“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”      ~Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Left: *Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man (Self-portrait?), 1513-14. Plundered by Nazis in Poland. Never recovered. Estimated value, $100M.

Private Eye?

It used to be that art collecting was the province of the very rich—kings and sultans, popes and emperors. Then, in the Age of Exploration, an emerging merchant class arrived on the scene, in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and England. They wanted ‘in’ because owning art was prestigious, a sign that you were traveling in the right circles. It meant that you could raise two crossed fingers at your next banquet and proudly boast, “The king and I, yup, we’re like that!” Collecting—or rather accumulating—wasn’t a case of art for art’s sake; there were matters of power and prestige on the line. Art was hung high in 17th and 18th century estates, salon style: floor to ceiling and end-to end, in a helter-skelter mix of portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The portraits were, of course, renderings of you and your wealthy forbears; the landscapes often reflected on pastoral settings or storms at sea, metaphors for good times and bad; and still lifes were crammed to bursting with all manner of fruits, vegetables, flowers, sea life and other dead animals. If life at your estate was truly bountiful—then this painting confirmed there were enough leftovers to make a painting. artes fine arts magazine

But hoarding art for purposes of entertaining a small circle of friends behind closed doors didn’t sit well with many, particularly after a couple or three revolutions. The first was in the colonies on this side of the Atlantic, the second was in France, on the other side of the pond, the third- and more pervasive- was the Industrial Revolution, with each, in its own way, reshaping western civilization.

This trend toward opening the doors took a different turn in the late 18th-early 19th century, as portraiture and landscapes became the motifs of choice among a newly emerging merchant class. Private commissions of family and individual portraits were de rigueur among landed gentry, particularly in colonial America and among upper middle class Englishmen, growing rich by manufacturing and trading in an ever-widening global market. Serene landscapes held their place on the walls of established homes and estates, as evidence of a bucolic natural world, laid out at the feet of an ordained and expanding social class, reaping benefits directly from God’s boundless earthly treasures.

Museums began to emerge in growing urban areas (Louvre, 1793; Smithsonian, 1847; British Museum, 1759; Uffizi, 1765), in response to a growing population seeking economic opportunity and cultural experiences as cities industrialized and diversified, economically. Trains and paved roads put Europe’s cities with reach of many more, living nearby. But, even as measures of class and status shifted in the late 1800s, the idea that possessing art represented a sign of status and wealth remained unchanged. It was not until commercial printing and photography developed to a point where inexpensive representations of ‘artful’ subject matter could be made available at affordable prices, did reproductions of famous works of art find their way into working class households throughout Western Europe and America.

The advent of a new century brought new political forces into play. Specifically, a newly unified, bellicose Germany (1871), began flexing its territorial muscle, building its military arsenal, and eyeing neighboring nations as fair game in their expansionistic ambitions. It took the rise of Adolf Hitler, after a demoralizing loss in World War I, to rally the German people around the goal of ethnic and cultural superiority—first in Europe, and then throughout the world. With this mega-maniacal agenda set in motion in the early 1930s, Hitler set about the task of dismantling Europe’s cultural heritage—particularly that of the Jews—to reshape it in his own Arian image. A competent, aspiring artist as a young man, he had been crushed by a rejection to a prestigious art school. For this, and many, more complex reasons, he saw himself as the arbiter of good taste in art, making the acquisition of certain styles of art—and the rejection of others considered “degenerate—a central goal of the Third Reich.

A 2006 documentary, The Rape of Europa, tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and the Second World War.

In a journey through seven countries, the film takes the audience into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But young art professionals as well as ordinary heroes, from truck drivers to department store clerks, fought back with an extraordinary effort to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.

The Rape of Europa begins and ends with the story of artist Gustav Klimt’s famed Gold Portrait, stolen from Viennese Jews in 1938 and now the most expensive painting ever sold.

Today, more than sixty years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war.

The film is a prequel to the recently released, The Monuments Men, a true account of the museum curators, college professors and artists who were tasked, in 1945, to retrieve, catalogue and return the thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis, and then hidden in salt mines and castles throughout Germany. It is a narrative about an astoundingly successful effort, over six years, to right a moral and aesthetic wrong, perpetrated by a real-life, Evil Empire. And while the story has not yet ended, as the provenance of many works held by museums and private collectors are still being disputed, the original documentary and the current Hollywood version make an excellent pairing, and each should be viewed. Both films are based on the book, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, by Lynn Nicholas, with multiple prizes and awards to the credit of author and film-makers, alike.

Editor’s Note: As a point of interest, all the images included in this article are works listed as either stolen, during the war or in subsequent thefts. Some have been recovered and returned to their rightful owners. An asterisk* in the caption denotes a work as looted, or stolen, and still missing.

 

Left: * Johannes Vermeer, The Concert (c. 1664). Stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, not yet recovered. $5M reward for information leading to its return.

 

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My Best,

Richard Friswell, Publisher & Managing Editor

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Watch rare, vintage color film footage from Hitler’s “Degenerate Art” exhibition and “Day of German Art, 1939”: