When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, in 1933, one of their first goals was to reshape culture by force. The Nazis organized book burnings, stormed artist studios, confiscating work they disagreed with, and fired contemporary artists from teaching positions in universities. The goal was to place limits on human expression–an ominous display for what was to come.
Visit the companion gallery for this episode here: https://mjdorian.com/dangerous/
The celebrated 1800's German poet, Heinrich Heine, wrote: "where books are burned, there too, people will burn."
On this episode, we explore the Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937, otherwise known as Entartete Kunst. The intended goal of the exhibit was to insult and ridicule the featured artists and kill modern art. Making it clearly known to the German public that the Nazi Party was forbidding any form of abstraction in painting, film, sculpture, or music.
The suppression or censorship of art is a symptom that something is desperately wrong in the cultural fabric of a society. What happened to the artists featured in the exhibition? Did they continue making art? Did they flee or stay and protest? Why is art so dangerous?
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Artists featured in this episode: Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Conrad Felixmüller. Explore their work in this special companion gallery I put together: https://mjdorian.com/dangerous/
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All music in this episode was produced & composed by MJDorian.
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Creative Codex is written and produced by MJDorian.
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