"Degenerate" art: The trial of modern art under Nazism

"The ideal of cretinism" is what modern art is all about. At least, that’s what the Nazis thought when they set about cleaning up the museums plagued by this "cultural bolshevism", this "art of the system" heralding decadence. Hundreds of artists were blacklisted, thousands of works withdrawn from public collections to be destroyed or sold. Of these, over 700 were first exhibited in Munich in 1937 in a vast exhibition on "degenerate art". The Musée Picasso is revisiting this event by bringing together around sixty of these avant-garde paintings and sculptures that threatened German "purity". It has to be said that the Nazis showed a distinct lack of taste as they attacked the greatest masters of the twentieth century, living and dead, German and foreign, from all currents: Expressionism, Dada, New Objectivity, Otto Dix, Kirchner (ill. 1), Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Chagall, Picasso...

To denounce modern art by devoting a resounding exhibition to it might have seemed counterproductive, if not silly. And this is undoubtedly what the Musée Picasso does not show enough: far from being showcased, the works presented in Munich in 1937 were violently denigrated by insulting and mocking slogans written in large letters on the walls. A video from the period gives a glimpse of the scenography, but it is relegated to a corner and too small for today’s audience to appreciate the visual shock created by the Nazis. Another video, just as discreet, shows images from the "Great Exhibition of German Art" organised at the same time as the exhibition on "degenerate art". The approach was pedagogical, confronting example and counter-example. This is perhaps what is missing from the Musée Picasso’s exhibition: a few paintings and sculptures as a counterpoint to the "degenerate" works to illustrate…