November 24th

Degenerate art

a procession of mourners

pay their last respects

I was reading about “Degenerate Art” today, the label applied by the Nazi’s to any art which didn’t fit their ideals on realism, classically influenced art or promotion of the Reich. This meant that most modern art would be labelled degenerate, including art by such eminent German artists as Max Ernst and Otto Dix (both first world war veterans). Artists fled Germany, were prevented from working, or were in extreme cases, executed like poor Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, through forced euthanasia.

The Nazi’s put on a show of Degenerate Art with dismissive labels, to instruct the populace as to why the works were degenerate. As this BBC article states.

An exhibition of confiscated works titled Entartete Kunst, which took place in Munich in July 1937, was advertised as "culture documents of the decadent work of Bolsheviks and Jews".

When I was on a Munich walking tour some years ago, the guide said that the Degenerate exhibition had several times the number of visitors as the officially endorsed Nazi art gallery next door. It seems the German people were not all taken in by this propaganda and were (privately) curious to make up their own minds.

Many art works were sold, many were destroyed.

Hitler himself was a frustrated artist, before taking up politics, he led a life of someone he would have labelled “degenerate” once he’d got into power. He painted detailed architecture and landscapes, his work was fairly boring it seems, lacking in emotion. Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor, one of the military and political heavyweights of the early part of the 20th century called him the “Bohemian Corporal”, due to his failure at becoming an artist and his low rank during World War 1.

It’s interesting to compare Hitler’s work (of which only a few examples of survive or are attributable to him) with Churchill, another keen painter. Churchill, suffering depression, his “black dog” for most of his life, saw art as a way of release, of coping, of coming to terms with the darkness. His book, “Painting as a Pastime” is a treat (D has a copy which is wonderful). You can feel that in his work, which although quite naive, is expressive.

Hitler, you can imagine, with his dedication to detail and buildings seemed emasculated and stifled by his inability to express.

Above: The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich (Adolf Hitler, 1913, Watercolour)

Sunset Over The Atlas Mountains (Winston Churchill, 1935).

January 17th

 

From Aegean boats,

To the blood soaked mud and sand,

Evil eye protects.

 

Close ups of two tanks housed in the Imperial War Museum below. I was fascinated to see that the crew (I assume) had painted Evil Eyes on their tanks. The first was a World War 1 tanks, the second from World War 2.

In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, the Evil Eye is a powerful talisman to deflect evil. You see it all over the med, painted on the bow’s of boats, on the top of doorways, around peoples necks, to bring protection, to ensure safe passage, it’s used like a St Christopher. The stylised blue eye is the symbol of choice. Blue eyes are considered to be the eye colour of the devil in the med… so if you mark yourself with a blue eye, you protect yourself, in a kind of perverse backwards logic.

People wear them, not just as a travelling talisman, but to deflect ordinarily well intended compliments. Yes, compliments. As these compliments, whether the person delivering them is genuine or not, have a tendency to turn into a curse when they are intercepted by demons or the devil and actually deliver you the direct opposite of the compliment. For example “your little boy has a beautiful smile” will put that child at risk of some sort of mouth injury.

Hence a compliment is sometimes accompanied by a spit (especially when you are complimenting a child!), to show your good intentions! (This is a double protection on top of the recipient wearing an eye stone). So some older people will be offended if you compliment their children without that going hand in hand with spitting at them! The spit although aimed at the person you are complimenting, is actually trying to shoo a spirit or the devil away from the child to ensure the compliment isn’t going to be turned into a curse. Complicated and weird? Yes. But don’t worry, you don’t have to hoke up a big green grolly and flob it on the childs head… it’s just a pretend spit, a spit sound. So it’s vaguely civilised.

It isn’t so widespread now, but I certainly remember it from my youth and from my mum’s generation. So if you do meet a 95 year old Greek lady, don’t make compliments, don’t spit either. Just smile lots!

Anyway, back to the tanks, I wonder how the idea or the superstition came to these fighting men.

 

Must go back and do the museum justice, the art gallery looked amazing from a brief look and the holocaust exhibition is very moving