At the end of his previous term, the Trump government focused its attention on art. An executive command from 2020 entitled “Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” Mamined that all future projects meet neoclassical architectural styles; Another series of executive orders concerned the so -called ‘National Garden of American Heroes’, a collection of triumphalistic and traditionalist images of patriotic correct figures, including, among others,, Barry Goldwater” Douglas MacArthurAnd Vince Lombardi. Both earlier orders were deleted by President Joe Biden to be resuscitated during Trump’s second term. Now, the new government consolidates its authority worrying about government agencies that deal with art.
The National Donation for Art, for example, has updated the policy of the subsidy to eliminate financing for everything that has been interpreted as related to diversity, equity and inclusion (dei), while priority to propagandistic ” ”Projects that celebrate the … Semiquincientnial of the United States of America.“Most echoing, in a released social tirade, Trump purified the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and installed himself as a chair while he is” “Vision for a golden age of American art and culture“On the same social media site. He barked: “No more sleep shows, or other anti-American propaganda-alleen the best. Ric, welcome to show things! ”
In a later post, Trump wrote: “From now on we will use a ruthless purification war against the last elements of our cultural decline! Make the American art beautiful again! “Apart from the fact that he did not post that. That statement, apart from the Trumpian affecting of Scattershot capitalization and the second sentence, was delivered by Adolf Hitler in a speech of 18 July 1937 at the opening of the opening of the opening of the Great German art exhibition In Munich.
The fact that the artistic feelings of Trump and Hitler (among other things) can be processed seamlessly together is extremely reason for concern. Although there are still some who pretend that the fascism of our president is an open question – Elon Musk Sieg heel Handy explained – The new interest of the Maga movement in the art prefers an ominous turn. If cultural institutions were allowed to continue their necessary work of art financing, exhibitions and scholarships relatively unscathed during the first Trump administration, that is no longer the case in its second. Trump’s wish to preserve the Kennedy Center, seems understandably a bizarre waste of time, an exercise in the middle of dilettantism. But fascism is naturally obsessed with cultural control. Far from just being a new joke in Trumpian narcissism and surplus, his new perseverance is proof of his continuous fascist crawl.
Hitler was famous a failed painter, a mediocre landscape artist who was not able to once represent a human figure. As Chancellor of Reich, he understood his role as generative power and spent hours with his official architect Albert Speer who is about the imagination of a triumphalistic new Berlin, or planning museums such as Haus der Kunst van Munich. From 1937 to 1944, towards the end of the war, Great German art exhibitions were performed in Munich, who promote artists who felt the Nazis, an exemplary Aryan ideals. “Hitler’s obsession with aesthetics was not only a personal grill,” writes Frederic Spotts in Hitler and the power of aesthetics (2002), “But a central driving force behind his political vision, where he tried to” create again “DWZ to make it big again. The dictator understood the loaded energy of creative expression, of amazing images, grandiose architecture, theatrical spectacle. This was a fighting field as sure as a literal one, the site of “cultural struggle” or Kulturkampf. Are What the American Alt-Right journalist Andrew Breitbart once described when he said that “politics is downstream of culture.” What is frightening is that a cultural war never stays cold and that it never remains alone about culture.
In her Landmark 1975 Essay in The New York Review of Books” Susan Sontag explains how fascism is not only an ideology, but an aesthetic policy that “emphasizes the contrast between the beautiful and the impure, the invisible and the contaminated, the physical and the mental.” These values could all be seen on the Great German art exhibitionwhere 600,000 people viewed the war paintings Franz Eichhorstmilitary scenes by Fritz Erler, and neoclassical kitsch through Wilhelm Hempfing. The deserved contemporary uncertainty of those artists can become contrast Degenerate art exhibition Held in 1937 – held by the Nazi party to present “bad art” – including expressionist, cubist, surrealistic and dadaistic notables such as Piet Mondrian, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. Ironically, the Degenerate art exhibition turned out to be much more popular than the shows of approved art, with more than a million Germans who come there in the first six weeks. As far as Hitler is concerned, his artistic preferences were fiercely conservative and anti-modernist and described German avant-garde galleries as stuffed ‘shows [that] were terrible. They were a shame. ‘It was actually Trump talks to reporters about the Kennedy Center last Sunday.
Trump shares more with Hitler than just a affection for the prosaic, Maudlin and nationalistic. He also understands the strategic importance of controlling art, not to let apolitical bureaucrats organize subsidies or specialists exhibitions and schedules, but rather consolidate his own control (as he does about any other aspect of the government). His recent actions may seem micromanaging, but they reveal a dark intention. In his first term, Trump received a noisy conviction of most of the culture industry, especially in Hollywood. He is not going to make speech flow this second time unbound. The perseverance of fascism on cultural control can only remember the oppressed and libidinal, such as Hitler’s obsession about his failure as a painter who contributes to his wish to be seen as a great artist who does not with paint And canvas work, but with people and the people and the people nation. Even here is Trump’s own humiliation because he is an outer congregation that has never been fully accepted in Manhattan, the emotional boost for his middle finger for the art company.
Although Trump never wanted to become a painter, he clearly always wanted to become an actor. In a sense he is – one with a huge international stage. Just like Hitler from the neighborhood of all the creative energies of German culture used to be a malignant result, only the United States could only produce a Trump-a carnival barter and medicine man, shock jock and pornograph, reality show star and pro sausage. The Nazis exchanged in the German kitsch and so Maga will act in Americana. Last week, Trump posted A statue of himself generated by AI as a conductor for the National Orchestra with the caption “Welcome to the new Kennedy Center!” While the Maestro takes his baton and brings the rough beast to Washington, we must ask ourselves as artists and critics: how can we keep our soul?
