In From Lucerne to Washington, DC: Degenerate Art and the Question of Restitution, Jonathan Petropoulos spotlights the actions of MoMA founder Alfred Barr, who obtained many works for the collection that previously belonged to German museums, sometimes to the profit of the Nazi regime. All modern art was considered 'degenerate' by the National Socialist (Nazi) party. Faass said it was unusual to curate an exhibition about an exhibition but bringing a portion of the works back together had helped underline what an important cultural collaboration the 1938 show had been, used as it was to introduce Britons to modern German art, and to help emigrants show themselves as representatives of a better Germany. Samurai 6. Read our full, Alternatively search more than 1.25 million objects from the, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, London. His self-portrait was lent to the 1938 exhibition by Emil Korner, an economics professor with whom Kokoschka had sought refuge in Czechoslovakia, before Korner himself was forced to emigrate to Zurich. Misinformation accompanied the artworks, and slogans emphasised their degeneracy. Indeed, the inventory invites us to think not only about the artworks, but also about the persecution of the artists who created them. All the artworks were curated in such a way as to conceal the skillful accomplishments of many masters of the modernist movement. Every purchase supports the V&A. Freie Universitat Berlin: Database Entartete Kunst. Virivores discovered: Microbes that survive on a virus-only diet, Bad at saving? The Nazis stacked the aesthetic deck against the Degenerate Art by removing the pictures from their frames, hanging them as unflatteringly as possible, and adding the chaos of oversized wall text in bizarre fonts to create the impression of madness. Twenty-two of Liebermanns works were loaned to the 1938 show by his wife, Martha. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subject to sanctions."("Degenerate Art") The art teacher was relieved from their . Name of authorised dealer where applicable | 8. Every purchase supports the V&A. The London show was hailed as the biggest international response to Nazi censorship but some critics were furious at the efforts its curators went to to present the exhibition as non-political. A month before Entartete Kunst opened in 1937, Feininger and his family moved to the United States. Original London show was hailed as protest against Nazi censorship of artists they labelled degenerate. The Nazis ran a concurrent exhibition, the Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) which displayed art approved by the Nazis, though Entartete Kunst was much more popular. At the same time, offices like the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts began popping up to engage in a sort of national artistic surveillance as well as produce art propaganda. The V&A holds the only known copy of a complete inventory of Entartete Kunst confiscated by the Nazi regime from public institutions in Germany, mostly during 1937 and 1938. In March 1939, the Propaganda Ministry had around 5,000 artworks burned in the courtyard of the Berlin Main Fire Department. Several rooms included displays of works by Jewish artists, anti-Religious works and those that were deemed insulting to the German people. Stck Drei 4. In 1932, doctors in the psychiatric hospital in Arnsdorf diagnosed her with schizophrenia. It was boycotted by many musicians and composers in Germany, even those that were committed members of the Nazi Party. Crazy at any price! read a sign above the modern art masterpieces at the Nazi-sponsored Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art, in English) exhibition in Munich, Germany, in 1937. United Kingdom. iambercem Plot summary Add synopsis Genre Documentary The general impression it leaves is of a set of men savagely protesting against the pain they have been unjustly made to bear.. The title was added after the document was first created, and may have been written by Harry Fischer himself. This combination of populist awareness and the rejection of 'decadent art' began to be mobilised long before 1933. 1. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism, the exhibition subsequently traveled to several other cities in Germany and Austria. It went on to tour the country. to be valid, to count as, to be regarded as, The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric, Lawrence Scanlon, Renee H. Shea, Robin Dissin Aufses. In Barrs mind, the Germans didnt deserve the modern masterpieces they once rejected, or at least didnt deserve them as much as the appreciative MoMA did. The Entartete Kunst exhibit, featuring over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of 32 German museums, premiered in Munich on 19 July 1937, and remained on view until 30 November, before traveling to 11 other cities in Germany and Austria. Even Hitler-approved artists such as Adolf Ziegler, whose triptych Die vier Elemente(The Four Elements) once hung above Hitlers fireplace in the Munich Fhrerbau but now appears in the Neue Galerie show, could find themselves in a career- and life-jeopardizing situation with one wrong move. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Thorsten Kunst produced a video from your horse during the auction and from the presentation. Degenerate Art also was the title of an exhibition, held by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of 650 modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art . The exhibitions argued that this art had been nurtured by those politicians who had betrayed Germany by . This week we explore the Degenerate Art exhibition, opened in Munich in 1937, one of the most shameful chapters of art history and, simultaneously, one of the most surprising. The inventory was donated to the V&A's National Art Library by Elfriede Fischer, the widow of Heinrich Robert (Harry) Fischer, in 1996. Corrections? As Ines Schlenker points out in her catalogue essay, Defining National Socialist Art: The First Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung in 1937, Hitler vaguely defined acceptable Nazi art as eternal, stemming from the inner being of a people, leaving curators and artists scrambling to abide by his unclear wishes. These works of art were shipped to a grain silo in Berlin Kpenick, where they were inventoried on index cards. Created between 1938 and 1945, when he retired to the village of Seebll in northern Germany, these small, immediate images were inspired by the flat, marshy landscape and open skies near his home. In 1937, Nazi officials purged German museums of works the Party considered to be degenerate. Thirty of the original 300 paintings, by 64 artists from Wassily Kandinsky to Oskar Kokoschka, many of whom were forced into exile and whose works had been stripped from German museums, will be reunited for the first time at the Liebermann Villa in Berlin for the exhibition London 1938: Defending Degenerate German Art. Volume 1 covers the cities Aachen to Grlitz, while Volume 2 covers Gttingen to Zwickau. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2023, You can change your preferences or opt out of hearing from us at any time using the unsubscribe link in our emails. Created at the heart of the Nazi regime by Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda, the document records the confiscation of more than 16,000 works of art which the Nazis deemed 'degenerate'. Many of the artworks displayed in these early exhibitions would later be confiscated in 1937, recorded on the inventory, and displayed in the Munich exhibition of Degenerate Art. His brazen nudes, with their lurid gazes, swimming in primeval fluids . Technique: 'A' for Aquarell (watercolour), 'G' for Graphik (print), 'L' for lmalerei (oil painting) | 7. And its effects are being felt even today - witness the contested cache of paintings hoarded. Two other copies of an earlier version of Volume 1 (A G) are known to have survived the War, and these are now held by the German Federal Archives in Berlin (R55/20744, R55/20745). The Surrealists explored the secrets of the subconscious; the Cubists experimented with new, alien points of view. German painter Otto Dix used his paintings to convey his disillusionment regarding the horrors of war. From the very moment that the Nationalist Socialist Party came to power, its leaders immediately placed art and the artistic domain at large under a microscope. Jewish artists could not possess licenses for performing in public and were no longer allowed into concert halls (though they could perform in the Jdischer Kulturbund). Although it is not yet known how, when and for what purpose Fischer obtained the list, he seems to have possessed it from at least the late 1960s. ], [Many thanks to the Neue Galerie in New York City for providing me with the image above from, a review copy of the catalogue to, and other press materials related to the exhibition Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, which runs through June 30, 2014. 126 Albert Street It is widely thought that the Chancellor of the German Reich, Adolf Hitler, was the mastermind behind the opening of the Entartete Kunst, or Degenerate Art exhibition. A decree issued on 30 June 1927 allowed for the seizure of German Modern Art from museums created since 1910. Instead of images of prostitutes, they could appreciate paintings and sculptures celebrating motherhood. Blatt 357 - 99 Rechnung.jpg 383 665; 54 KB. But no amount of money or threats could change the fact that all the top tier artists embraced modernism, leaving only the second stringers to put Hitlers ideals into artistic action. Hitlers apathy grew along with his belief that the 19th century was the veritable pinnacle of cultural and intellectual achievement, producing, as he had claimed many times, many of the greatest music composers, architects, poets, painters, and sculptors the world had ever seen. In the first decades of the 20th century, radical new art flourished in Germany. for seven weeks, inviting the inhabitants of the city to come and meet her. B. malfeasance The exhibition presented 650 works of art, confiscated from German museums, and was staged in counterpoint to the concurrent Great German Art Exhibition. It forms part of the National Art Library Fischer Collection. Instead, modern art centered predominantly around abstraction, the human psyche, and fragility. More than that, the Nazi regime explicitly drew a direct link between modernist stylistic tendencies and mental illness and societal dysfunction. This meant that Hitler and his totalitarian regime effectively weaponized art to propagate a message of xenophobia, antisemitism, racism, and hate. It allows us to chart the dispersal of the looted objects to collections all over the world and to remember those works which were lost to the flames. A devout Catholic, he was not only the Mayor of Cologne during the Weimar years, but at the close of WWII was a co-founder and leader of the center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, the same party of Germany's current Chancellor Angela Merkel). De ontaarde kunst tentoonstelling was de meest bezochte moderne kunsttentoonstelling ooit, maar leidde ook tot de vernieling van duizenden kunstwerken. It was the cornerstone of an ambitious propaganda campaign that culminated in the exhibition Entartete Kunst, which took place in Munich in 1937. The racial laws were imposed strictly in music because it was so important in the Third Reich; the Nazis considered Germany to be culturally superior in all areas but particularly so in music. The exhibition presented 650 works of art, confiscated from German museums, and was staged in counterpoint to the concurrent Great German Art Exhibition. In 1928, Paul Schultz-Naumburg, an architect and Nazi activist, published his book Kunst und Rasse (Art and Race), which summarised the worldview that underlay the Nazis' campaign against 'degenerate art'. During the first decades of the 20th century, before the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, abstract and radically new forms of art were at the epicenter of public attention and adoration. The inventory's two typescript volumes provide crucial information about the provenance, exhibition history and fate of each artwork. In hopes of angering tax-conscious citizens, degenerate works in German national museums came tagged with the price the German people paid (but never pointing out that the largest prices came during the inflationary times of the late 1920s, when people pushed wheelbarrows full of marks around to buy a loaf of bread). The art exhibition was celebrated on a wider scale, whilst the smaller music exhibition was quieter so as not to incite protest. The origins of the idea that art could be degenerate were bound up in the social and economic transitions of the nineteenth century. Faass said the reassembled paintings including works by Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Max Beckmann have been displayed alongside the stories of those who loaned the works. Eugen Hoffmann . The 'Us versus Them' dichotomy is fundamental to any propaganda to create a successful antagonism by identifying a people in relation to their shared threat. The Nazi government's concern for degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known campaign against degenerate art ("Entartete Kunst"). Fighting for modern art suddenly became a way of fighting against the Nazi legacy. Credit. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2023, Background image: Adolf Hitler inspecting confiscated artworks, 13 January 1938 (Aktion "Entartete Kunst"), photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann. While there are many examples of the censorship of music through the ages, that of the suppression of music by the Third Reich is particularly notable. The V&A's copy of the inventory lacks a formal title page. When they saw the London show, many people reportedly said they couldnt agree with Hitler on most things, but they sided with him when it came to modern art, said Martin Faass, the Berlin exhibitions co-curator. The Neue Galerie in New York City revisits that sad moment in modern art history with the exhibition Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, which runs through June 30, 2014. The building was dark, with narrow staircases and small rooms, which were deliberately overfilled and the works displayed in a chaotic manner. The 1937 exhibit of ENTARTETE KUNST at the Archeological Institute in Munich, not far from the House of German Art, with paintings of modern artwork declared by the Nazis to be "degenerate" on the gallery walls. One million individuals were reported within the first six weeks alone, while an additional million saw the Degenerate Art project as it traveled throughout Germany between February 1938 and April 1941. Hitler also insisted that entry to the exhibition would be free so as to encourage the public to attend and have them comprehend the qualities of degenerate art. For this purpose, he provided a list of names of artists whom he deemed guilty of promoting degeneracy and whose work would then fall victim to the confiscations. The exhibitions, which had titles such as Schreckenskammer (Chamber of Terror), Kunst im Dienste der Zersetzung (Art in the Service of Subversion) and Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), were united by a common theme: they denounced works of art which were interpreted as an attack against the German people and as symptoms of a cultural decline inextricably associated with liberal democracy. Schlimmer noch: Zwar knnen weiterhin Ausstellungen und Ankufe akademischer deutscher und lokaler Kunst durchgefhrt werden, aber der mhsam an die Stadt gebundene Nachlass von Wilhelm Lehmbruck muss an die Familie zurckgegeben werden, und durch die Aktion Entartete Kunst 1938 gehen dem Museum ber 100 Werke - wenige Gemlde, aber Arbeiten auf Papier - u.a. von Lehmbruck und . Thanks to a short silent film by American filmmaker Julien Bryan (available online here), we know how Entartete Kunst looked, right down to the range of reactions of the German citizens come face to face with modern art by such now-esteemed figures as George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Marc Chagall, and Vasily Kandinsky, all of whom are represented among the approximately 50 paintings and sculptures, 30 works on paper, and posters in the Neue Galeries small-scale recreation. Composers such as Hindemith and Stravinsky, who had been unsure about their place in Nazi Germany, took their inclusion in Entartete Musik as confirmation that they were unwelcome in the Third Reich. The third room featured nudes, the nature of which was summarised as the 'Mockery of the German Woman as Cretin and Whore!' On 30 June 1937, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment, authorised the Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Adolf Ziegler, to select and confiscate paintings and sculptures from public collections for a major exhibition on 'degenerate art'. ''Die Kunst muss Verknderin des Erhabenen und Schnen und damit Trgerin des Natrlichen und Gesunden sein.'' -Adolf Hitler (1930) "Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern Kunst macht sichtbar.'' -Paul Klee (1920) Verbot der ''Entarteten Kunst'' -Bekmpfung einer However, the majority of the Modern works were banished to depots, and in some cases the purchases . Oskar Kokoschkas towering oil on canvas, Self-portrait of a Degenerate Artist, captures his defiant mood. By doing so, Peters continues, the Nazis shifted this incriminated field, contrary to Max Nordau, clearly into their own present, while reviving Wagner and Nietzsche, whom Nordau had denounced as degenerate. Consistent only in their inconsistency, the Nazis struggled to agree on the list of degenerates, with figures such as chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels considering the German Expressionists as a possibly acceptable group, at least until Hitler made his opinion perfectly clear. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/art/degenerate-art. Others struggled to see the cultural value of the largely expressionist artworks, with the Daily Telegraphs critic denouncing them for their poster-like crudity. What are the correct present tense forms of the verbs in parenthesis? There were strict controls over the works of art, music, literature and film that could be enjoyed, and those that were considered Entartete, or degenerate. This regulation of cultural life culminated in two exhibitions in the late 1930s: Entartete Kunst (1937) and Entartete Musik (1938). Sadly, we have only photographs but no film footage of that counter-exhibition, but one can only imagine the expressions of people walking among the cheesy portraits of Hitler (a dozen in all) as well as Aryanized classical nudes and idealized peasant workers. En effet, Thors ten Kunst a fi lm votre cheval lors de la prsentation et de la vente aux enchres. Eager to take hold of this opportunity, Hitler approved the proposal on the 30th of June and appointed Adolf Ziegler, the head of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts and painter of svelte asexual female nudes, responsible for the collection and curation of the artworks. In 1939 many of the confiscated works were auctioned in Lucerne, Switzerland, or sold abroad to finance the Nazi Party; the rest are believed to have been burned in Berlin. The room also held an ensemble of Dada art, which was particularly despised by the Nazis for its intentional irrationality. In her analysis of the reasons why Hitler-approved art was so bad, Schlenker quotes Hitlers photographer-turned-curator Hoffmanns lament that Unfortunately [] no genius like [Adolph] Menzel, [Friedrich] Kaulbach, [Moritz von] Schwind and so on emerges from the contemporary painters in spite of all the sponsorship. By trying to turn back the clock to the 19th century, Hitler wanted art to return to a time and style that no longer resonated with modern artists or audiences. Omissions? Worms: Wernersche, 1995. London 1938: Defending Degenerate German Art is at the Liebermann Villa, Berlin, Germany, from Sunday to 14 January 2019. Though the same Nazi ideology applied to both Entartete Kunst and Entartete Musik, music was a more sensitive subject in Nazi Germany and Entartete Musik was therefore more controversial. His aims for the exhibition were that it should bring about a clear decision for music as well [as art]: what was and is diseased, unhealthy, and highly dangerous in our music and that for this reason must be eliminated.. A failed artist himself, Hitler wanted to mold the German soul in every way, including how it viewed the world through the prism of art. Vol 2 - Free ebook download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read book online for free. Slogans criticised composers and their music, educating visitors about the danger of these music and musicians. They hoped the exhibition would help them shape a new existence.. Composers included in the exhibition included Jewish musicians, foreign artists and Modernists including Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, Ernst Toch, Hans Eisler, Igor Stravinsky, Franz Schreker, Ernst Krenek and Kurt Weill. "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) exhibition Film | Accession Number: 1991.259.1 | RG Number: RG-60.0375 | Film ID: 210 The 1937 exhibit of ENTARTETE KUNST at the Archeological Institute in Munich, not far from the House of German Art, with paintings of modern artwork declared by the Nazis to be "degenerate" on the gallery walls. Although his antipathy for modernist art is still undisputed, the abomination exhibition was actually not his brainchild. The inventory reveals how this cynical process unfolded: they were sold through art dealers trusted by the regime, or they could be exchanged for the kind of racially appropriate artworks displayed in the German Art Exhibition (such cases were indicated on the inventory with a 'T', for 'Tausch', meaning 'exchange'). The Einstein portrait is believed to have been bought by the Royal Society, although there is no proof Liebermann ever received the 350 asking price. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric 2nd Edition Lawrence Scanlon, Renee H. Shea, Robin Dissin Aufses The newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack) called it Bolshevik art half of it, of course, by Jews and emigrants, which had nothing to do with what the German people consider to be art. He was forced to join the Nazi government's Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and had to promise to paint only inoffensive landscapes. Stck Eins 2. In contrast, the banned artistic genres such as Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism were arguably somewhat disliked or misunderstood by ordinary Germans. See more ideas about degenerate art, art, cities in germany. Nachtclub Schule 4. Hitler, however, never gives Nordau any credit for one simple reasonNordau was a Jew. By the end of the exhibition on November 30th, 1937, and to this day, Entartete Kunst remains the most visited modern art exhibition in history with over 2 million visitors. In yet another irony, as Ruth Heftrig points out in her catalogue essay, Paradoxically, the stigmatization of modernism caused by the National Socialists is partly responsible for the current boom in modern art. Post-war Germans and German museums overcorrected the evils of the Degenerate Art age by embracing and promoting modern art more than any other country. Which characters play a part in this story's conflict? He was one of the first artists to be denounced by the Nazis who seized more than 400 of Kokoschkas works from museum collections. And, instead of disturbingly disproportionate sculptures, they could feel inspired by sculptures which followed the time-honoured principles of antiquity. Sale price in German currency (Reichsmarks), You can also view and download a PDF copy of the Entartete Kunst inventory, Entartete Kunst inventory, vol. Updates? Sale price in foreign currency | 10. His deeply pessimistic and disturbing paintings created for the University of Vienna caused a scandal. Faass added: In these Brexit-tainted times, its important to show how significant, then and now, on a European and international level such cultural cooperations are. Hear about collections, exhibitions, courses and events from the V&A and ways you can support us. bpk, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Archiv Heinrich Hoffmann, You can change your preferences or opt out of hearing from us at any time using the unsubscribe link in our emails. The Reichsmusikkammer set up Reichsmusiktage (Reich Music Days) in Dsseldorf in 1938 to present sanctioned German music; they later set up an exhibition of degenerate music which echoed the Entartete Kunst exhibition. Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 and the formation of his NSDAP government was met with enthusiasm throughout Germany and infamously marked the beginning of the Third Reich and the "legal" concerted persecution of those deemed enemies of . The next step was their 'liquidation': if they could not be shown in Germany outside the context of 'shaming exhibitions', they could yet be sold abroad to generate cold, hard cash for the Nazi regime. Oil on canvas. The case of Elfriede Lohse-Wchtler (1899 1940) draws into focus the terrible consequences of the worldview that lay at the heart of the Nazi comparison of modernist art with mental degeneration. Stck Vier important drone record #01: Minimalist electronic music. Which are you? How to say entartete kunst in Dutch? Chief Menominee did not negotiate to sell the land, but three other chiefs did. As recently as 2010, the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture met with opposition over David Wojnarowiczs 1987 video A Fire in My Belly because of the combination of its religious content and his sexual orientation. There was presumably also a master list, in inventory number order. The Entartete Kunst exhibition was a heavily rushed project. To forcefully drive home this point, Paul Schultze-Naumburg juxtaposed photographs of disabled individuals with modernist art to demonstrate that they were both ultimately the outcome of negative hereditary traits and were symptomatic of a 'racial degeneration' which had to be curtailed. The Degenerate Art exhibition (German: Die Ausstellung "Entartete Kunst") was an art exhibition organized by Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi Party in Munich from 19 July to 30 November 1937. Etymologi Entartete Kunst er tysk og betyder 'udartet, dekadent kunst'. In the independent and subordinate clauses in the given sentences, underline the subjects once and the verbs twice. It is interesting to note that apart from being considered elements of societal and mental degradation, modern art could also be used as an additional source of revenue for the Nazi regime. In contrast to the organized madness of Entartete Kunst, the show of great German art epitomized rationality and order to the dullest degree. Copyright 2007-2023 & BIG THINK, BIG THINK PLUS, SMARTER FASTER trademarks owned by Freethink Media, Inc. All rights reserved. . Though the focus was on Jewish influence, only six of the 112 artists represented were Jewish. After showing in Munich, Entartete Kunst toured to other German cities. Modern art always called for freedom of thought and freedom in art. Thus, contra Barr, Germany today might deserve modern art more than anyone. From the thousands of works removed, 650 were chosen for a special exhibit of Entartete Kunst. All Right Reserved. During World War II, the Nazi party used state control of music and the arts in an attempt to eradicate . Harry Fischer apparently collected most or all of the material in the Fischer Collection during the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a view to donating it to the V&A. In the case of oppressive propaganda, such as that of the Nazi regime, the enemy figure is More than that, the Nazi regime explicitly drew a direct link between modernist stylistic tendencies and mental illness and "societal dysfunction." Complete List of 'Entartete Kunst' (Degenerate Art). So that people can see and learn to recognize it.. www.thebreman.org/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Entartete-Musik. Entartete Kunst was not the first exhibition of Degenerate Art. Schandausstellungen or exhibitions of shame popped up in Nazi-sympathizing galleries for years. The inventory was donated to the V&A by the widow of Heinrich Robert (Harry) Fischer in 1996.. In 1933, he was dismissed from his academic post as a teacher at Dresden Academy, and his artwork was declared degenerate. In 1939 the Nazi regime began to systematically murder the mentally and physically disabled throughout the Reich. Ziegler promptly assembled a commission which would include Wolfgang Willrich, whose book, Die Suberung des Kunsttempels (The Cleansing of the Temple of Art), was a major inspiration for Goebbels. 1. This is a documentary from 1993 about the art exhibit under the Nazi regime of what they considered to be the most corrupting and corrosive examples of what they called 'Entartete Kunst' or 'Degenerate Art.' The exhibit, which opened in July of 1937, was meant to be laughed at and despised.