"Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) exhibition
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- Library of Congress - Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS)
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
Biographical History
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.
Scope and Content
The 1937 exhibit of ENTARTETE KUNST at the Archeological Institute in Munich, not far from the House of German Art, with paintings of modern artwork declared by the Nazis to be "degenerate" on the gallery walls. Museum visitors in the exhibit, walking, viewing the art on display. SS officer in FG. A quote taken from George Grosz and mockingly displayed on the Dada wall: "Nehmen Sie Dada ernst! Es lohnt sich." [Take Dada seriously! It's worth it.] EXT, visitors exiting building. Large sign on the building's facade: Ausstellung: "Entartete Kunst" / Eintritt frei [Exhibition: Degenerate Art / Admission free]. More shots of visitors inside the exhibit. Room 3 is prominently shown. Included in the filmed sequences are works by Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Dix, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Eugen Hoffmann, and others.
Note(s)
The exhibition in Munich opened July 19, 1937 and closed in November, 1937. Julien Bryan filmed in Germany in September 1937 for The March of Time production, "Inside Nazi Germany." From the catalogue of the exhibit prepared by the LA County Museum of Art, it is clear that this footage of the Degenerate Art Exhibit was taken at the Munich exhibit, in the Archaeological Institute, which was almost opposite the House of German Art. The LA County Museum of Art catalogue identifies the artists and "Room 3" of the Munich exhibit which had written on the wall "Nehmen Sie Dada ernst. Es lohnt sich." Please see departmental subject files for more information. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.
Subjects
- GERMANS
- PROPAGANDA (NAZI)
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- GERMANY
- CIVILIANS
- DADA
- ARTISTS
- SIGNS/POSTERS
- ART (DEGENERATE)
- PAINTINGS
- EXHIBITIONS
- MUSEUMS
Places
- Munich, Germany
Genre
- Unedited.
- Film