Painting By A Famous Artist

[Taphophilia]

Christians say this person was absolutely in no way a Christian. A little known fact, was that he was an accomplished artist. Here is one of his paintings.

 

"Mother Mary With The Holy Child Jesus Christ"

[Piprus]

That's very interesting. A Hitler documentary I watched one time dealt with Hitler's failed attempt to become an artist, but the examples of his art that were shown didn't deal with religious themes, and were intended to show the lack of human feeling in his work. (I don't know jack about art) Obviously, he was trying to show a classic religious and human theme (mother and child) in a human way here. I wonder, after he became Germany's fuhrer, did he ever paint again?

[Taphophilia]

hmm...I don't know.

 

I also think that it is very interesting that Hitler, who was Catholic, has never been excommunicated by the Catholic church. For those Christians who refute his Christianity, they have never read Mein Kampf.

 

Hitler held many hysterical beliefs which not only include, God and Providence but also Fate, Social Darwinism, and ideological politics. He spoke, unashamedly, about God, fanaticism, idealism, dogma, and the power of propaganda. Hitler held strong faith in all his convictions. He justified his fight for the German people and against Jews by using Godly and Biblical reasoning. Indeed, one of his most revealing statements makes this quite clear:

 

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

 

What is frightening is that the German Christian Social movement, strongly resembles the Christian Right in the US today.

[Kurari]

A Hitler documentary I watched one time dealt with Hitler's failed attempt to become an artist, but the examples of his art that were shown didn't deal with religious themes, and were intended to show the lack of human feeling in his work.

 

I've studied Hitler's art and he did some amazing work doing buildings. He was much more of a vector based artist (meaning he could acurately gage proportion, space, and distance) with inanimate objects than he could more organic life forms like humans, animals, and such. I agree that he couldn't really capture "life" in his art very well, but I still think if he persued it he could have made a living with his artwork if he played on his strengths instead of his weaknesses.

 

Not that I think he would have persude art instead of dictatorship, but I think his teachers had some blind spots in regards to his talent.

[Warrior_of_god]

I've studied Hitler's art and he did some amazing work doing buildings.

Indeed. The director of the Vienna Art school, where Hitler failed to gain acceptance, noted this. I have often wondered if this influenced his wanting to build Germania, his "World Capitol".

[godlessgrrl]

The rejection of his art work certainly led to his future attitude about what place art should and shouldn't have in German culture.

 

Germany at the time was undergoing an explosion of modern art movements, as was the rest of Europe (especially in the post-WWI period). Hitler found this utterly revolting and felt that German art needed to reflect a more conservative, traditional, style - lots of watercolor landscapes, images of the Bavarian Alps, mother-and-child paintings, pretty tame stuff. When he came to power he persecuted the Bauhaus school until it was shut down and most of its staff fled to other countries. He and some of his cronies put together a show on "Degenerate Art" which included works by Mondrian, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Max Ernst, Kandinsky, and others. (It probably was one of the best shows ever produced, ironically... and got exponentially more attendance than the show of "Proper German Art" that was exhibited nearby.)

 

The exodus of artists out of Germany and into other nations led to things like the American Art Deco movement of the 1930's and the development of abstract expressionism. (Max Ernst, for instance, fled Germany and married Peggy Guggenheim.)

 

I hate to think about how many probably wonderful works of art were destroyed by Hitler, all because of his rage and resentment at not being accepted as an artist himself. (Coupled with his being a psychotic fuckhead, to quote Eddie Izzard...)

 

Bad time to be an artist in Germany, in the 1930's... unless you worked for Goebbels' propaganda machine or were Leni Reifenstahl.

[Warrior_of_god]

As far as art goes Georing had art from all over Europe at his palace in Berteschgaden, that and wine, he loved em both.

[Taphophilia]

Thanks Gwen for that Art History mini lesson. Interesting.

[godlessgrrl]

Yer welcome. Glad to be of service.

 

Yeah Goering and others did take some of the degenerate stuff and keep it for themselves. Funny how that works...

 

As I understand it a lot was destroyed, some was taken for private use, and the rest was mothballed in warehouses and stayed there until it was either bombed to shit, or else the Russians moved in when Germany fell and took it back to Moscow. (The gold treasure from Troy took the last route, iirc.)

[The Sage Nabooru]

Hitler's ultimate stance on religion seemed to be that while Christianity was all right for the here and now, it would of course need to be replaced with a much more Aryan-centered state religion in due time.

 

The main reason was that Christianity was rooted in Judaism. There was no getting around the fact that the prophets were Jews, and the entire Old Testament was Jewish in origin. Since Christianity was started by Jews and preceded by Judaism, it would need to be replaced by a faith in a blond-haired, blue-eyed God.

 

At Lutheran school I had teachers and relatives of schoolmates who were involved heavily in, ah, deeply German-American ideals. They always had a deep hatred of Catholics, although that might just be the Lutheran in them.

 

As for Hitler's art I do tend to see that his icy Aryan human forms lack strong emotional content and life. Even when selecting works for the national German collection he was a poor judge of others' paintings and sculptures, preferring rather bland creations.

 

Might it also be said that simply from a deep interest and history in art the Madonna and Child is a common theme, done in fact so often as a regular sort of test-portrait that a picture of them cannot always be ascertained to mean deep Christian or Catholic values.