“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, March 28, 2011

Nazi Degenerate Art


Otto Dix, one of my favorite painters, was in the exhibition, and Bela Bartok, one of my favorite composers, insisted that he be put in it. This post on it by Harvard UP shows how an ordinary Berliner looked at Dix's War triptych and came to the best conclusion:

“The picture is not a bloody-minded depiction of the degenerate, war is.”


Yes. Wow. It reminds me of what Picasso said to a Nazi officer who was looking at Guernica, sneering. “Who did that?”

“You did.”
Best reply EVER.

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