Degenerate! Hitler’s War on Modern Art @ The National WW2 Museum

Lissy (1931), Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, a piece in the Degenerate Art exhibit at the WWII Museum

Are you Degenerate?
Degenerate! Hitler’s War on Modern Art @ The National WW2 Museum
Review by Jamie Chiarello

Among the Nazis’ other attributes, they were enormously petty. Before becoming a symbolic representation for the incarnation of pure evil, Hitler was an aspiring artist, painting watercolor postcards of castles, and hustling just enough to move himself from a homeless shelter into a men's home. His lifestyle and self-aggrandizement probably wouldn't have been entirely out of place in an early 2000's artsy punk house. He was rejected from the Academy of Fine arts Vienna in the early 1900's, supposedly for submitting a portfolio that lacked sufficient head studies. If Hitler had only studied and revered the human form a little more closely, might history have swayed down a kinder path?

In 1937, the Nazi party invited the German public to the 'Degenerate Art Exhibition' in Munich. This show was intended to define (by contrast) what standards good German art should be held to. I really can't imagine a more petty gesture than to organize an entire exhibition in order to say, "This art is trash!". The work in question was modern, what now seems commonplace was then a rebuff to the previously established classical standards. Classical art standards are generally rooted in Greco-Roman ideals; clarity in form, exaltation of developed skill sets which require patience, focus and practice, accuracy in proportion and anatomy, and awareness of how light creates form.

The show up at the National WWII Museum right now is a partial recreation of the original exhibition, and I believe I've really found the ideal way to process smaller exhibits like this. I start at the beginning and I move through, opening myself to direct experience of what is presented; in this case looking at the art without reading any of the plaques or anything on the walls. I make notes and do a lot of introspection. Then, I return to the beginning and read through everything, putting it all into the context provided. This is a direct way to build one's muscle for critical thinking, and also to witness how your own interpretation may vary with what is being presented. As an artist that holds a deep love for classical art, an (anti zionist) Jew, and person that has deeply struggled with mental health, I was prepared to have very conflicting personal responses to this show.

In our current moment, 'degenerate art' actually sounds pretty cool. In a more literal sense, to degenerate is to decay, to go backwards, to return to a simpler state of less complexity. The Nazis claimed that artistic expressions were direct reflections of a state of mind, and that the mind could be deemed healthy or sick. To be healthy was to be a pure blooded Aryan: strong and logical. A sick mind was basically anything that fell outside of these narrow boundaries.

The work in this show varies widely, and was included because it either represented artistic approaches that strayed from the classical (ie; Dadaism, Cubism, Expressionism, etc) or was created by a people that had been socially deemed as 'inferior' (ie; Jews, Bolsheviks, Blacks, the mentally ill, etc). Interestingly, many of the artists that fled Europe at this historic moment wound up in New York City, where they seeded the ground for the eventual emergence of what we consider the American avant-garde.

Hitler's own artwork has been condescendingly referred to as the work of a 'moderately ambitious amateur'. I imagine this posthumous criticism would cause him to writhe, and I believe that is the purpose of it. If Hitler had dipped his toes into some modern expressionist self portraiture, I wonder what the response would have been. The Nazi assertion of aesthetics was fairly simple: if it is modern it is bad. Do we simply mirror that sentiment with the opposing blanket of ideology: if it is modern it is good? Walking through this show looking directly at the artwork, my overall response was that a lot of this is underwhelming and mediocre. But then, I stumbled on a lithograph by Kathe Kollwitz and felt a gut punch of feelings I don't have words or slogans for. And I think that is the purpose of all art.

The three pieces included by Kollwitz are honestly reason enough to visit this show. But doubling back and fine combing the work in the context of the history presented offered its own gut punch. When you reach 1933 on the timeline, Hitler is announcing himself chancellor. What follows is book burnings, gutting of cultural institutions, arrests without due process, the creation of 'containment camps'.

Standing quietly, shoulder to shoulder with museum strangers, we read the writing on the wall. I turned to a young couple near me: "You see this right?" They gulped and nodded fervently. I suddenly felt like I might have a panic attack. I had to abruptly leave the museum. On the way out, I said goodbye to the friendly woman who I think was a museum volunteer sitting outside the entrance. She asked "Did you like the show?" to which I responded, "Well, it was horrifying really. Because…we are in it." I left feeling inspired to do lithography and to fight fascism in any form.

- Degenerate! Hitler’s War on Modern Art is at The National WW2 Museum until 10th May,2026
- See our picks of the city's current art exhibitions 
- Jamie Chiarello is a working artist in New Orleans. See her work at her website, Nameless Art