Quote:
Originally Posted by travric
You know from the foregoing it does show Hitler had an 'artistic' side that he sought to express. The fact is he did find success artistically in writing down his thoughts into arguably one of the most notorious books in history. And that was Mein Kampf.
What Hitler couldn't express through his art apparently surely seeped in and throughout his emotional prose writing. And that writing apparently lighted a fire among readers.
In Hitler's case it was the book rather than the picture that stands as a pivotal object on his legacy to the world. It is evident that damming up the art that never got to fruition within him unleashed calamity on the world. His words became literally more powerful than the brush.
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Very true.
I've often wondered what would have happened if Hitler had used his inheritance to pay for some art lessons from one of Vienna's many good artists.
There are many parallels between Hitler and Egon Schiele, one of Vienna's most famous (and controversial) artists.
Egon Schiele - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(A warning for anyone who looks up Shiele's paintings: He did some blatant pornography, so be prepared. Some might show up in a search.)
Both were shy and considered to be odd children, both came from very similar circumstances, and both arrived in Vienna around the same time. Schiele also applied at the Vienna School of Fine Arts and Crafts, and was accepted, but in less than a year, was kicked out. At the insistence of several of his professors, he was admitted to the other art school in Vienna, the more traditional Bildenden Academy. He left there on his own 3 years later.
Egon attracted the attention of Gustav Klimt, one of Austria's most important artists in its history, and Klimt took him in as a protégé. (A Klimt masterpiece recently brought the highest price ever for a 20th century painting).
Gustav Klimt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Schiele's work went from very tight and traditional to the highest levels of the Expressionists in just a few years. While still in his easy 20s, he was selling everything he could paint, right along with the other expressionists like Edvard Munch, the painter of The Scream, another painting that brought millions of dollars recently.
Schiele's work is raw, his figures are extremely posed, and he did quite a lot of very sensual paintings and drawings, some crossing the line into pornography, but even his most controversial and despised art still sold out. Even today, his work is still very arresting.
Like Hitler, he was drafted into the army, but never went to the front. He and his young wife both died 3 days apart from the Spanish flu after he was discharged in 1918. He was only 28, but left a massive volume of work behind.
Hitler was as sexually repressed as Schiele when he arrived in Vienna, but was never able to go beyond mediocre, uninspired city scopes in his paintings. His passions never found a release until after the war. Schiele was no better off, but he caught some breaks, and his work suddenly blossomed and he thrived, but he had to seek some of those breaks out. His output was prodigious, and within a few years, he was the talk of Vienna and most of Europe.
Hitler was crushed by Vienna. He never tried to seek out his breaks, choosing to become a surly drunk instead. The only gallerist who ever hung his paintings sought him out, more out of sympathy than because Hitler showed promise.
The war made Hitler even more surly. He was known as being almost silent in his company, following orders, but was even more repressed and remote. He was courageous, and was only known for being a fast runner. He won his Iron Cross as a courier, but his mates never got to know him personally in any way.
I think that if he had been able to let out some of his anger in his paintings, it's possible he could have become a lot better painter, and a more popular one. His art days in Vienna were a time when human emotions and their expression became the most popular theme in art throughout Europe and America. It would have been a much different history if he had been able to let it all out on canvas instead of discovering politics as a way of venting, I believe.
And he would have become a much happier man.
But someone would have risen. Germany was full of very bitter and angry men. I also think that history always happens when many small threads converge and weave together. It's very hard to claim Hitler would have avoided what he became, but he may have not been as important as he was.
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