this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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You are making a fundamental mistake: that art is venerable by nature. I.e., if it is not venerable, it is not art.
I would insist that an incompetently made movie is a work of art, actually. It's very interesting to me that you wouldn't.
Fascist art is actually very interesting because there is a perverse artlessness to it.
The nazis were not good artists. They liked big, masculine, square stone blocks. They liked big nipple domes that communicated power through their sheer size and their size alone. They hated degenerate, jewish ornamentation and artistic flavor.
Their depiction in recent Wolfenstein games is notably cool as shit, but also entirely unlike them: the gothic-esque qualities of those pillars and tall buildings would have been seen as degenerate, damaging the masculine austerity they wanted to project.
Their art, their marble statues of strong, muscly soldiers, venerates status and power in a purely aesthetic, unthinking kind of way—you're not meant to think about it.
Now, why point this out. You keep bringing Hitler up in an obvious attempt to disgust, as if the words "Hitler" and "important" in the same sentence are itself a crime, but "important" doesn't have to mean "good." It doesn't even have to mean "likeable."
Hitler is a very notable historical figure, I'm sure you can imagine why, and his art, and the art of his fascist contemporaries, is an important reflection of what they were like as people: boring and stupid.
Why should I care if Ringo Starr or Jim Carrey are "important" or not? They don't deserve to be? Does "importance" come with a trophy or something?
Anything can be art, but most things are not good art. I'm not interested in wasting my time with bad art. A badly made movie is art, but everything is art, so what does it matter?
The Nazis were effective artists. Just look at their rallies. Their aesthetic was ideal for what they were trying to achieve. It's not the sort of thing I'd want around my house. But, the Germans were coming out of a time when they had been defeated in WWI and then humiliated by having to make reparations to the French. Their style was "we're powerful, manly men", which appealed to people as a contrast to the humiliation of post-war Germany.
I'm not trying to use him to disgust. I'm just pointing out that if the frequency with which art is discussed is important, then he's an important artist. I think if you focus just on the paint on the canvas, he was not at all important. He doesn't seem particularly skilled, and he didn't seem to do anything interesting or new.
If you consider "whose art should we study?" to be a trophy, then I suppose it does. I'm sure that question gets asked pretty often, and I think if your answer is Hitler, or Jim Carey, or Ringo Starr, you're not making good use of your time.
Don't lie to me, c'mon.
"If you accept that how much art is talked about is a useful metric, then you would have to accept Hitler as an important artist"—don't pretend you aren't stirring the pot.
Either, Hitler is talked about quite often, in which case, yeah, he's more significant than Picasso. Good job Hitler, I guess.
Or, he isn't, because nobody gives a shit about his stupid castle paintings, in which case I don't understand why you keep bringing him up.
People talk about him, they don't talk about his art, so no, we don't have to contend that he's an important artist, actually. But fine, you want me to accept through some lense you've constructed that Hitler is very important: Sure. He is. Now what?
What is the next part of this argument? Because the self-evidence of this is lost on me.
Their big boob building, which was meant to be the capital of world commerce or whatever, is ugly as all hell. I reject this entirely.
Their beach resort building is a big, flat rectangle.
If the point of these were to be as boring, depressing, lifeless, drab, uninspired, and hostile to people's mental health as possible, well, they certainly moved that conversation forward.
I'm not lying. I'm picking a well known person who isn't famous because of their art, but whose art is often shown on the Internet. I'll grant you that the art is often shown for shock value, but I'm not trying to "use him to disgust". I'm merely making the point that if you talk about how much "buzz" an artist's work gets, he's going to be right near the top.
Hitler is definitely discussed more often than Picasso. I'd even say that Hitler's art is discussed more often than Picasso's art. It may be for shock value, but again, if you're using "this person's art is talked about often" as an indicator for how relevant their art is, then he's going to be in the conversation.
People don't give a shit about his castle paintings as paintings in themselves. That's the point I'm making. They're not talking about his art because his art is worth talking about. But they're talking about his art because of who he is. If what matters is how often an artist's art is discussed, then his art is important. I don't think it should be, but those are the rules that are being suggested.
They talk about him and they talk about his art:
https://old.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/pm0rxq/nice_painting_though/
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-just-enjoyed-one-of-hitlers-artworks
https://www.tumblr.com/cleanmemes/56159658268
I dunno, you've decided he's important. Now I guess you go discuss his art? I'm having no part in it though.