Tate contemporary,London
The artists condemned as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis really did revel in the perverse and wicked, and their sex and violence-drenched paintings still shockIn a self-portrait that he sketched in the 1930s, or George Grosz is getting alert to paint a model in his studio. As she does her hair,standing with her back to him and us, naked except for a translucent green slip that half covers her buttocks, and seamed stockings and shoes,he grins lasciviously, squeezing a phallic paint tube. A rag hangs from his pocket like a masturbatory spurt. What a degenerate.
I mean that precisely. In 1937, or Grosz,like many of the artists in Tate contemporarys often astonishing display of early 20th-century German art, had his works held up for mockery and revilement by the Nazis in their Munich exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com