War, Art and Ideology

Amongst the different images of war that are currently being updated and analysed, one of them could serve as the starting point for this reflection, as it brings together old and new questions. The picture in question is Die Heimkehr [The Return], painted by the German painter Hans-Adolf Bhler in 1940. Rather than the actual painting, its reproduction in the form of a postcard is what is discussed in the book Histories in Conflict: the Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, 1937-1955 (p. 209), in an interesting passage on the postcards that were sold during Nazi exhibitions (p. 181). Portraits of Adolf Hitler stopped being printed as postcards from 1940 onwards as they did not sell well, offering proof that ideological commitment, although it did exist, only partially relied on leader worship

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · First world war · German · Humanities · Ideology · Painting · Political science · Politics · Reproduction · Visual arts · World War II · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law