Three men
Three tyrants
Three killers of tens of millions
Three artists.
Hitler the painter,(warning, nazi link
Mao the poet(warning, hard-left link)
Stalin the sketchartist.
Who do you think was the most talented artist?
I don’t enjoy poetry, so that’s straight out. Of the two artists, Stalin seems much better to me.
Hitler is more impressionistic, which makes it harder to judge whether he can actually draw. I initially thought that his buildings were good, but closer studying reveals some perspective problems. He’s poor at drawing living things. Given that humans are harder to get right than the angles and flat surfaces of architecture, I give to Uncle Joe.
Kinda hard to judge poetry, especially when translated.
Hitler seems to have a lot of trouble with lighting. And like Nunzio says, he has a lot of problems drawing living things—he’s better at dogs that people, it seems. I admit to being a fan of imposing, megalomaniacal architecture and furnishings though.
But Stalin has to be the overall winner. And he’s certainly not bashful about depicting the human body, I’ll give him that.
Hitler… there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in ONE afternoon! TWO coats!
What can I say, except: "Yay, RENO NEVADA!!!"
Yeah, I gotta go with Joe.
If those studies are really by Stalin (and I’d never heard before that Stalin was known for his artistic prowess), they’re pretty darn good. I do have to wonder, though, if Stalin’s propaganda machine (like Kim Jong-Il’s) made him out to be a man of superhuman talents – and the pictures attributed to him were actually made by someone else.
Nah. While Stalinist Russia was pretty involved in erasing or heavy handedly editing anything from history that might lead the uninformed viewer that the man could possibly have been wrong about anything at any time in his life, I’m not aware of any actual self-aggrandizing slant, certainly nowhere near Kim “I drive a hole in one every morning and am better at basketball than the entire NBA” Jong Il.
For better or worse, that was Dear Leader’s special snowflake brand of cray-cray. And we, all of us, are made richer for it.
They are all of naked men… There’s nothing wrong with that, but it might be amusing to the public at large. It’s not something that would have been fabricated for propaganda purposes.
I gotta go with Stalin here. Hitler’s paintings are about what one would expect from a hobby artist, and Mao’s poems, even allowing for translation, seem pedestrian. (Admittedly, I only read one at random.) If those are indeed Joe Stalin’s sketches, the man had artistic talent, no question.
There was the one sketch of a(n unattractive) woman. But yeah, I’d expect a (straight) man with the kind of personal power Stalin wielded to have had more female models.
Could it be that he was just much better at drawing males. Kind of like Hitler sucking at humans so he focused on landscapes.
I find it a lot harder to draw women, especially as you have to balance flatteringness and accuracy.
Hitler’s dog pictures are a lot better than his human ones as well.
I’m not sure who’s better, but I would give it to Stalin as both Mao and Hitler wanted to be artists and were rejected, whereas Stalin was a talented hobbyist.
Hitler. For his architecture, not his landscapes.
Not many people know it but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer.
I thought most people agreed his architecture was tortuous.
I thought the Stalin drawings were fishy and it seems I was right:
I guess you might try to count this as conceptual art, but considering Stalin’s relationship with art and culture during his reign, that would be quite a stretch.
There were 2 nekkid women there.
He had a thing about not doing mens genitalia - they got awful vague on that one dude that just had a sort of genital balloon down there.
Those are obviously prints from an art book or something. Still, Stalin’s graffiti (“If he wasn’t pissing in the wind, he’d still be alive”) is more creative than either Hitler’s paintings or Mao’s poetry.