Response to Justine

I disagree with Justine's assessment of Hitler's art in relation to his second career as Führer of the Third Reich. While she argues there is a substantial divide between his two occupations, there is in fact a remarkable continuity. Artistry in no way brings about a peaceful state of mind or being (hence the caricature of the tortured, anxious artist), and the claim that Hitler's watercolors and oil paintings could in no way presage his later brutality is false. 

What I think is most interesting about Hitler's art is how traditional it is. Expressionism and the avant-garde originated in Austria and Germany during the 1920s, and Hitler's work is a stark contrast to that of his contemporaries such as Kirchner, Munch, and Kandinsky. This kind of reverence for more traditional standards of beauty (as expressed in his landscapes, which follow an almost Romantic aesthetic), starkly opposes the bold innovations in composition, color, and perspective of his time. Hitler would later express his distaste for the avant-garde through his purging of "degenerate art" from the German cultural scene, as recounted in this article. Rather than contradict his later exploits, Hitler's art exposes his rejection of modernism's core value, the deconstruction of art to represent the tumult and uncertainty of the modern world, and in that sense underlines some of fascism's core tenets.