Is there any good Nazi art?

Discussions on the propaganda, architecture and culture in the Third Reich.
Sid Guttridge
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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#31

Post by Sid Guttridge » 14 Aug 2021, 08:00

Hi TMP,

If kitsch, bombast and absurdity are you thing then such art is presumably "good". Even if one can't see that in the art, one might still like it and consider it good for other reasons. One man's meat is another man's poison.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#32

Post by Cult Icon » 14 Aug 2021, 14:12

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
14 Aug 2021, 05:40
It was also perceived as being progressive and internationalist/universalist in way that threatened a reactionary ethos of blood and soil. That perception was not always accurate on specific art/artists but broadly was true.

Though it seems a skilled painting on technique grounds it's kitsch, bombastic, absurd.
Yes, for similar reasons, modern/post-modern art is currently being attacked as being "degenerate" for its political and character orientation. An analysis I heard called it "art for the sake of artists" (and thus not for everyone else who doesn't have an arts education and are interested in metaphysics, spiritual matters, the psychological areana, and have progressive values). I suspect part of it also offensive to the ideal of Nazi character and interests of not being obsessed with the internal world of one's mind but rather out-ward focused on acting like a "good Nazi", the active man who doesn't think too much but acts.

An aspect of good art is how mysterious it is. Like a good film/movie script or story isn't clear-cut, and has unknown elements that encourages the mind to roam. Without this aspect of mystery and its mind-expanding effect the artwork is quickly boring and shallow.

A lot of the same criticisms of kitsch can be leveled at a lot of the lame agrarian, religious and pro-military art in the US right now. Very cheesy and it makes me wonder what kind of person would pay for this..

I don't think I've ever seen a brilliantly skillful Nazi painting before (if others can post of an example it would be interesting). At best they are decent in skill. However in the area of architecture and sculpture (and the film Triumph of the Will)) it appears that the Nazis rearched a higher technical level and the propaganda power in these areas were stronger. But at the same time I find the messages of "greatness" being transmitted as being inherently fraudelent and a form of self-serving, Nazi ego-expansion.


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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#33

Post by Cantankerous » 14 Aug 2021, 21:39

Cult Icon wrote:
12 Aug 2021, 14:51
Cantankerous wrote:
11 Aug 2021, 22:09
The depiction of Hitler as a knight in shining armor was extracted from the Nazi version of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, which used the Wicked Witch to represent democracy and equated Sleeping Beauty with Germany and the prince (who rescues Sleeping Beauty and breaks the spell) with Hitler in order to justify Richard Walter Darre's narrative of democracy as a Jewish invention.
source for this?
I watched the Disney film Education for Death and the plot of the Nazi version of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale is discussed by the narrator of this film at 1:57 to 2:40.

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TheMarcksPlan
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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#34

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 15 Aug 2021, 07:14

Cult Icon wrote:Yes, for similar reasons, modern/post-modern art is currently being attacked as being "degenerate" for its political and character orientation. An analysis I heard called it "art for the sake of artists" (and thus not for everyone else who doesn't have an arts education and are interested in metaphysics, spiritual matters, the psychological areana, and have progressive values). I suspect part of it also offensive to the ideal of Nazi character and interests of not being obsessed with the internal world of one's mind but rather out-ward focused on acting like a "good Nazi", the active man who doesn't think too much but acts.
IMO there definitely are valid critiques of the contemporary art world, ones in line with having values more progressive (or humanistic/whatever) than some of that world's practiced/implicit values. Damien Hirst, for example, strikes me as someone now completely subsumed by a marketplace ethos and by a conception of art (the thought is all that matters) whose reductionism can at least be validly challenged [I think Hirst has created some brilliant art, btw]. The dramaturge isn't the playwright; the muse isn't the poet; art is embodied thought. It's hard to accept Hirst et. al.'s conception especially when their conception aligns so neatly with amplifying their extravagant wealth.
Last edited by TheMarcksPlan on 15 Aug 2021, 07:27, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#35

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 15 Aug 2021, 07:20

Sid Guttridge wrote:One man's meat is another man's poison.
My beloved childhood dog once ate a 10lb dead catfish that washed up on the shore. De gustibus non est disputandem applies to that as well; I didn't try to argue with him over his taste in meat or poison (he was fine though we were a little worried).

Nonetheless, there is something objectively true about the kind of being/person/dog who would gorge himself on fetid carrion, versus the kind of person/being/dog who wouldn't (in normal circumstances).

Likewise, there is something that is objectively correlated with different being/person/dog tastes, including in the arts.

Nazis, for example, liked bombastic, stupid, simplistic art because they were bombastic, stupid, simplistic people.
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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#36

Post by Sid Guttridge » 15 Aug 2021, 09:27

Hi TMP,

You make it sound as though only quiet, self-effacing, intelligent, complex individuals are qualified to decide what is good art.

Sounds a bit elitist to me.

If your dog could eat a ten pound cat fish raw, he must have been pretty big and determined. I would therefore not feel inclined to dispute his taste in either piscine Pollock or Jackson Pollock.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#37

Post by Cult Icon » 15 Aug 2021, 14:20

There are some other points from "Hitler and the power of Aethestics" that effected the art environment:

-The Nazi art purge essentially either forced artists to retire or leave Germany if they could not get on with the art of the new regime. The point was raised earlier that some Nazi artists had successful careers AFTER the fall of the 3rd reich.

- Hitler's past as a failed artist always trailed him, there is the idea raised that the war was waged so he could realize his artistic and cultural ambitions. What is revealed is the extent to his passion for architecture and a large personal library devoted to this hobby. After the war, there was plans to rebuild of Berlin into "Germania", the capital of Europe but not in the Western capitalistic style but more as a governing super-power and also a leading cultural center. Hitler had a contempt for market-oriented cities that were filled with shops.

-His retirement, after victory in WW2, was to rebuild his birthtown of Linz into an arts and culture center and also build a musuem there.

-All of this, and also his personal comments (and that of Goering) give the impression of a preoccupation with legacy and immortality, the ego-expanding tendency of rich and powerful men. The artwork and the architecture was the primary tool towards guaranteeing continual "life" for themselves and Nazism, after their physical deaths.

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1792-1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#38

Post by Cult Icon » 15 Aug 2021, 15:04

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
15 Aug 2021, 07:14
IMO there definitely are valid critiques of the contemporary art world, ones in line with having values more progressive (or humanistic/whatever) than some of that world's practiced/implicit values.
Yeah, I agree with how these values are often not what interests a lot of people. I am personally not interested in these contemporary movements but I do not hate them and would not have any desire to ban them if I was art dictator.

Also, like free press, art is used to illuminate, critique, and subvert in special ways that contradict a strictly controlled Nazi art regime. It is ironic to me that the Nazis would ban entire fields of art yet have pretensions of being the world art leaders. There isn't that much room to manuever if the art is dominated by nazi themes.

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Re: Is there any good Nazi art?

#39

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 16 Aug 2021, 07:50

Sid Guttridge wrote:You make it sound as though only quiet, self-effacing, intelligent, complex individuals are qualified to decide what is good art.
That's the ideal person to get art recommendations from, in my experience. Problem with them is you have to ask, which usually means you need to be friends. Make friends with quiet, intelligent people if for no other reason.
Sid Guttridge wrote:If your dog could eat a ten pound cat fish raw, he must have been pretty big and determined. I would therefore not feel inclined to dispute his taste in either piscine Pollock or Jackson Pollock.
:lol: I missed the obvious poison/poisson pun... He was a sweetheart of a dog to the family; could be dicey otherwise. You know the saying "the dog that caught the car"? He once head-rammed a minivan driving past our yard.
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