Glee = Fascism? WWHW? "What would Hitler Watch?"

New York didn't only “Steal” the idea of modern art, but also became a refuge for the modern condition in light of the Fascist appropriation of the classical forms. As many of us already know, Hitler was an unsuccessful artist who was denied admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He thought of himself as a connoisseur of the arts and when he became head of the Third Reich, he enforced his aesthetic ideal on the nation. The type of art that was favored among Hitler and the Nazi party were classical portraits and landscapes by old masters, particularly those of Germanic origin. Modern art that did not match this was dubbed degenerate art (entartete Kunst in German) by the Third Reich. The art of Jewish and eastern European artists deemed degenerate was often displayed in highly controlled exhibitions designed to discredit their pieces and call attention to the grotesqueness of the modern condition perpetrated by those ethnic groups.

Throughout the War, Hitler made the looting of important pieces (both classical and 'degenerate')and appropriation of art tantamount. To control art is to control consciousness. Hitler, as well as Mussolini and Franco all understood this; adopting important directors in to the fold to direct propaganda films, writers to write, and artists to create art that supports their ideology. The rest either fled Europe, hid, or committed suicide. It's precisely because the Avant Garde was not easily accessible that it could not be rightly appropriated.

The fears of a Fascist Europe introducing a new Dark Age were not totally founded. Rather, a fear of a Fascist Europe in which Art serves the state and serves the lowest forms (for lack of a better term) of artistic representation. Art that is good if 'the art looks like the thing it's supposed to look like.'

Is there something dangerous in mediocrity? Is there something about accessibility that actually acts in a counter democratic way?

In a sad twist of events, some 100,00 pieces of art that were plundered by the Nazi's were never found, including a number of important pieces. It does seem unfortunate and fitting that Fascism consumed and destroyed the very thing it attempted to reposition.