“Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art), now in the USA
If you don’t sound the alarm, you are blind to history. With Bonus Content.
Shock. Rage. Déjà vu. These feelings hit me hard in the gut as I saw this image on my Instagram timeline. I couldn’t believe it’s true. I couldn't buy for a moment, we are already THERE.
But it’s true. We are there.
Trump’s Administration is building fascist America.
You know my passion for the Historical Avant-Garde, Dadaism, Surrealism, and other groundbreaking movements that defined the art and culture of the 20th century. Not everybody was a fan of such stuff.
The Nazi Party in Germany of the 1920s called modernist art “an insult to German feeling”, also “Verfallskunst” (“decay art”), as the opposite of the Nazi propagandist art with “healthy family”, “clear gender roles”, “nationalism”, and other conservative features. The main focus of the Nazi Party was to exclude such art from all German museums, be it seen as “Jewish”, “Freemason”, “Communist Art”, be it, “incomprehensible to the common people”, say: “un-German” art.
This was practically every kind of art, not aligned with the Nazi Administration Policy.
Nazis called it “Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”).
The artists of the works mentioned above were prosecuted, forbidden from exhibiting, selling, or producing their art. They’ve lost their academic and teaching positions.
The year 1937 was the culmination of such repressions: the big exhibition “Entartete Kunst”, organized by the Nazis in Munich. It was the “anti-exhibition” with the approach to defame the modernist artists and their artworks and to promote the conspiracy theory that modernist art was a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to destroy Germany.
In a bullying way, the holders of Nazi authorities tried to demean and humiliate the artists and their works.
And now, let’s look at the recent post of the White House, the mouthpiece of the current POTUS, Donald Trump.
In a defamatory manner, the article lists American museums that include works not aligned with Trump’s ideology.
Racism
Artists, who raised attention about racism and white men's domination (which history is very well documented), are criticised for their “wokeness”. Literally, artists who fight against segregation and racism are called “woke”.
Homosexuality
Another “culprit” is the American History Museum, “prominently displaying the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag”
You remember, Hitler sent homosexual people directly into concentration camps, where they were tortured, used for (anti)human experiments, or murdered. Fighting for the rights of these people, for their acceptance and integration in society, was persecuted by Hitler and is called “woke” by Trump.
Also this:
To “include” biological men posing as woman is apparently a crime. And to scrutinize the fact that it’s a crime, is “woke”.
Slavery
Slavery as a topic on Benjamin Franklin’s exhibit in the American History Museum is criticised for this focus (White House quotes here “The Federalist”, an ultraconservative online magazine, famous for spreading conspiracy theories).
Slavery, as a fact, is about to be neglected by the Trump Administration. Funny thing: these kinds of illegal immigrants were very welcomed by Americans some centuries ago. Not as humans, but as tools (ergo: only in this condition acceptable by conservative white?). (Sidenote: Meta now allows calling people of color “tools”; it isn’t a faux pas or reportable issue anymore.)
And this is the main trigger for Trump, who criticized the Smithsonian: “We shouldn’t focus on “how bad slavery was” (Trump).
Spoiler:
Conceptual art
Now the crime here is to… I quote… to depict “the Statue of Liberty holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch, and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet”. That’s it, that’s the crime.
Let’s think about conceptual art in its powerful form, mocking sacred visual grammar and untouchable ideals. Isn’t it one of the most virtuous goals of art? To condense the aesthetics and values to an exaggerated mirror? To scrutinize the norms and conventions? To break with conservatism?
Like, Komar and Melamid:
Or Andy Warhol:
We should be proud to be able to exhibit critical art that questions our lives and culture.
Unless we are in the Soviet Union (with Bulldozer Exhibition).
Or in Nazi Germany, with Entartete Kunst:
Or in Trump's America.
Migration
Here is the actual image of Felipe Galindo, aka Feggo's work. This is a part of Feggo’s Series “Manhatitlan: Mexican and American Culture Interwined”. In his drawing (created 1999), we see the Independence Day fireworks “through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall”. The composition of the drawing is nothing more or less than “The Stripes and the Stars”. American Flag. Very powerful message.
The description highlights the fear among white politicians regarding non-white immigration and the criminalization of Latin American immigrants. Ironically, these actions are carried out by the very same administration that denies such allegations — revealing a clear double standard.
All these are signs.
No, more than signs.
If you’ve read the history, or did it in school (which might be complicated now by educational indoctrination, or by the dismantling of the Department of Education), you’ll see that this is already progressing towards fascism.
I told it once, and I’ll repeat again: This is not a drill.
Bonus Content.
And here is a short reality check for you.
If you use the term “woke” in defamatory way against people fighting for human rights — you are already Fascist. There is no “yes, but”.
