Dewey, the Nazis and "Degenerate" Art

The chapter entitled Experience, Nature and Art in John Dewey's Experience and Nature develops a conception of art as a

solvent union of the generic, recurrent, ordered, established phase of nature with its phase that is incomplete, going on, and hence still uncertain, contingent, novel, particular ... (359)

He goes on to speak of routine and a capricious impulse as the limiting terms that define art at the extremes. Each extreme in isolation is unnatural and, thus for Dewey, inartistic (360). He goes on to insist: "for nature is an intersection of spontaneity and necessity, the regular and the novel, the finished and the beginning" (360).

Obviously this conception of the relation between art and nature goes far beyond an aesthetic theory concerned exclusively with the meaning of art in isolation from the world of politics and culture. However, the terms in which Dewey articulates the meaning and nature of art do lend insight into what was at stake during that fateful historical moment in the 1930's in Europe when the forces of fascism took control of artistic expression.

Genuine German versus "Degenerate" Art
When the Nazi's came to power in 1933, they took control of the Culture Chamber and set about funding only the artists who produced what they called genuine German art. In Dewey's terms, this art was highly inartistic because it only emphasized the phase of regularity and order, excluding altogether the natural phase of novelty, irregularity, whimsy and surprise. In the process, they also gathered many works of modern art, particularly the art associated with the movement of Expressionism. Before their scheduled destruction, they were sent on a tour entitled the "Degenerate Art Exhibition" in the mid- and late-1930's. A look at some examples of both "Genuine German" and "Degenerate" art will draw Dewey's point about art being a solvent of two poles into sharp relief.