4 ms·

Stalin's poems with illustrations by Hitler: http://kto-kto.narod.ru/bl-bl-4/stalin_hitler.html http://kto-kto.narod.ru/bl-bl-4/stalin_hitler.html

kanox 7y ago
Those are really shitty illustrations.
- golergka 7y ago
  Poems aren't that great either.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  I've seen worse. Maybe if Hitler had practiced more instead of becoming Hitler he could have done better.
- lqet 7y ago
  Wikipedia also has an article on Hitler's paintings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler Even the better ones still look odd, like kitschy comics. For lack of a better description, his paintings completely lack any kind of poetic depth. edit: the article actually contains a better description by John Gunther: "They are prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling, or spiritual imagination. They are architect's sketches painful and precise draftsmanship; nothing more. No wonder the Vienna professors told him to go to an architectural school and give up pure art as hopeless"
  - rangibaby 7y ago
    They aren’t that bad for an aspiring amateur. Imagine a world where he had got the instruction he knew he needed and unleashed his energy and passion as Adolf Hitler, Artist instead of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Hitler
    - apocalypstyx 7y ago
      In Norman Spinrad's book The Iron Dream a young Hitler moved to New York City and became an illustrator for pulp science fiction magazines.
  - dEnigma 7y ago
    I actually think some of his paintings and sketches look quite good for a young artist, who hadn't even received proper training yet. There are some more available on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Ado...
    - pavlov 7y ago
      They really aren’t that bad. Very uneven, but that’s to be expected from a young person. The few looser paintings like “Klosterruine in Messines” show promise IMHO, at least compared to the heavy-handed drafting of most of the watercolors. This one makes me think that it would be an amazing trolling opportunity to remove the signature, create high-quality reproductions of this “Mary with Jesus” and give them out to American Evangelicals, as the art style generally matches the Christian fundamentalist taste: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HitlerMaryWithJesus.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HitlerMaryWithJesu...
    - shadowprofile77 7y ago
      As I commented above. many of his works were far from hopeless for a young artist, and if he'd been accepted to the right academy, the latent talent could have nurtured something much better, but the safe thing even for modern art critics is to simply agree with a prevailing and hindsight biased idea that of course the art showed a total lack of imagination and humanity and was right for rejection. One wonders at the world we'd know today if the young Hitler had gotten an admissions official with just a bit more imagination for his application.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    "One modern art critic was asked to review some of his paintings without being told who painted them and judged them quite good in 2002. The different style in which he drew human figures, however, the critic said, represented a profound disinterest in people." But of course he was a Bad Man, so he cannot be allowed to have any good qualities, therefore his art is bad.
    - goto11 7y ago
      A lot of context is missing from that quote. I'm pretty sure nobody sane have ever claimed this is great art. But perhaps quite good for an amateur. Only the buildings really works in the paintings, the rest looks like crap. But he seem to be quite competent at drawing architecture, which is also what the Vienna school told him.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        > I'm pretty sure nobody sane have ever claimed this is great art. You would think the same was true of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Darks_in_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Darks_in_Red, and yet...
        pavlov 7y ago
        Have you seen the Rothko in person? It is a large work with deep color that doesn’t reproduce in photos displayed on computer screens.
        deogeo 7y ago
        Unfortunately, the only Rothko I've seen in person was a small one. But I have seen a lot of other modern art in person, large and small. I was not impressed.
  - ajxs 7y ago
    When you bring up contemporary critique of Hitler's paintings it's worth noting that Hitler's ill-fated aspirations as a painter came in a time and place where art was moving in leaps and bounds towards much more abstract styles. I'm not an expert in this area, so I can't really qualify exactly what you'd call the fashion of the time, but it certainly wasn't the classicism that Hitler's paintings represented. For an amateur painter, I think most people agree he had some talent, but he'd have a hard time getting accepted by a much more avant-garde art establishment.
    - goto11 7y ago
      I don't think that is the case. Hitler was rejected from the entrance exam to the Vienna academy in 1905. At that point the academy was notoriously conservative (which is what led to the "secession" movement). It certainly did not represent the avant-garde in the modern sense. The tendency the "art establishment" prefer abstract, avant-garde art is much more recent. Probably in part spurred by Nazisms campaign against "entartete Kunst"!
      - ajxs 7y ago
        Interesting! Maybe I've been misinformed. I might have my timeline a bit confused, I had always thought this was the case.
        goto11 7y ago
        I think is is just a more compelling narrative that Hitler was rejected because he didn't make crazy incomprehensible "my 5-year old son could have made that!" avant-garde art. But note that cubism was barely invented in 1907, and the academy represented a conservative view of art. If you look at the kind of art Hitler endorsed when he came to power, it was actually pretty close to the academy style.
        ajxs 7y ago
        That is a compelling narrative I guess. I had always associated that period of Viennese art with that of Gustav Klimt, who seems to have been reasonably successful in that period. He probably didn't represent the conservative views of the academy as you said.
  - 7thaccount 7y ago
    Now that is interesting. I have zero artistic talent and the only art I know is what I learned from an art appreciation class in highschool and and art history class in college. With that being said, those paintings look pretty similar to the kind of stuff I see in museums or in people's homes. I was expecting to see crude stick figures based off of the descriptions.
    - goto11 7y ago
      You are not going to see anything like that in an art museum. But in peoples homes, sure. This is the kind of art street-artists sell to tourists. It is easy to see why they recommended him architecture instead though. The buildings are drawn technically good and precise, but they are also the only thing that really works. Nature and people looks pretty bad. But of course with appropriate training he might have learned that also, who knows.
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    Tiresome and rather stupid hindsight bias. I even generally agree with the opinion in your quote about Hitler's art, but in the broad scope of works that have been heavily applauded by art critics and galleries, it falls far from bottom rung. And it's certainly not deserving of someone declaring its creator's efforts as "hopeless". That would just be a shitty attitude because an artist with the technical proficiency of Hitler could indeed be successfully nurtured in the right environment towards really creating something interesting. But of course, because it's Hitler, safer to say it was prosaic crap with no humanity to it and no hope of anything better had things been different...

kanox 7y ago

Those are really shitty illustrations.

golergka 7y ago
Poems aren't that great either.
whatshisface 7y ago
I've seen worse. Maybe if Hitler had practiced more instead of becoming Hitler he could have done better.
lqet 7y ago
Wikipedia also has an article on Hitler's paintings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler Even the better ones still look odd, like kitschy comics. For lack of a better description, his paintings completely lack any kind of poetic depth. edit: the article actually contains a better description by John Gunther: "They are prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling, or spiritual imagination. They are architect's sketches painful and precise draftsmanship; nothing more. No wonder the Vienna professors told him to go to an architectural school and give up pure art as hopeless"
- rangibaby 7y ago
  They aren’t that bad for an aspiring amateur. Imagine a world where he had got the instruction he knew he needed and unleashed his energy and passion as Adolf Hitler, Artist instead of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Hitler
  - apocalypstyx 7y ago
    In Norman Spinrad's book The Iron Dream a young Hitler moved to New York City and became an illustrator for pulp science fiction magazines.
- dEnigma 7y ago
  I actually think some of his paintings and sketches look quite good for a young artist, who hadn't even received proper training yet. There are some more available on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Ado...
  - pavlov 7y ago
    They really aren’t that bad. Very uneven, but that’s to be expected from a young person. The few looser paintings like “Klosterruine in Messines” show promise IMHO, at least compared to the heavy-handed drafting of most of the watercolors. This one makes me think that it would be an amazing trolling opportunity to remove the signature, create high-quality reproductions of this “Mary with Jesus” and give them out to American Evangelicals, as the art style generally matches the Christian fundamentalist taste: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HitlerMaryWithJesus.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HitlerMaryWithJesu...
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    As I commented above. many of his works were far from hopeless for a young artist, and if he'd been accepted to the right academy, the latent talent could have nurtured something much better, but the safe thing even for modern art critics is to simply agree with a prevailing and hindsight biased idea that of course the art showed a total lack of imagination and humanity and was right for rejection. One wonders at the world we'd know today if the young Hitler had gotten an admissions official with just a bit more imagination for his application.
- deogeo 7y ago
  "One modern art critic was asked to review some of his paintings without being told who painted them and judged them quite good in 2002. The different style in which he drew human figures, however, the critic said, represented a profound disinterest in people." But of course he was a Bad Man, so he cannot be allowed to have any good qualities, therefore his art is bad.
  - goto11 7y ago
    A lot of context is missing from that quote. I'm pretty sure nobody sane have ever claimed this is great art. But perhaps quite good for an amateur. Only the buildings really works in the paintings, the rest looks like crap. But he seem to be quite competent at drawing architecture, which is also what the Vienna school told him.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      > I'm pretty sure nobody sane have ever claimed this is great art. You would think the same was true of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Darks_in_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Darks_in_Red, and yet...
      - pavlov 7y ago
        Have you seen the Rothko in person? It is a large work with deep color that doesn’t reproduce in photos displayed on computer screens.
        deogeo 7y ago
        Unfortunately, the only Rothko I've seen in person was a small one. But I have seen a lot of other modern art in person, large and small. I was not impressed.
- ajxs 7y ago
  When you bring up contemporary critique of Hitler's paintings it's worth noting that Hitler's ill-fated aspirations as a painter came in a time and place where art was moving in leaps and bounds towards much more abstract styles. I'm not an expert in this area, so I can't really qualify exactly what you'd call the fashion of the time, but it certainly wasn't the classicism that Hitler's paintings represented. For an amateur painter, I think most people agree he had some talent, but he'd have a hard time getting accepted by a much more avant-garde art establishment.
  - goto11 7y ago
    I don't think that is the case. Hitler was rejected from the entrance exam to the Vienna academy in 1905. At that point the academy was notoriously conservative (which is what led to the "secession" movement). It certainly did not represent the avant-garde in the modern sense. The tendency the "art establishment" prefer abstract, avant-garde art is much more recent. Probably in part spurred by Nazisms campaign against "entartete Kunst"!
    - ajxs 7y ago
      Interesting! Maybe I've been misinformed. I might have my timeline a bit confused, I had always thought this was the case.
      - goto11 7y ago
        I think is is just a more compelling narrative that Hitler was rejected because he didn't make crazy incomprehensible "my 5-year old son could have made that!" avant-garde art. But note that cubism was barely invented in 1907, and the academy represented a conservative view of art. If you look at the kind of art Hitler endorsed when he came to power, it was actually pretty close to the academy style.
        ajxs 7y ago
        That is a compelling narrative I guess. I had always associated that period of Viennese art with that of Gustav Klimt, who seems to have been reasonably successful in that period. He probably didn't represent the conservative views of the academy as you said.
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  Now that is interesting. I have zero artistic talent and the only art I know is what I learned from an art appreciation class in highschool and and art history class in college. With that being said, those paintings look pretty similar to the kind of stuff I see in museums or in people's homes. I was expecting to see crude stick figures based off of the descriptions.
  - goto11 7y ago
    You are not going to see anything like that in an art museum. But in peoples homes, sure. This is the kind of art street-artists sell to tourists. It is easy to see why they recommended him architecture instead though. The buildings are drawn technically good and precise, but they are also the only thing that really works. Nature and people looks pretty bad. But of course with appropriate training he might have learned that also, who knows.
- shadowprofile77 7y ago
  Tiresome and rather stupid hindsight bias. I even generally agree with the opinion in your quote about Hitler's art, but in the broad scope of works that have been heavily applauded by art critics and galleries, it falls far from bottom rung. And it's certainly not deserving of someone declaring its creator's efforts as "hopeless". That would just be a shitty attitude because an artist with the technical proficiency of Hitler could indeed be successfully nurtured in the right environment towards really creating something interesting. But of course, because it's Hitler, safer to say it was prosaic crap with no humanity to it and no hope of anything better had things been different...