Is There a Right Way to Do Art?

An infamous 1937 exhibition contains lessons for our present debates

Joseph Goebbels (center) visits the Entartete Kunst in Munich in 1937

From July 19-November 30, 1937, an art exhibition was held in the city of Munich. Containing 650 works in total taken from various German museums, it attracted more than a million visitors. But unlike most art exhibitions, people were not coming to gaze in wonder: they were coming to scrunch their noses in disgust.

The title of this exhibition was Entartete Kunst, which in English means Degenerate Art. It was an initiative of the ruling Nazi Party to highlight art that conflicted with the perceived German ideal. Works could be chosen based on their style (Expressionist, Surrealist), the artist’s ethnicity (Jewish), or the artist’s political views (left-leaning or anti-Nazi). A concurrent exhibition, the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung or Great German Art Exhibition, ran concurrently and featured works of which the Nazis approved, most of them based on classical artistic ideals. (Think of the style of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.)

When the Degenerate Art exhibition was completed, some pieces were sold to foreign buyers to help finance the Nazi Party’s goals, but a large number were simply burned. This may seem like a typical example of Nazi intolerance and persecution of minorities, but many people at the time agreed with the assessment that a high percentage of modern art was degenerate.

Indeed, while most of us would not approve of the widespread destruction of art, the dismissal and even condemnation of modern art forms is a common occurrence in today’s society. As an active user of Twitter/X, I often see posts by an account titled Culture Critic, which regularly posts photos of classical and neoclassical art forms and asks, “Why don’t we make things like this anymore?” It also posts photos of modern architecture, particularly in the much-maligned Brutalist style, and declares them to be a travesty for society.

For many years, I too thought that I did not like modern art. I remember visiting the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. as a child and seeing a prominently displayed work that was simply a white canvas with some vertical black lines painted on it. “Anyone could do that,” I thought. “It’s not beautiful.”

While a few vertical lines are still insufficient to impress me, two things have served to change my opinion about modern art as a whole: First, I have come into contact with a greater diversity of modern art and seen that much of it is indeed beautiful. Second, I have encountered many defenders of classical forms who seem in their vehemence to cross into the realm of ridiculousness.

Here I recall a recent discussion on social media with a resident of New York City who declared that the modern office buildings throughout Manhattan were an injustice against the city’s poorer residents, who needed access to beautiful forms. While I enjoy beautiful architecture as much as the next person, I found myself engaging (perhaps unwisely) on the question of what makes a building’s design “unjust.” Notice the choice of wording: not ugly or uninspiring, which are more subjective terms, but actual injustice.

I had so many questions. If it costs a company twice as much to build something that fits classical beauty standards, must it do so, and who will end up footing that extra cost? Who decides what constitutes a beautiful office building? Must all industrial infrastructure be located outside the city center? If ugly buildings are an injustice, could we say the same for ugly library interiors or city parks? Would the construction of low cost housing within easy commuting distance not be a greater source of justice for the poor than a palace destined to be occupied by billionaires?

I would submit that while it is possible to identify works of art that reflect greater skill than others, the question of beauty will always be a somewhat subjective one. More to the point, there may be aspects of modern life that are better reflected through modern art forms than classical ones.

Take, for example, the work of artist Max Beckmann. He was one of those targeted in the Degenerate Art exhibition. American buyers were able to rescue many of his paintings, some of which I saw last autumn at the Museum of Modern Art and the Neue Gallerie in New York City.

Max Beckmann's depictions of life in the Weimar Republic

Beckmann was active in the years between the First and Second World Wars. He lived in a Germany beset by political violence, economic collapse, and frenzied social change. The period of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was a tumultuous time to be making art. However, it did provide inspiration in its vibrant culture of lounges, cafes, and cabarets. This was a world of both colors and shadows, when hopes for social change were high but the political reality was exceptionally dark. It would end with the rise of the Nazis.

As seen in the paintings above, Beckmann used modern art styles to capture the feel of nightlife in the Weimar Republic in a way that classical forms simply could not do. The moral ambiguities are more clearly perceptible in his Expressionist style. The new freedoms granted to Germans were constantly under threat. This is a less cheery world than that of the Belle Époque that came before it.

Beckmann allowed his experience of that world to influence his religious themed art. Consider the above depiction of the Prodigal Son. He appears to be sitting in a Berlin cabaret hall. His lust and avarice are associated with the excesses of Weimar Germany. The modern form of expression is used to communicate biblical truth.

Then we have this depiction of Christ’s descent into hell. Beckmann portrays the Savior with short hair and no beard, a most untraditional choice in European art. But why does Beckmann do so? For the same reason that artists began painting Jesus with long hair back in the medieval period: it was a choice inspired by their own cultural moment. Whereas the long-haired medieval Jesus looked like the nobility of the day, this short-haired Jesus looked like the average German man who has just returned from the trenches covered in wounds and is now hurled into a dark underworld. (Beckmann himself had been a soldier in the trenches of the Western Front, which looked very much like hell on earth.) Again, it almost seems that Jesus has entered one of Beckmann’s cabaret halls.

Now we come at last to Beckmann’s depiction of the Descent from the Cross. Could it be any more different from Michelangelo’s Pietà? Unlike many traditional depictions of this moment in the Gospels, the focus is not on Mary’s suffering. She is off to the side, dwarfed by the massive figure of Christ’s body. I say his body is massive, but I simply mean he has a large frame: there is not an ounce of fat on his body, and his muscles seem to be completely atrophied. Interestingly, this bald and skeletal Jesus reminds me of nothing so much as the inhabitants of concentration camps which would spring up in Germany during the Nazi period.

Beckmann created the work in 1917, as the First World War was still raging. It seems to encapsulate the horrors of that period, in which so many young German were essentially called to sacrifice their lives on behalf of national pride. Beckmann had hoped with this work to create something as powerful as medieval German art,¹ and I believe he succeeded. The strange hues, shadings, and angles intensify our experience of horror when we look upon the lamb who was slain.

I came to appreciate Beckmann after seeing his work in person. While there are some modern art forms I do not enjoy, I never would have come across the ones that I do enjoy unless I had taken a chance and opened my mind to new artistic possibilities. Therefore, I encourage you to do the same. Perhaps you will come away unchanged, or perhaps you will find something that heightens your experience of truth, goodness, and beauty.

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1. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79759