Neue Galerie: Degenerate Art

The Neue Galerie on 86th Street was more crowded yesterday than I can ever remember it having been on a weekday.  The exhibit everyone had come to see was Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, a major review of the infamous exhibit that was held in Munich in that year and was attended by Hitler himself.  It proved to be a much more disturbing experience than I had anticipated.

I had coincidentally this past winter read a book on German portraiture from the Weimar period entitled Glitter and Doom.  It was shocking to see some of the originals of works reproduced in that book now on display at the museum.  These included works by Otto Dix and George Grosz (Portrait of Max Hermann-Neisse, 1925).  Also shown were a number of important Expressionist works by such artists as Kirchner (Berlin Street Scene, 1913, and The Brücke-Artists, 1926-27) and Kokoschka (Self Portrait as Degenerate Artist, 1938).  A place of honor was given in one of the galleries to Max Beckmann's monumental triptych Departure (1937).

Perhaps the most moving work currently on display had not been part of the original 1937 exhibit.  This was The Damned (1942) by Felix Nussbaum who was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1944.  It is a large canvas that graphically depicts the suffering of German Jewry during the Holocaust.  One commentator has compared it to "a modern version of a medieval dance of death."  Included among the doomed figures shown are Nussbaum himself and his wife Flecka.

The 1937 Munich exhibit was, in spite of itself, one of the greatest shows of twentieth century art ever held.  Its virulent denunciation of the artists shown also changed the course of European art history and, in particular, dealt German modernism a blow from which it has never fully recovered.  The Neue Galerie has made a sincere effort to put this event in its historical perspective and to fully explore its ramifications.  To give as complete a view as possible, it presents samples of Nazi propaganda, including exhibit guides and a short black & white film, that had been churned out for the show's opening in an attempt to condemn the works on grounds of racial inferiority.  There are also examples of "approved" German art from the Great German Art Exhibition held the same year and staged literally next door.  There are even works on display by Nazi sympathizers, such as Emil Nolde, who were themselves denounced as degenerate and whose work suffered the same fate as that of the artists who opposed the fascist regime.

The exhibit continues through June 30, 2014.