Degenerate art

Degenerate art (from the German: entartete Kunst) was the official platform adopted by the Nazi regime for banning modern art in favor of Heroic Art. Based on Romantic realism, Heroic Art was meant to exemplify the German race in order to project a moral statement in a simpler, and more conventional style. Heroic Art symbolized racially pure art, free from distortion and corruption, while modern styles deviated from the prescribed norm of classical beauty. Racially pure artists produced racially pure art, and modern artists of an inferior racial strain produced works which were contorted. Ironically, the theory originated with the Jewish intellectual, Max Nordau. In the Nazi adaptation it was used to defend claims of a cultural decline and racist theory.

References

• Adam, Peter. Art of the Third Reich (1992). New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0810919125
• Barron, Stephanie, ed. Degenerate Art:' The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (1991). New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0810936534
• Grosshans, Henry. Hitler and the Artists (1993). New York: Holmes & Meyer. ISBN 0810936534
• Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut. Art Under a Dictatorship (1973). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Nordau, Max. Degeneration, introduction by George L. Mosse (1998). New York: Howard Fertig. ISBN 0803283679
• Rose, Carol Washton Long. (1995) Documents from the End of the Wilhemine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism. San Francisco: University of California Press. ISBN 0520202643
• Suslav, Vitaly. The State Hermitage: Masterpieces from the Museum's Collections vol. 2 Western European Art (1994). New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 1873968035