"Eric Michaud's 'The Trick of Jacob': A Narrative Account by Roger-Pol Droit"
Art doesn't always shine a light on emancipation and resistance like some believe. Eric Michaud, scholar and director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, paints a different picture. He's known for exposing the darker, dirtier secrets of art over the centuries – the role in constructing systems of power, domination, and exploitation that we often overlook or ignore.
Michaud's worksheets, like "An Art of Eternity" and "Barbarian Invasions," tug at the threads of history, revealing how art historians have entwined themselves in the creation of racist doctrines since the 19th century. His most potent stance comes from his 2004 novel, "The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany." This gem dives into how the Nazi state, with its tooth-and-claw grip on propaganda, twisted art to further their racial and political agendas.
Nazi Germany's art scene echoed with the desperate wails of rejected modernist and abstract expressionist works, labeled "degenerate" because they allegedly threatened the purity of Aryan culture. These pieces were mere pawns in a political chess game, standing for everything Hitler and his cronies opposed – figureheads like Jews, Bolsheviks, and enemies of the white race.
The notorious Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937 was more than an art show. It was a witch hunt, a bone-chilling display of the twisted minds at the helm. Works by international heavyweight artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and many German artists, such as Max Beckmann and Emil Nolde, were subjected to public scorn. The exhibition was a gallery of horrors intended to depict these works as morally and racially corrupt, displaying them in rooms dedicated to political and moral outrage.
Hitler himself, a failed artist, favored realistic landscapes and architecture, starkly different from the modernist styles shot down by his regime. Through exhibitions and propaganda, the Nazis wrestled the cultural narrative from the hands of the public, turning art into a weapon of racial and nationalist oppression, reinforcing their twisted vision of racial purity[1].
Art under oppressive regimes like Nazi Germany serves as a grim reminder of how images and body representation can be perverted to serve oppressive ideologies. The Nazi goals included:
- Advocating an idealized Aryan body and aesthetics in line with their barbaric race theories.
- Suppressing and vilifying expressions that contradicted or diverged from these ideals, particularly abstract and modernist art.
- Employing exhibitions and propaganda to indoctrinate the public, linking certain artistic styles to racial and political enemies.
- Using art as a tool for racial hygiene, reflecting and reinforcing the twisted body politic in line with their exclusionary racial criteria.
It's a sinister testament to how art can be turned into a weapon of mass manipulation, creating and reinforcing ideological constructs of race and identity. Michaud's work spotlights the far-reaching, insidious reach of art into the darker corners of history, exposing the rot that festers beneath the gilded veneer of aesthetic beauty[1].
Books on education-and-self-development might delve into Michaud's revelations about art's role in historical systems of power and oppression, offering insights into the Nazi era's manipulation of art for political purposes. Further, entertainment stories in learning materials could examine how art under oppressive regimes, like Nazi Germany, served as a means of indoctrination and mass manipulation, reinforcing ideological constructs of race and identity.
