K Scherff Assignment # 5.2
Compared to the Great German Art, the art labeled degenerate by the Nazis. presents a startling variety of human appearances. But more startling are the suggestions, first, that this variety is an effect of including disability and, second, that the Nazis were the first to recognize the aesthetic centrality of disability to modern art. -Siebers, Tobin. “Disability Aesthetics” pg 34 This quote is under the heading Three Analytic Examples, here Siebers discusses the "aesthetics of human disqualification" where art work is an example from which to derive qualifiers of human appearance. Siebers discuses the German's use of fantastical nature in their sculpture as the aesthetic provenance of German superiority against the antithesis of the Nazi deemed degenerate art. With traditional German Art as a canon, the broken lines and undesirable aesthetic found within the modernist style were the very undesirable characteristics that the Nazi regime wished to purge from Germany. These "degenerate" characteristics both socially and aesthetically defined the artistic inclusions and exclusions of the Nazi artistic taste. Here, modern aesthetic is defined as a disability.