Page 29 - Studio International - April 1970

Total and

totalitarian

art

John Elderfield

The relationship of total and totalitarian art
is akin to that of Socialism and National
Socialism. If so, then National Socialist art
owes a certain debt to its Weimar heritage.
While never forgetting the record of Nazi
conservatism, and the harshness of its leaders'
suppression of advanced currents, it is never-
theless worth considering the character of this
debt—just how 20's preoccupations with a
total art activity relate to, and fared under,
the totalitarianism of the 30s. The social ideal
of the Weimar period began as utopianist
mystification and gradually embodied itself
in the concrete practicality (Sachlichkeit) of
the new art and architecture of the 20s
which served as a symbol of a metropolitan
civilization. This new 'society' (Gesellschaft)
was condemned by the Nazis for its corrup-
tion; and yet established values are not so
easily discarded. In one sense the rationalized
mystification of 'the new vision', with its
attendant societal contradictions (the re-
formist dissenter, the institutionalized avant
garde, and so on), did set the pattern for an
art-state entente. However, the inheritance of
certain theoretical ideals from 20's modernism
does not itself imply, of course, a common had originally informed the socialist con- evidenced a certain admiration for the
stylistic approach (though there are some nection of 20's art. The influence of the Bol- technological alliance of the new architecture
important affinities), and my suggestion of shevik and German revolutions is widely despite condemnations of the 'bolshevik'
ideological connection between total and recognized as significant for Nazi propaganda Bauhaus and of associated non-figurative art.
totalitarian art is not intended to support any technique. Art, as a branch of propaganda, But during the 20s the Nazis hadn't really
claim that what happened in the 30s was in was as susceptible to this influence as any- concerned themselves with formulating an
any way predetermined. Nevertheless, re- thing else, and the earlier mystification, the artistic policy as such.1 From around the time
formism and institutionalism as artistic goals spiritual-social ethos of the 'new start' modern of the depression, however, art began to find
may come to mean either total democratic movement, was revived, but to support a very its way into policy statements as part of the
good or totalitarianism. different spirit and society. increase in tempo of Nazi propaganda and as
`The age of extreme intellectualism has now In the summer of 1933, a power struggle took an attempt to broaden its appeal. Such jour-
ended, and the success of the German revo- place between Goebbels and Alfred Rosen- nals as the Völkischer Beobachter began to dis-
lution has again given the right of way to the berg over the control of Nazi artistic policy. cuss the implications of contemporary art, and
German spirit . . . The past is lying in flames This quarrel was in an important sense about
. . . The future will rise from the flames within the place of modern art in a totalitarian state. I & 2
Emblems of the Weimar Republic and of the Third
our own hearts.' This could well have been It is easy to assume that Nazism was in- Reich.
written by a Berlin expressionist of 1919 but is evitably set against any form of modern art; 3
The burning of books by 'undesirable and pernicious
in fact by Joseph Goebbels on the occasion of and yet, despite Hitler's personal antipathy
authors', including Freud, Marx and Mann, Berlin,
the Nazi book-burning of May 1933. From towards 'the Cubist grimace', it little attacked May 1933.
around 1930, many Nazi writers on artistic advanced currents in its official pronounce-
affairs reveal attitudes close to those which ments of the 20s. Indeed, its 'socialist' strain
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