the Jews and Bolshevics and that made it UnGerman and degenerate. Only six of the 112 artists featured in the Degereate Art Exhibit created by the Nazis were Jewish, but it was all labeled Jewish art and labelled a conspiracy by the Jews to harm the German people.

Not exactly, the art was not disliked because of Judaism. It was thought to be both a retelling of history shown from the usually Christian perspective and aided in the degeneration of German art, music and culture. Not because of Judaic reasons, but because Hitler was trying to form a German identity that harkened back to the Nordic ways and that included art and music.

BBC.com didn’t exactly get it right, as their interpretation of history stems from a British view.

I didn't get my information from BBC,I got it from my grandfather,who is not British and has a masters in art history. It sounds dangerously close like you're saying the Nazi persecution of artists had nothing to do with the government's attempts to build animosity against the Jewish people.

[WellPreserved]

Careful with your phrasing, the Nazi Party came up with the term Degenerate Art to describe modern art, particularly abstract expressionism. It was seen as "unGerman" and perverted by Jewish influences, whether or not the artist was Jewish.

DADA is not exactly Jewish art. It was heavily disliked by Hitler, but not because Jewish people made the art. Lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds made the art.

Hitler didn’t name them Degenerate artists, they named themselves that.

Nope.

Sorry for the short reply earlier but I wanted to hold the spot until I had more time.

Dadaism was an art movement that was born just prior to and immediately following WWI - mainly in Switzerland, Paris, and New York. Dadaists described their works as irrational, sometimes absurd, satirical, nonsense, but never "degenerate". And while I don't doubt that Hitler didn't like dadaism, the movement was for all intents and purposes over by the 1920s.

Hitler used the term "degenerate artwork" not only in his campaign to remove modernist art from all German museum collections (over 20,000 works were confiscated) but also as the name of his exhibition of "Degenerate Art" in the late 1930s. While the artists that were targeted were not all Jewish, Hitler certainly linked the "degenerate art" with the Jewish population as a whole - labeling the artwork at exhibit as "Jewish-Bolshevik", having a specific "Jewish artist" room, and even putting the price that the museums had paid for the works on each piece. The following are some of the slogans painted on the walls of the exhibit:

Insolent mockery of the Divine under Centrist rule
Revelation of the Jewish racial soul
An insult to German womanhood
The ideal—cretin and whore
Deliberate sabotage of national defence
German farmers—a Yiddish view
The Jewish longing for the wilderness reveals itself—in Germany the Negro becomes the racial ideal of a degenerate art
Madness becomes method
Nature as seen by sick minds

Also, if you look at the Degenerate Art Exhibit in historical context, Kristallnacht was exactly one year later. While the authors of the books burned were not predominantly Jewish, the Jewish population was seen as perpetuating the ideas of these books and were certainly the target of book ban and burning.

Populism, cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, fear of difference are all key components of fascism and Hitler was a good fascist.

I get the cringe-worthiness of the title as "degenerative art" does have it's roots in Nazism. But also, is the meme really calling the style of art degenerative or the subject matter? Labelling a class of people degenerate, even subtilely, is abhorrent.

[Frau Holle]

I acknowledged in my first reply that not all of the artists were Jewish. But, it was still labeled Jewish art because Hitler claimed the art style was influenced by the Jews and Bolshevics and that made it UnGerman and degenerate. Only six of the 112 artists featured in the Degereate Art Exhibit created by the Nazis were Jewish, but it was all labeled Jewish art and labelled a conspiracy by the Jews to harm the German people.

Not exactly, the art was not disliked because of Judaism. It was thought to be both a retelling of history shown from the usually Christian perspective and aided in the degeneration of German art, music and culture. Not because of Judaic reasons, but because Hitler was trying to form a German identity that harkened back to the Nordic ways and that included art and music.

BBC.com didn’t exactly get it right, as their interpretation of history stems from a British view.

I didn't get my information from BBC,I got it from my grandfather,who is not British and has a masters in art history. It sounds dangerously close like you're saying the Nazi persecution of artists had nothing to do with the government's attempts to build animosity against the Jewish people.

Ok. That’s strange because it’s almost word for word and in the same order as the BBC article on it.

I didn’t say that at all, however if you want a true understanding of Nazis and how Germany came to support them, you need to grasp the entirety of the situation which was not solely focused on Judiasm, but also had deep political, financial and cultural roots.

When it comes to DADA, there was a very specific goal, but to condense it down to simply anti-Judaism would be ignoring most of the other aspects of that specific situation within the art world.

[WellPreserved]

Not exactly, the art was not disliked because of Judaism. It was thought to be both a retelling of history shown from the usually Christian perspective and aided in the degeneration of German art, music and culture. Not because of Judaic reasons, but because Hitler was trying to form a German identity that harkened back to the Nordic ways and that included art and music.

BBC.com didn’t exactly get it right, as their interpretation of history stems from a British view.

I didn't get my information from BBC,I got it from my grandfather,who is not British and has a masters in art history. It sounds dangerously close like you're saying the Nazi persecution of artists had nothing to do with the government's attempts to build animosity against the Jewish people.

Ok. That’s strange because it’s almost word for word and in the same order as the BBC article on it.

I didn’t say that at all, however if you want a true understanding of Nazis and how Germany came to support them, you need to grasp the entirety of the situation which was not solely focused on Judiasm, but also had deep political, financial and cultural roots.

When it comes to DADA, there was a very specific goal, but to condense it down to simply anti-Judaism would be ignoring most of the other aspects of that specific situation within the art world.

What is your definition of DADA? I assumed you meant dadaism but that wouldn't make sense in this context.

[SallyMae]

Steve Hanks c. 1990s