Adolf Hitler's stint as a jobbing painter has always been rather overshadowed by his subsequent career in politics. However, nearly a century after the future Führer was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, 13 of his watercolours go on show today in a London art gallery.
They are the star attraction in a new exhibition by Jake and Dinos Chapman, the Young British Artists famous for showing mannequins of children with genitalia instead of faces and for Hell, a series of nightmarish Hieronymus Bosch-style dioramas arranged in the shape of a swastika, which was destroyed in the Momart warehouse fire in East London in 2004.
Bought anonymously from collectors around the world for a total of £115,000, the Hitler watercolours are mostly plodding landscapes and a few smaller studies. The Chapman brothers have transformed them — the gallery uses the word “annihilated” — by painting rainbows, psychedelic skies, floating lovehearts and smiley faces into the background of each picture. The resulting work is now available as a job lot for £685,000. The brothers said that they were expecting angry reactions to the work but denied that it was offensive or that they were profiting from Hitler's notoriety.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen