How to Cite

Werckmeister, Otto Karl: The Political Confrontation of the Arts in Europe from the Great Depression to the Second World War, edited by Wolfgang F. Kersten, Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2020. https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.649

License

Free access – all rights reserved
Free access – all rights reserved

Identifiers

https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.649
ISBN 978-3-948466-22-0 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-948466-23-7 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-948466-24-4 (Softcover)

Published

07/16/2020

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Authors

Wolfgang F. Kersten (Ed.), Otto Karl Werckmeister

The Political Confrontation of the Arts in Europe from the Great Depression to the Second World War

Georg Bloch Annual, Vol. 24/25, 2019/2020

Between 1929 and 1939 the arts in Europe were politicized more than ever before. Government oversight, party agitation, and public pressure sought to make them serve domestic policies of social stabilization and foreign policies of antagonistic self-assertion. They were drawn into the struggles between the economic, social, and political systems which came to a head in the Second World War. As a result, they were entangled in a three-way ideological conflict between communism, fascism, and democracy. In a fast-moving course, art policies were enacted, and art ideologies were proclaimed, with doctrinaire assurance. This is what the author calls a political confrontation of the arts.

Otto Karl Werckmeister, born in Berlin in 1934, Professor Emeritus of Art History, has been appreciated worldwide as a scientific protagonist and critical author for half a century. Most important book publications: Ende der Ästhetik (1971), Versuche über Paul Klee (1981), The Making of Paul Klee's Career, 1914–1920 (1989), Zitadellenkultur (1989), Linke Ikonen (1997), Der Medusa-Effekt (2005).

Media coverage

Olaf Peters, Politische Systemkonfrontation und offene Geschichte

in: Kunstchronik, Bd. 74 Nr. 4 (2021), S. 169-177

Chapters

Table of Contents
Pages
PDF
Cover
Front Matter
a-5
Content
7-13
Preface
14-15
Related Publications
16-17
Policies
Traditional versus Modern Art
19-51
Totalitarian Art Policy
53-85
Democratic Art Policy
87-119
Ideologies
Art of the People
121-153
Revolutionary Art
155-187
Ideologies and Policies
Artists
Political Activity
223-255
Political Oppression
257-288
Political Resistance
291-322
Toward War
Art Policy and War Policy
325-357
The Last Stand of Revolutionary Art
359-389
Traditional versus Modern Art Revisited
391-423
Plates
425-467
Notes
470-481
Index of Names
482-486

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