"I saw the Degenerate Art exhibit, though in the bowels of the Smithsonian
rather than LA. "Polite"? Not sure what Michael means here."
Sorry for the delay in responding. I was digging out material.
In 1992 I presented a paper at the FACSISM(S) conference at the University
of Oregon, Eugene. The following paragraph is an excerpt from my abstract:
<The reconstruction of "Degenerate Art" in Los Angeles comes at a time when
modernism is subject to renewed assaults by politicians and designers
alike. In suggesting Seaside, Florida as the New American Suburb, architect
Andres Duany claims German town planning during the Third Reich as one of
his sources. Seaside, with its authoritarian building code and derivitve
style, is, in the end, a scheme for the affluent by an enterprising private
developer - hardly a paradigm for socially responsive urban development.
Another of Duany's patrons, HRH The Prince of Wales, chooses to ignore
social issues by considering contemporary design prodeminantly in
'archaicist' terms, favoring historicism (style) over history (process).
This reduction suggests that an alliance of patron/mentors, their chosen
developers and architects, and the media can conspire to set ther standards
for architectural critique, effectively isolating and neutralizing those
who might provide an alternative view.>
As I could not attend the Degenerate Art exhibit in LA, I tried to find and
read all the press critiques of the exhibit. One, in New Statesman and
Society, was particularly interesting. It was titled "Fascinating Fascism.
Californians have flocked to see a recreation of the Nazis' most infamous
art show. Fred Dewey wonders why." Here are excerpts:
"Historical comparisons to the present are difficult to make, primarily
because the art the Nazis attacked now looks so tame."
"The press has insisted in parallels in current right-wing attacks in the
US."
"It is especially troubling for Americans, the standard-bears of the
modern, to recognise that the Nazis' appeal may have been precisely their
modernity, their ruthless drive to the future."
"The irony of the show being recreated in a land where many Nazi inventions
- rockets, bio-engineering and mass-media, among them - undergird the
economy is, for the most part, lost on the crowds whose aerobic obsessions
have produced bodies the Nazis would have envied."
"This 1991 environment is hardly the California Reich. But placing the
Nazis outside modernism, or rather, placing modernism outside the Nazis,
helps those at this show, and the rest of us, to preserve a dangerous lie
about modernism and cultural self-knowledge. If the Nazis were barbaric,
non-modern, then we, as the true moderns, are safe, and in no danger of
moving down the same road. In this way, art-historical categories
neutralize the century's most costly lesson: how true "modernism" might
dictate that a society can become modern only by becoming fascistic, and
vice-versa."
"People who see this show should pause at its recreation of a past, for
that which lies under this past may be the ground we are all now walking
on."
Dewey, Fred, from New Statesman, 10 May 1991
It should be remembered that Degenerate Art was mounted in the midst of the
controversy over NEA funding of "obscene" art projects, Shows were being
closed down at that very moment by NEA threats. The boldest thing LACMA and
Gehry could have done would have been to include the works of Mapplethorpe
et al alongside the works of Max Beckman, Emil Nolde, Thomas Mann and
Bertolt Brecht.
the works of Max Beckman, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht.
rather than LA. "Polite"? Not sure what Michael means here."
Sorry for the delay in responding. I was digging out material.
In 1992 I presented a paper at the FACSISM(S) conference at the University
of Oregon, Eugene. The following paragraph is an excerpt from my abstract:
<The reconstruction of "Degenerate Art" in Los Angeles comes at a time when
modernism is subject to renewed assaults by politicians and designers
alike. In suggesting Seaside, Florida as the New American Suburb, architect
Andres Duany claims German town planning during the Third Reich as one of
his sources. Seaside, with its authoritarian building code and derivitve
style, is, in the end, a scheme for the affluent by an enterprising private
developer - hardly a paradigm for socially responsive urban development.
Another of Duany's patrons, HRH The Prince of Wales, chooses to ignore
social issues by considering contemporary design prodeminantly in
'archaicist' terms, favoring historicism (style) over history (process).
This reduction suggests that an alliance of patron/mentors, their chosen
developers and architects, and the media can conspire to set ther standards
for architectural critique, effectively isolating and neutralizing those
who might provide an alternative view.>
As I could not attend the Degenerate Art exhibit in LA, I tried to find and
read all the press critiques of the exhibit. One, in New Statesman and
Society, was particularly interesting. It was titled "Fascinating Fascism.
Californians have flocked to see a recreation of the Nazis' most infamous
art show. Fred Dewey wonders why." Here are excerpts:
"Historical comparisons to the present are difficult to make, primarily
because the art the Nazis attacked now looks so tame."
"The press has insisted in parallels in current right-wing attacks in the
US."
"It is especially troubling for Americans, the standard-bears of the
modern, to recognise that the Nazis' appeal may have been precisely their
modernity, their ruthless drive to the future."
"The irony of the show being recreated in a land where many Nazi inventions
- rockets, bio-engineering and mass-media, among them - undergird the
economy is, for the most part, lost on the crowds whose aerobic obsessions
have produced bodies the Nazis would have envied."
"This 1991 environment is hardly the California Reich. But placing the
Nazis outside modernism, or rather, placing modernism outside the Nazis,
helps those at this show, and the rest of us, to preserve a dangerous lie
about modernism and cultural self-knowledge. If the Nazis were barbaric,
non-modern, then we, as the true moderns, are safe, and in no danger of
moving down the same road. In this way, art-historical categories
neutralize the century's most costly lesson: how true "modernism" might
dictate that a society can become modern only by becoming fascistic, and
vice-versa."
"People who see this show should pause at its recreation of a past, for
that which lies under this past may be the ground we are all now walking
on."
Dewey, Fred, from New Statesman, 10 May 1991
It should be remembered that Degenerate Art was mounted in the midst of the
controversy over NEA funding of "obscene" art projects, Shows were being
closed down at that very moment by NEA threats. The boldest thing LACMA and
Gehry could have done would have been to include the works of Mapplethorpe
et al alongside the works of Max Beckman, Emil Nolde, Thomas Mann and
Bertolt Brecht.
the works of Max Beckman, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht.