It is hard to imagine that in the 1940’s the US Government would have sold 117 American paintings as War Supplies. Although I think the intention of heralding the good news of Democracy isn’t the biggest sin, I do however question how the government, being a patron of art, alters what is available for public consumption. Does their support of specific art influence who and what is a factor in the fair market, saturating the art market with “approved” art?
http://www.artinterrupted.org/
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Trying to pry Futurism from Fascism is not easily accomplished, but Richard Jensen gives it a try in his article Futurism and Fascism where he looks at the intimate relationship that Marinetti had with both. Although Marinetti was the heart of Futurism, Jensen explores how he was intrinsic to the rise of Fascism’s growth. He recognizes how Mussolini and Marinetti were involved in the creation of the Fascist movement, but that Marinetti’s disgust towards actions of the Fascist movement caused him to distance himself. But when Jensen begins to separate Fascism from Marinetti’s Futurist movement based on the level of violence, I believe that Jensen forgot that the 2nd theme of the Futurist programme was “championing of violence and conflict”.
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Dennis P. Doordan’s The Political Content in Italian Architecture during the Fascist Era examines how Italian architects of the 1920’s and 1930 have reacted to their limited resources and technologies and a political revolution that affected all aspects of Italian life. This combination set in place an artistic independence in architecture that gave rise to uniqueness that combined ideas of aesthetics and a vision of what Fascism looked like in this form. A cultural revolution when strong enough can apparently help dictate not only the heart of a country, but it’s appearance as well.
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Salvador Dali’s The Conquest of the Irrational displays a run-on writing style that does not appear to offer any sense of reality at first reading. Trying to understand what is meant by the illegitimate child of logical intuition can be a bit off-putting, never mind the fact that he wrote about himself in third person. But since he was willing to identify himself as extravagance, I slowly and openly begin to accept the indulgence of an experience and consent to the fact that he hates any form of simplicity.
I can entertain the idea of concrete irrationality as bringing about the irrational inner self and making it concrete in the time and space that we are familiar with through the creation of art, and then subjecting it to “an experimental method based on the power that dominates the systematic associations peculiar to paranoia” to identify irrational knowledge. Although this seems a bit heady, I would look at it like looking at the clouds within yourself to doodling on the shapes that you see onto some tangible re ality.
His view about a paranoid-critical activity gives the irrational a stage to be presented in reality. He so strongly believes in these ideas that he gives gravity towards reevaluating the functionality of art history while placing Picasso’s hypermaterialist thoughts firmly above mathematical physics. Although I think that Dali was looking to make room for the next ideologies, I think his approach was a bit too removed from reality to become the key in the keyhole of transcendence that he might have wanted.
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so classical
how fanatical
must one stand still?
expression made them ill.
soul whispers under the soil,
buried and fired,
reminiscence, as jazz music dilutes towards the background,
snap snap,
enters professor Thorax
carve away, says a command with out a face,
a uniform,
demanding the grandiose,
what is grand anyway.
A picture perfect,
perfect they say,
perfect
make it PERFECT.
Heroic only
the erect?
Still souls wonder,
aiming not to squander.
Realism,
what sort of reality were they after?
What sort of a reality had they created?
Hands to the side,
the body wants to give in and join the dance of life,
instead around this corner,
like the image on the poster,
one foot at the time
they marched ahead towards a journey, not their own.
leather boots on the feet of soldiers,
creating a tune,
static as stone.
– Nicole Matta Santos
Rockwell Kent, And Women Must Weep, 1937, Lithograph
The Schiller Collection is currently being held over at the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio. Above, is the image I chose to write about out of all the pieces in the collection.
The Schiller Collection definitely has a theme to it, especially when looking at the varying interests of the Schiller Family. When paging through the book that the Museum had available, it really cam down a to a few points; Economic, War, and Race and Ethnicity. Out of those three it really came down to social justice and modern meanings behind the works. After looking through the book, I didn’t find it strange at all that Rockwell’s works should be included.
During Rockwell Kent’s life, he traveled throughout North America and found inspiration for his work after experiencing the landscape around the area. In the 1950s, he was blacklisted for being to leftist in his activism during the Red Scare. He ended up donating a majority of his work (More than 800 pieces) to the Soviet Union in the 1960s and has left many in the United States after his death.
This is a great example of his work just due to the fact that it’s a little different in how this isn’t a usual landscape piece and the emotions are clearly conveyed in this one. It’s obviously about grief and war and how women had to deal with losing husbands, brothers, and fathers to the drafts of WWII. The heavy shadowing on her body and the way it’s leaning up against the frame, head bowed unable to see her facial features suggests that she wants to hide her grief but her whole body conveys it in her stance and actions. Hidden somewhat behind the fence is a man marching off from his home, back turned from the woman. At this, we can only assume that this is the person she is crying over.
There are some wonderful motifs in here as far as how the theme of war and grief come across. I like that it greatly shows the level of what people had to go through when they had to watch a member of their family leave or possibly never come back. I’m sure as that man was walking away, that’s what many women were thinking, “Is this the last time I will see them?”
Also, the fine, minute details of the piece really draw you throughout the picture. The lighting, the atmosphere, the actual background with all the little details are just wonderful and contribute greatly to the overall work. Also, the composition is wonderful. You can’t help but look first at the woman and then as your eyes move throughout the work and you follow the fence heading down the hill, that is when you see the man and then the realization hits you that she is crying because someone she loves is going off to war.
L. Engle
I’ve previously watched George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1954) and have read the book many times, but upon reading this article,http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html it made me look at things a little differently in terms of the perspective of the movie. The movie follows the story very well and is a good visual guide to go off what the article has mentioned.
Here the full 1954 version of the movie on Youtube:
L. Engle
Pricing of some of the work involved in the Auction:
M. Beckmann Southern Coast $20 to Buchholz
M. Beckmann Portrait SFr 1 to Gurlitt
W. Gilles 5 Watercolors $.20 each to Boehmer
W.
Kandinsky Ruhe $100 to Möller [now Guggenheim Museum, New
York]
E. Kirchner Strassenzene $160 to Buchholz [now MoMA, New York]
P. Klee
Das Vokaltuch der
Sängerin Rosa
Silber
$300 to Buchholz
Lehmbruck Kneeling Woman $10 to Buchholz49
After the Auction, this is what happened to the remaining work:
“In the fall of 1938 Exploitation Commission member and dealer Karl Haberstock suggested to Hitler and Goebbels that a public auction would increase these minimal revenues. He brought a Swiss crony and fellow Cassirer alumnus, Theodore Fischer, to look over the depositories. Together they chose the 126 works which would be sold in Lucerne on that sunny day the following June. It was none too soon. Despite all the trading activity, the Copernicusstrasse warehouse remained distressingly full. Franz Hofmann, fanatically desirous of carrying out Hitler’s purification policies to the letter, pushed to get rid of the remaining works, which he declared “unexploitable.” He suggested that they be “burned in a bonfire as a symbolic propaganda action” and offered to “deliver a suitably caustic funeral oration.” Shocked at the idea of such destruction, Hetsch and the dealers took away as much as they could. But Goebbels agreed to Hofmann’s plan, and on destruction, Hetsch and the dealers took away as much as they could. But Goebbels agreed to Hofmann’s plan, and on March 20, 1939, 1,004 paintings and sculptures and 3,825 drawings, watercolors, and graphics were burned as a practice exercise in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Department’s headquarters just down the street. The works in Schloss Niederschonhausen were reprieved and gradually sold or traded away. The whole process of “purifying” the German art world, and its “final solution” in flames, eerily foreshadows the terrible events to come in the next six years.”
People who were put into the Degenerate Art Show/Auction:
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L. Engle
Name: Emil Nolde, originally Emil Hansen
Born: August 7, 1867 in Schleswig
Was he still in the “Fatherland”?
From what I have found on the exhibition involving Nolde it appears he was not in the country when the show was going on.
Has this so-called “artist” written or said anything that would implicate him as an Enemy Combatant of the Third Reich?
Actually, Emil was a sympathizer of the Nazi Party. He was opposed to many Jewish artist’s and paintings and had even become a part of the Dutch sector of the Nazi Party. He even expressed that he felt Expressionism was solely German and others were going off a German form of painting.
How many of his works of “art” were included in theEntartete “Kunst” (Degenerate “Art”) show in Munich in 1937?
It doesn’t state an exact number of how many of his pieces were in the actual show, but it is known of the 1052 pieces taken from museums he did have some shown in the Degenerate Art show. Out of everyone in the show, he did have the most confiscated from museums/galleries.
Below, are 5 examples of his artwork:
Emil Nolde, Blumengarten (ohne Figur), oil on canvas, 1908
Emil Nolde The Prophet, woodcut, 1912
Head with Pipe (Self Portrait) (1907) Lithograph
Emil Nolde, Wheat Field, Oil on canvas
Emil Nolde, Marschlandschaft, oil on canvas
L. Engle
Here is an article I found about Italian Fascist Architecture by George P. Mros that gives excellent examples of Architecture during the time.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/774290
There is a PDF available on the page along with citations used for the article.
L. Engle
Defeating the Ideal 