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.

Theory of Degeneracy

The theory of degeneracy was conceived by the critic and author Max Nordau in his 1892 book, Degeneration, (German title: Entartung). According to Nordau, artists were victims of modern life and suffered from decayed brain centers. Nordau's inspiration was the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, author of The Criminal Man published in 1876. Lombroso attempted to prove that there were born criminals, which could be detected by scientific methods to determine atavistic personality traits by measuring abnormal physical characteristics. Nordau then used this as a pseudoscientific rationale and a critique of modern art. Based upon Lombroso's theory, Nordau asserted that modern artists also suffered from an atavistic degeneracy as Lombroso's born criminals. For Nordau, all forms of modern art, whether music, poetry, or visual contained symptoms of mental disorder and corruption. Modern artists suffered from both fatigue and nervous excitement. Therefore, all modern arts lacked discipline, and failed to make coherent connections. Nordau particularly focused his attacks on the Symbolist movement in French literature, Aestheticism in English literature, and Impressionism in painting, claiming that the mysticism of the Symbolists was a product of mental pathology, and that Impressionist painterliness was the sign of a diseased visual cortex.

Related Topics:
Theory - Critic - Author - Max Nordau - 1892 - Victims - Life - Brain - Criminologist - Cesare Lombroso - 1876 - Scientific - Atavistic - Pseudoscientific - Atavistic - Modern art - Music - Poetry - Visual - Symbolist movement - French literature - Aestheticism - English literature - Impressionism - Painting - Mysticism - Painterliness

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Nordau's pseudoscientific theory of degeneration was seized upon by German National Socialists during the Weimar Republic as a rallying point for racial purity in art. Racially "pure" artists produced racially "pure" art, and modern artists of an "inferior racial strain" produced works which were contorted. Nordau's theory, then, was used to defend the National Socialist doctrine of the decline of culture due to the decadent influence of modernity. Romantic realism was an accurate representation of racially pure art, while modern art was a deviant from socially accepted norms of classical beauty.

Related Topics:
Pseudoscientific - Weimar Republic - Culture - Decadent - Romantic realism - Classical - Beauty

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Alfred Rosenberg was the first to use Nordau's theory in Myth of the Twentieth Century published in the 1920s, which became a best-seller in Germany. Another influential art critic, Paul Schulze-Naumberg wrote three books: Art and Race, The Fate of the German House, and The German Art. Schulze-Naumberg argued that modern artists unwittingly produced their own racial stereotypes in their artwork. To prove this, he utilized both Nordau's and that Lombroso's methodology by comparing examples of distortions of the human figure in modern art next to photographs with people with deformities and diseases. Schultze-Naumberg then compared healthy people with examples of the new,Heroic Art to prove that modern art was an indication of racial impurity.

Related Topics:
Alfred Rosenberg - 1920s

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