This is not a political rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler.
As we all know before he became the Demoniac he was a painter. And ironically some of his most loyal customers were Jews in Vienna, Austria. But was Adolf Hitler good at painting? In my (amateur) opinion he was skilled technically. Please take a look at some of his (non-propaganda) paintings, depicting the streets of 1910s Vienna:
Do you think they are well-conceived, at least technically? I know that the curator of a Masschusetts art show called Hitler “unoriginal.” Newsweek magazine ran an article about how Hitler lacked the basics of style in his art.* But are these evaluations of a subject totally unrelated to Nazism biased due to the fact that Hitler was the morally vilest creature to walk earth?
I can see that he wasn’t a revolutionary in High Art but at least the paintings look realistic (to the untrained, amateur eye). What are the opinions of artist Dopers?
I think we tend to associate only malodorous things with villains and only wildly positive attributes with heroes. These neat black-and-white dichotomies, when disturbed, cause discomfort for people. For example, when Peter Schaffer made the play and movie Amadeus classical musicians everywhere decried how it portrayed the genius as an immature brat. They seemed to think that his immaturity detracted from his eternal genius. Hitler may have been a fine painter. Although that will never atone for his pure evilness we should see other dimensions of him. He will always be the repugnant hellspawn that he is but I think we should look at his pre-Nazi art in a different light not based on the moral depravity of the demon-man’s politics. Just as we should dissociate Mozart’s genius from his ruinous alcoholism and financial immaturity.
*Newsweek in a later article about Saddam Hussein’s artistic preferences said “even Hitler grasped the basics of style” to highlight the Iraqi’s strange obsession with crappy art.
I may not have great taste in art, but I kind of like it. At least it’s several steps above Thomas Kinkaid. But it does show a sort of lack of imaginitive thinking. It’s a bit rigid. Technically, though, not bad at all.
I actually think he was pretty good at architectural and landscape paintings—helluva lot better than I am, that’s for sure. Amateur, yeah, but a pretty damn good amateur.
Depends on what you mean by “good artist”. For being a major political figure, I guess he was a good artist. But his stuff was never going to end up on the wall of any respectable art museum. He couldn’t even have hacked it as a commercial portrait painter – as dropzone said, his figure work was pretty lousy. Not just people either, but animals too. I’ve seen one of his landscapes that features a moose that is almost comically awkward.
His architectural work isn’t bad, and I believe he did support himself for a while selling small drawings of buildings to tourists as postcards. Maybe he could have expanded into other souvenier work, or perhaps illustrations for travel publications. But that’s probably about the most he could ever hope for in terms of success as a professional artist.
He had the right sort of technical competence for architectural drawing. However, he could not do the human face or form worth a hoot. When he was rejected from the art schools, they recommended he seek a future as an architect. However, since he was intellectually very lazy, his mathematics grades were laughable. This meant that architecture was out, too.
No; he was a decent draughtsman. This may be hindsight, but there’s a fascist sensibility to his paintings: the people don’t matter at all, while the buildings–the organs of the state, etc.–are solid and powerful. There’s no recognizable humanity in the people pictured; I get the feeling he’d rather have eliminated them from the composition.
IIRC, Herr Schicklegruber failed the entrance exam to the Art Institute. He also failed the entrance exam to an architectural school because he was required to design a building, and vented the exhaust directly into a recreation area.
Unfortunately, he succeeded at his third choice of career.
Did he really? That’s actually pretty funny, in a sick way. (Considering the later implications).
Some of the caricatures aren’t bad. They’re not super good, but they’re not bad.
Certainly, his paintings of buildings and such are better than anything I’ve ever done. I like drawing and painting, even though a lot of my work is really lousy. But I just do it for fun.
As for Churchill’s, call me crazy, but I kinda like it. It has character, something lacking in Hitler’s art. Hitler’s is more greeting card, motel paintings art. His landscapes are pathetic-Bob Ross did way better.
And as others have said, his drawings of actual people are laughable.
But for the most part, he wasn’t a hideous artist. Just a boring one. shrugs
He’s better than Thomas Kinkade, as someone said. Of course, that isn’t saying much.
People who can draw realistically are a dime a dozen. I’m sure any one of you knows a couple people who can draw a good looking building or nice pot of flowers without even thinking about it. Judgeing from his paintings, Hitler couldn’t even do that. His people look like the work of a bright high schooler at best.
Most importantly, he doesn’t have much to say about his subjects. His architectural drawings show some respect for line and form, but mostly thats because the buildings themselves were carefully planned by people who kept all that in mind. None of his drawings or paintings show any inspiration. He doesn’t seem to care about the subjects. They don’t do anything surprising or interesting. And without that, you don’t have an artist.
Did you check out the dogs? Two were good; they actually look like dogs posing for their portraits. But I can not believe the same hand drew the shepards.
Doesn’t it make sense that the buildings overshadow the people, as he couldn’t draw people?
Churchill, and for that matter, Eisenhower, never pretended to do anything but paint for their own amusement and relaxation. Hitler on the other hand had aspirations of making a living at this stuff.
Hitler’s student work dated from the first decade of the century and a little later. By 1910 the Impressionist Movement was 40 years old. VanGogh had been dead for 20 years and his stuff was starting to gain a following. Picasso was starting to experiment, he did his Cubist Les Damoiselles d’ Avigon in 1906-07. Munch’s The Scream was done in 1893. Oskar Kokoshka and Emil Nolde were working in Germany in 1910. Looking at Hitler’s work you would never know any of that had happened, let alone that word of it had spread to the conservative Osto-Hungarian Empire.
Even as the work of a conservative and a student it is pedestrian and dull. Look at his selection of color. The stuff is nearly mono-chromatic.
It is water color. You would think that even a guy with only one testicle would have enough testosterone to venture afield from the medium of spinsters.
While he may have one-point perspective down pat, he could stand to spend a lot more time in the life drawing studio.
He was just awful, not even a good technical painter, fit only to do architectural renderings.
It make a guy wonder just who would have lead a vengeful Germany if Hitler had become a successful producer of post cards.
Okay, I’ll admit the guy was just a kid when he did this stuff and experience (and deadlines) would free up his style but the architectural stuff is stilted and confining and overworked. He’d’ve died of consumption in some Viennese garret and the world would be a better place for it.
Or he could’ve designed Austria’s answer to Levittown. Rather than Arbeit macht frei! it’d be Fläche Häuser mit Lebkuchen und Trollen! (Tract housing with gingerbread and trolls!)