Nevermind, it’s a zombie.
I think the largest essential part of the answer to this question is bound up with where you think the value of any artwork derives. Is great craft enough to qualify something as great art? Or is there an indispensable role for meaning and context?
Hitler’s paintings aren’t great but they reach a basic level of competence. They also sell but if that is the only criteria you can look at the various infamous criminals and especially serial killers who sell paintings. In the UK the Kray Twins knocked out plenty of artwork as does Charles Bronson. In America I vaguely recall John Wayne Gacy is a prolific painter. I am sure there are many others.
British photographer David Hamilton is well known for his artistic (grainy, soft focus) nude shots of young and teenage girls. They are considered these days somewhere between photographic art and underage porn.
German heavy metal band The Scorpions released an album called ‘Virgin Killer’ back in the seventies and the now banned cover artwork was a naked pre-teen girl staring at the camera. Her modesty mostly protected but a shattered piece of glass overlay.
TCMF-2L
As reprehensible as the Nazi Regime was, I have to say, it had wonderful aesthetics. If you can manage to ignore all the hate inherent in its symbolism, like the swastika*, the SS, the uniforms, etc. were all wonderfully designed and implemented.
*Yes, I know it predates its usage in the regime in Hindu and Buddhism traditions, but how Hitler applied it in their flag and military is very appealing from a design/aesthetics standpoint.
ETA: Ah fucking shit… zombie thread.
Nabokov’s Lolita is self-consciously reprehensible, and it’s great literature. And Tim Robbins’ movies The Player and Bob Roberts are great in something other than a “Mr. Bad Example” kind of way.
I’d say most of Werner Herzog’s oeuvre might qualify. Also, the photography of Helmut Newton. Woody Allen’s whole career from Crimes and Misdemeanors-onward is deliberately amoral, and constitutes his most interesting and provocative filmmaking
Yeah, nobody cares about Nazi-whatever any more.
Really? How so? (I am only really familiar with some of his later documentaries.)
I don’t understand this either. I can’t think of a single Herzog film that promotes a reprehensible point of view (and I’ve seen nearly all of them), although some are about reprehensible people (Aguirre, Cobra Verde).
I’ve always had mixed feelings about The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. It’s plaintive about the people who felt defeated after the end of the U.S. Civil War, and while I have a soft spot for the underdog, fuck them. There’s no argument for their side that doesn’t have it’s roots at owning another human.
Gorgeous art, but fuck it’s heroes. If it told the story of wiser men, like Sam Houston, then it wouldn’t be reprehensible. It glorifies suckers, at best.
Resisting an invasion is generally a popular cause. The average Confederate soldier owned no other humans.
The Rites of Spring was considered so reprehensible that it started a riot at the premiere.
This answer works for differing values of “reprehensible”, of course…
That isn’t what the CSA was doing.
As strange as it sounds I have to agree somewhat. I got a lot of my great uncle’s things when he died. A lot of which are Nazi war spoils. When I found the flag he brought back and opened it I was surprised how impressive it was.
Not sure if the original Bad News Bears belongs here or not. I liked the movie, and it’s got a better story then a lot of movies now, but to hear those kids calling each other derogatory names really threw me.
Hitler’s oratory was pretty much the same as Mein Kampf. Same theme, same style, same tone. Althoug, as cmyk mentions, overall the Nazi use of symbols and pageantry was spectacular.
The novel Gone With the Wind isn’t only an apologia for slavery and the Confederacy, but part of it was.
Regards,
Shodan
Reprehensible, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Nelson Rockefeller (and many others at the time) considered Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads reprehensible enough to be destroyed before it was even finished (after commissioning it and fully paying for it).
Hitler, of course, found much of modern art to be “degenerate”, going so far as to build a bonfire out of paintings by Picasso, Dali, Miro, and others. Presumably to protect the “mental health” of the Third Reich…
So banned that it’s right at the top of the Wikipedia page.
Perhaps you missed it, but this was in the post you quoted:
That is certainly what many individual soldiers of the CSA armies were motivated to do, though, as letters and other records attest. They had no particular stake in slavery (more than the average white person of any section).
Didn’t miss it. Only felt the need to address the part of your comment that was most wrong. 