"...a fascist aesthetic...plays (and justifies) from the control of the situation, the obsession with the act of obedience, and the effect of fanaticism: an aesthetic that celebrates extreme egoism and The two superficially opposed phenomena of servitude. Domination and servitude take a particularly veiled form: the grouping of men; the transformation of men into things; the multiplication of things; There is a hypnotized leader or an assembly of leading forces. At the center of the fascist stage art is the frenetic alternation between a mighty force and its puppets. Fascist choreography is endless movement and condensation, stillness and 'masculinity' The art of fascism flaunts submission, glorifies ignorance, and glorifies death.
It’s hard to limit this art to fascist-labeled or fascist-concocted works (for movies alone, Disney’s Fantasia, Busby Berkeley's Gangs, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey can be seen as reflecting some of the fascist art form structures and thematic ideas).
Fascist Art Showcase A utopian view of aesthetics—physical perfection. Painters and sculptors under the Nazi regime often used nudes as subjects, but they were not allowed to show any physical defects. Their nudes resembled photos in men’s health magazines, The models are masquerading as unsexy and (technically) lustful because they represent the imaginary perfection of the human body.”
“…Nazi art was both obscene and idealized. This utopia Formal aesthetics (identification with the biologically known) implies idealized lust (which translates sexuality into leader attraction and follower joy). The fascist ideal is to translate sexuality into socially beneficial 'Spiritual' powers. They often use sexuality as a temptation, and those who heroically suppress it are admired."
"In fascist art, the will is a reflection of the relationship between the leader and his followers. Under the National Socialist Party, it is interesting that the relationship between politics and art is not the need for art to be subordinate to politics (because it is the common to all dictatorships), but to politically regulate the vocabulary of art—referring to the art of late Romanticism. Goebbels said in 1933 that politics “is the highest and most comprehensive art in existence, and we are formulating In modern
German policy, we feel that we are artists... The task of art and artists is to take shape, to shape, to eliminate harmful things, and to create freedom for healthy people." The appeal is that it is simple, metaphorical, emotional, not intellectual; it is a reconciliation to the intricate and demanding modernist art of the time. And for today's well-informed audience For example, part of the appeal of Nazi art was the desire to restore all styles of the past, especially those that had been deprecated. But after the revival of "Art Nouveau", Pre-Raphaelite painting and Art Deco , the resurrection of Nazi art may not be feasible. Because these paintings and sculptures are not only dignified, but as art, they appear astonishingly poor. Formally because of these characteristics, people look at Nazi art with a knowing and mocking distance. , but sees it as a form of Pop Art.
Riefenstahl’s work lacks the amateurishness and childishness of other works of art of the Nazi era, but her work promotes the same values . The sensitive (art critics) of today, mentioned above, will also appreciate her. It is ridiculous that the self-righteousness of Pop Art can regard not only the formal beauty of Riefenstahl's work, but even its political fanaticism. Work is an extremely aesthetic form. With this disjunctive assessment of Riefenstahl, there are reactions, intentionally or not, to the themes that bring strength to her work.
Triumph of the Will and Olympia are undoubtedly terrific films (they're even the greatest documentaries of all time), but as an art form, they're not important in the history of cinema. Today, no one mentions Riefenstahl when making a film, and many directors (myself included) still think of the Soviet director Vertov as an inexhaustible source of motivation and ideas for film language. However, it is hard to say the most important director of a documentary like Vertov, who has made films as impressive and astonishing as Triumph of the Will and Olympia (of course, Vertov never There were as many means as Riefenstahl had, because the Soviet government's budget for propaganda films was not generous). Likewise, The Last of the Nuba is an excellent photobook, but I can't imagine it would do anything to other photographers, or change the way people see and photograph.
When looking at propaganda art, whether it's on the left or on the right, there is a double standard. No one would admit that Vertov's later films use the same emotional manipulation as Riefenstahl's. When the audience explained why they were moved, they used emotion to illustrate Vertov's touchingness and lie about Riefenstahl. In this way, Vertov's films are said to evoke great moral sympathy among lovers of his films all over the world. As for Riefenstahl's films, the trick is to filter out the toxins of political ideology in her films, leaving only what they have of "aesthetic" value.
As a result, Vertov's films are praised as an attractive man, an intelligent, original artist-thinker, but ultimately overwhelmed by the dictatorship he served. Most contemporary viewers of Vertov (including those of Eisenstein and Pudovkin) see the early Soviet film propagandists as presenting a lofty ideal that has been betrayed in practice . But the praise for Riefenstahl couldn't turn to that, because not even the people who rehabilitated her made her popular; and she wasn't a thinker at all. What's more, it is widely believed that National Socialism represents nothing but barbarism and terror. Not so. National Socialism (or, more broadly, Fascism) also advocated an ideal that still exists today under other banners: the ideal that life is art, the cult of "beauty," the belief in "courage" fetishistic fascination, the annihilation of alienation in the ecstasy of public ecstasy, the critique of knowledge, (under the parental care of the leader) everyone is a brother, and so on.
These ideals are vivid and touching for many, but it would be dishonest and repetitive to say that one is moved because Triumph of the Will and Olympia were made by a talented director . Riefenstahl's film still works because, among other reasons, that desire in the film remains because it contains a romantic ideal to which many people continue to be attached , and it manifests itself in a variety of cultural dissent and new forms of social propaganda, such as youth rock and roll culture, primitive therapy, Ramo anti-psychiatry, third-world adherence, sectarianism and ghosts Superstition, etc. The glorification of society does not exclude absolute leadership, and it inevitably leads to it (not surprisingly, a considerable number of young people who now bow before the head of the sect to submit to the most grotesque of autocratic disciplines, were in the 1960s. those who are anti-authority and anti-elite). Riefenstahl's zeal for the Nuba, not ruled by a supreme chief or a sorcerer, doesn't mean she doesn't pay attention to a seductress-performer, though she can only be content with being a non-politician . One of her main projects since she finished her work on the Nuba a few years ago has been to shoot Mick Jagger. "
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