Degenerate Art

Degenerate Art-1993, The Nazis vs. Expressionism
Name
Institution
Date
Degenerate Art-1993, The Nazis vs. Expressionism
This documentary is written, produced and directed by David Grubin, it was in the Nazi regime and was about the art exhibition. Entartete Kunst is a term in German meaning Degenerate Art which was borrowed from the Nazi regime to describe modern art.This regime was highly considered a corrupt and extremely immoral and they termed it as Degenerate Art. In 1937 July, the exhibit was opened for everyone to see and make fun of and despise of it. This kind of art was banned in Germany because it was considered as perversion, Jewish or un-German. The artists that were considered degenerates were also banned from taking up teaching and could not sell or display their art.
The Nazi did not entirely forbid art but only banned what they termed as modern art. They only promoted traditional sculptures and paintings. This kind of art was not received well by many because by then Germans were grounded in their traditions. They thought that the work of those artists lacked morals and many did not understand or come to terms with it. In this documentary we see artists like Kokoschka who was one of the modern artists, whose work was not well received. He painted himself predicting a wound that he would suffer which he actually did.
While all this was going on Germany, Hitler had not come into power. By then he was merely doing sentimental paintings to get by. He was one of the few artists who were painting the more traditional paintings before he joined the army. Right before Hitler came into power Berlin became the capital art world and Max Beckmann was the most successful artist at that time. German becoming the capital art did not really help their economy because they suffered a huge depression. People lost their jobs, food was expensive and Hitler took advantage of this and made it seem like it was modern art’s fault. This is where elections were held and the Nazi emerged as the largest political party.
Less than 5months in power, Nazi banned some books of the most famous writers like Albert Einstein. There was also formation of Degenerate Art museum where Hitler ordered that all the modern paintings were stored. He banned all this paintings from being show cased in other exhibits. The Nazi were directed to get rid of all the modern art from all the exhibits and place them in the Degenerate Art museum that he had created. Emil Nolde was one of the painters that remained faithful to the Nazi and attacked the modern artists by throwing all sorts of insults on them.( http://youtu.be/1QE4Ld1mkoM)
On watching this video i was shocked beyond words on how on the kind of dictatorship Hitler portrays. There was so much unfairness shown in his leadership by disallowing freedom of expression. I am also shocked by the fact that despite banning the modern art, he later did the same thing by opening The House of German Arts. The kind of art that was displayed in that museum was mainly nude art. This was art that he only liked and that had no morals according to their culture. He treated the artists unfairly and labeled them all kinds of names like insane, Jews just to mention but a few.Being Jewish was related to be of an inferior race. He forbid classical music from being played and artists like Emil Nolde from purchasing any painting materials, this made many artists leave Germany while some ended up committing suicide. An auction was held in Switzerland in June 1939 to sell the Degenerate Art and I find this selfish because the profits went into their Nazi party coffers and Germany suffered a huge loss.

Work Cited
Degenerate Art - 1993, The Nazis vs. Expressionism." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.