Self-Portrait As a Degenerate Artist

ART AND IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY

SECTION EDITOR: JAMES C. HARRIS, MD Self-Portrait as a Degenerate Artist

...onbehalf of the German people I would like to ban any such pitiful unfortunates—evidently the victims of defective eyesight— from attempting to bluff the public into accepting the products of their distorted vision as real, or even as ‘art.’ Adolf Hitler, July 18, 1937, opening remarks, House of German Art1(p386,388)

N JULY 19, 1937, THE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense About Artists Being (Nazis) opened the Entartete Kunst (Degen- Degenerate,4 writing that art cultivates and refines our senses.4(p343) erate Art) exhibit directly across the park from By the early 1930s, the concept of degeneration was in de- the newly founded House of German Art that cline academically as new interventions for mental illnesses were had opened the day before. Entartete Kunst1 introduced by Adolph Meyer, Eugen Bleuler, and Sigmund Freud contained 650 items that had been confiscated from 32 public Ger- (hysteria).3 By the late 1930s, sterilization too was in decline. Ironi- O 1 2 man museums during the previous 2 ⁄ weeks and hastily as- cally, the Nazis took Nordau’s position on degeneracy seriously sembled. The confiscation of these works was retrospectively le- but did not refer to him publicly, presenting instead a distorted galized on May 31, 1938; the museums were never financially version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on degeneracy, perhaps be- compensated, and the artists represented were advised to stop cause Nordau was a prominent cosmopolitan Jew. painting and many were fired from their academic positions. The Kokoschka’s second and more enduring response to his in- first rooms of the exhibit were grouped by theme: religion, clusion in the degenerate art exhibit was his Self-Portrait as a Jewish artists, vilification of women; slogans in these and in other Degenerate Artist—a self-portrait depicting a proud and defi- rooms scorned abstraction and antimilitarism, likening this mod- ant man. As the political situation in Austria deteriorated, ern art to that of the insane. Eight paintings of Oskar Kokoschka Kokoschka had moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where his (1886-1980) were on display; 2 of his drawings were placed with sister lived. There he was commissioned to paint the portrait one by an institutionalized patient diagnosed with a mental ill- of Thomas Masaryk (1850-1937), the president of Czechoslo- ness. On a wall poster, the viewer was asked which of the 3 was vakia, who granted him a Czech passport. by an “inmate of a lunatic asylum,”1(p389) thus ridiculing Kokoschka was working on a commissioned self-portrait Kokoschka’s drawings and suggesting that he was a lunatic. when he was notified about the Degenerate Art exhibit. On hear- Kokoschka was shocked to find himself so characterized. Con- ing of it, he altered the position of his arms, now showing them current with Entartete Kunst, on the occasion of his 50th birth- defiantly crossed. Virile and robust,5 wearing a short-sleeved day, a major exhibit of his work was being shown at the Austrian shirt, with a broad nose, closed lips, and widely open eyes, he Museum in Vienna. He was concerned about the fate of his works looks directly at the viewer with a strained expression. The back- on loan from German museums if they were returned to Ger- ground of the painting shows the woods behind the house be- many when the exhibit ended. On August 3, 1937, Kokoschka longing to the grandparents of Olga Pavlovska´, his future wife, sought legal protections for his artwork from Kurt von Schush- where he had begun the painting. A stag appears on the right nigg, premier of Austria. Kokoschka wrote to von Schushnigg that and a running figure is shown on the left, perhaps to suggest at the opening of the House of German Art pursuit or impending flight, for Kokoschka was indeed a hunted man. He had become a vocal and adamant foe of the Nazis, who The German Chancellor himself [epigraph] declared that the pillo- planned to arrest him when they entered Czechoslovakia in 1938. ried artists “. . . suffer from defective vision,” and called upon Kokoschka fled to England with Olga before the German the Reich’s Minister of Interior to determine whether this defective invasion. There he painted a series of antifascist paintings vision is congenital or acquired. “If congenital steps must be taken (The Red Egg, Anschluss–Alice in Wonderland, That for Which to ensure that it becomes impossible for them to pass it on, and thus propagate the defect.” In other words the German Chancellor threat- We Fight). After the war, he and Olga permanently settled at ened to have these artists sterilized.2(p148) Villeneuve on Lake Geneva. From 1953 to 1963, Kokoschka initiated his School of Seeing at the Academy for Art in Salz- Kokoschka pointed out that painting involves far more than burg, Austria. The school would alert students to an aware- copying an object that is imprinted on the retina and that see- ness of their own existence—“to which art alone gives ing is an act of the conscious mind; hence there can be no fear form.”6(p175) There (no visual distortion for Kokoschka), he taught of a defect of vision being passed on.2 Despite Kokoschka’s pro- a new generation of artists to find the creative inner vision that test, his artwork was returned to the German museums. Hitler despised and sought to abolish. Preoccupation with degeneration had taken hold in the 19th century following several publications by Be´ne´dict Augustin James C. Harris, MD Morel (1809-1873). He found an increased rate of cretinism among family members, attributed it to hereditary degenera- REFERENCES tion, and extended the idea of degeneration to medicine and psychiatry.3 Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) extended degen- 1. Barron S, ed. Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Los eration to the social sciences in his work on criminology and Angeles, Calif: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 1991. described associated stigmata, both physical and psychologi- 2. Kokoschka O. Oskar Kokoschka Letters (1905-1976). London, England: Thames cal. Max Nordau (1849-1923), physician, critic, and Zionist, & Hudson; 1992. 3. Spiegel R. Freud’s refutation of degenerationism: a contribution to humanism. Con- widely popularized these views about degeneration and ex- temp Psychoanal. 1986;22:4-24. tended them to artists and authors in his 1892 book, Entar- 4. Shaw GB. The sanity of art: an exposure of the current nonsense about artists tung (Degeneracy). Nordau claimed that artists had defective being degenerate. In: Major Critical Essays. New York, NY: Penguin Books; 1986. 3 vision that made their work incoherent. George Bernard Shaw 5. Hoffman E. Kokoschka: Life and Work. London: Faber & Faber Ltd; 1947. (1856-1950) roundly refuted Nordau in his essay The Sanity 6. Kokoschka O. My Life. Britt D, trans. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing; 1974.

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