2 w. ago
Culture wars: Trump’s takeover of arts is straight from the dictator playbook
US president’s attempt to control or dismantle cultural institutions plays into a long history of authoritarians using arts to push their agendaIn 1937, leaders of Germany’s Third Reich hosted two simultaneous art exhibitions in Munich. One, titled the Great German Art Exhibition, featured art viewed by the regime as appropriate and aspirational for the ideal Aryan society – orderly and triumphant, with mostly blond people in heroic poses amid pastoral German landscapes. The other showcased what Adolf Hitler and his followers deemed “degenerate art” (“Entartete Kunst”). The works, chaotically displayed and saddled with commentary disparaging “the sick brains of those who wielded the brush or pencil”, were abstract, profane, modernist and produced by the proclaimed enemies of the Reich – Jewish people, communists or those suspected of being either.The Degenerate Art exhibition, which later toured the country, opened a day after Hitler declared “merciless war” on cultural disintegrati...
Politics
