Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. (Wikipedia)
German Expressionism
German Expressionism consisted of a number of related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. German expressionism was an early twentieth century German art movement that emphasized the artist's inner feelings or ideas over replicating reality, and was characterised by simplified shapes, bright colours and gestural marks or brushstrokes. Expressionism refers to art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s inner feelings or ideas.
Degenerate Art - Entartete Kunst
On July 18th, 1937, the National Socialist party celebrated the glorious nation of Germany the only way any self-respecting fascist totalitarian state should: by opening an art exhibition. Wasting no expense, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels commissioned an entire art museum built especially for this momentous occasion. The Great German Art Exhibition was to overwhelm the public with awe for Führer Adolf Hitler’s absolute power. This would symbolize the end of an era of corruption and disgrace, brought on by the dangerous foreign ideas responsible for the fall of Germany after World War I.
Nazi Germany had to cleanse itself of the art embodying these ideas. Goebbels’ Reich Chamber of Culture went to the extreme effort of confiscating thousands of works of modern art within Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism; all painted as too intellectual, Communist, and consequently, too degenerate. How did they decide to distort this cultural life that did not support Nazi ideology? By opening another art exhibition.
Given the title, Entartete Kunst, or Degenerate Art, the exhibition was held in the dark, narrow halls of the Institute of Archaeology. The Reich Chamber of Culture appointed painter Adolf Ziegler to organize 650 of the confiscated paintings and sculptures for the sole purpose of condemnation.
This worked, possibly all too well. Over a period of only a few months, more than two million people crammed themselves into the exhibition. Nearly five times more people went to go see Degenerate Art than the great German art, and for those people, the Nazis not only created an opportunity for discourse about modern art, but they deemed it worthy of discussion.
Nazi Germany had to cleanse itself of the art embodying these ideas. Goebbels’ Reich Chamber of Culture went to the extreme effort of confiscating thousands of works of modern art within Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism; all painted as too intellectual, Communist, and consequently, too degenerate. How did they decide to distort this cultural life that did not support Nazi ideology? By opening another art exhibition.
Given the title, Entartete Kunst, or Degenerate Art, the exhibition was held in the dark, narrow halls of the Institute of Archaeology. The Reich Chamber of Culture appointed painter Adolf Ziegler to organize 650 of the confiscated paintings and sculptures for the sole purpose of condemnation.
This worked, possibly all too well. Over a period of only a few months, more than two million people crammed themselves into the exhibition. Nearly five times more people went to go see Degenerate Art than the great German art, and for those people, the Nazis not only created an opportunity for discourse about modern art, but they deemed it worthy of discussion.
Neo-Expressionist 1980's
Jean-Michel Basquiat
December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally.