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Doug Bowker's avatar

This show reminds me of another one I saw in the early 90s, one that reproduced a famous show ftom the 1930s designed to denigrate the artists and modernism in general... The museum replicated the general presentation, including translations of the snarky title cards next the art from the original show... What was that one called? Oh yes: Degenerate Art.

It was an exhibition put together in Germany as a form of Nazi propaganda, intended to show the public dangers of modernism and free thinking. It was designed specifically to point out "qualities such as "decadence", "weakness of character","mental disease", and "racial impurity." It's hard not see plenty of painful similarities between that one of this, though the 1937 show displayed some 1500 works instead of the rather paltry number in Brooklyn. In both shows jokes and cynical comments were included next to each piece, again, as if they were afraid the public might draw their own "incorrect" conclusions on their own.

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Jack Miamensis's avatar

It's ironic that Picasso, who was always fashionably leftist and officially communist (though that had practically nothing to do with his actual life) is now a whipping boy for "progressives." I suppose his politics are no longer useful, or much less useful than his repurposed role. Funny how that works.

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