Page 32 - Studio International - April 1970

10
The liberal connotation of expressionist art: Kate
Kollwitz's poster in protest at the repealing of the
abortion laws, 1924.
11& 12
'Prehistoric stone-age culture bearers' and 'primitive
scratchings': Emil Nolde's Negro Statuette and Poppies 1920
and E. L. Kirchner's Striding into the sea 1912.
13
Anti-authoritarian modernism: George Grosz's
Policeman c. 1924.
14 & 15
Nazi symbols from Leni Riefenstahl's film of the 1934
Nuremburg Party Convention, Triumph of the Will.
16
Paul Ludwig Troost's House of German Art at Munich,
1933 ff.
17
Albert Speer's complex at Nuremburg (from Triumph of
the Will).
18
Nazi 'modern' industrial architecture: a rolling-mill by
Hans Väth.
19
`Medieval' Nazi architecture : Building for the
Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsoge.
20
Auch Du: An S.S. poster in the 'heroic' naturalistic
style.

rists and artistic activists concerned with the informs the cosmological mysticism of early artists were taken. Many of these were sold
social function of art to support the fraud- abstractionist theory. He speaks of 'the eternal in auction at Lucerne in the June of 1939 and
ulent interpretation of all modernism as bol- one in things, the essential, the law' and the national German art bought or bartered in
shevik, a conclusion Hitler had himself search for 'the mysticism of the triangle, the return.13 To prevent any new 'degeneracy'
reached in Mein Kampf. This was the principal basic symbol of the circle, the quietude of the developing, the persecution of modern artists
emphasis, but reference was also made to the rectangle'. This is one way in which modern- developed. Those unwilling to enroll as mem-
racially inferior nature of modernism and its ism and primitivism were linked and helps bers of the Reichskulturkammer, or refused
relationship to the art of the primitive and explain the Nazi's antipathy to both. And its membership, were, officially, not artists,
insane, thus following the tradition of such yet, the Nazi era was heralded by an involve- and thus prevented from exhibiting (Austel-
books as Schulze-Naumburg's Kunst und Rasse ment with 'community' ideals and an attack lungsverbot) or even forbidden to work
where expressionist painting and sculpture on the corruption of 'society'. This contrast of (Malverbot). But one looks in vain for any
was compared to examples of physical de- Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft was often made in consistent ideology on which Nazi artistic
formity and disease and Grautoff's Die neue the inter-war period, and owes its origin to theory is based. Most often it was an oppor-
Kunst which attacked modernism on a Ferdinand Tonnies's book of that name, the tunist use of prevalent conservatism plus a
primitivistic basis. Likewise, much of Hitler's theme being popularized at the beginning of muddled application of racial and political
speech at the opening of the official exhibition the 20s by Oswald Spengler, who similarly prejudice. For example, the italic letter was at
was concerned with a condemnation of the contrasted creative culture to mechanistic one time banned on racial grounds and the
primitive qualities of 'those prehistoric stone- civilization and, like 'Pinnies, distinguished Gothic type elevated as truly German. But
age culture bearers and art stutterers' and between an organic societal organization with the confusion this created in foreign propa-
their 'primitive international scratchings'. mythological consciousness and the essential ganda caused the Roman to be made the
The interpretation of primitive art itself as of rationality of `society'.12 This polarity holds official type and the Gothic condemned as a
artistic validity was popularized by anthro- the key to a wide range of artistic problems in Jewish invention. However, if anything typi-
pological and art-historical writers in the the inter-war period. It usefully clarifies the fied the degenerate art operations, it was the
20s.11 That this interpretation was widely Weimar confrontation of natural and mecha- extreme sensitivity of the Nazis to that which
accepted only after expressionist art had nical man and informs some of the issues in any way reflected the revolutionary
appeared is no coincidence. Indeed, Herbert which have been discussed in the Goebbels/ character of Weimar consciousness, and
Kuehn's Die Kunst der Primitiven of 1923 use- Rosenberg dispute. It is also directly pertinent especially the art which associated its con-
fully distinguished the 'sensory' (naturalistic) to the ideology and development of Nazi art ception. It was perhaps predictable that,
and 'imaginative' (abstract) forms of primitive and architecture in the attempts to create a when looking for artistic scapegoats, the
art by correlating the art and its economic total image for the totalitarian state. Nazis should turn to a period akin to their
structure, associating the sensory with para- But before this could be made, the unwelcome own, one concerned more with emotion than
sitic societies and the imaginative with sym- past needed deletion, or its reality transformed with intellect, one which placed a great stress
biotic ones. Thus the analysis of the primitive for new use. The continued persecution of on the social connection of art. Nazism itself
served to deprecate naturalism and capitalism `degenerate' art and artists successfully ful- developed from such roots; but its art was not
together, while supporting the ethos of filled the first of these conditions. After the expressionist because the 20s had already
Expressionism and of the spiritual com- 1937 Munich exhibition closed, the confisca- rationalized the expressionist dream, had, in
munity or Gemeinschaft as a search for essentials tions carried on and their range was enlarged their total practicality, taught the possibility
allied to mystification at the beginning of a to encompass late nineteenth-century modern- of a materialistic mythology, one embodied in
new period of imaginative forms. And ism. In all, some sixteen and a half thousand the rational. Nazi ideology thus encompassed
Kuehn's language both derives from and works of art produced by 1400 different the practical and the spiritual, while con-