If Hitler, a frustrated and admittedly poor artist, had a more sympathetic teacher maybe 6 million Jews would not have needed to die. My logic to this is that when someone makes you feel you are so far from being any good, you have two choices; either renounce their judgement or pour all your frustration into making them realise how important you are and how they were wrong.
The thing with slamming people completely when they come up with something creative is that you destroy their confidence and make them not want to bother at all, because they feel they are so far off the mark, they will never be able to do something even half good.
There is a better strategy. Even if you hate everything about what they have done, try to find some positives and then guide them into having another go and do something better.
You might not be completely honest, but maybe kinder, and if you have faith they have some skill, albeit limited, you could perhaps nurture that little flame to grow into a nice fire, rather than snuff it out completely.
Maybe if a young Hitler had had a sympathetic ear and his creative force had been channelled into his art, rather than world domination and persecution of minorities, things might have been different.
Well, hate to tell you, but “6 million” Jews had to die anyway (or been believed to have died) in order to fulfill the prophecy concerning when the Jews could return home. It was a prediction based upon how long it would take to get over their prior screw up and gain enough of what it takes to reunite in mass. Hitler only played his small role in the production. His art teacher could at most merely have caused it to be someone else in stead.
Looking at these I find it difficult to think of him as a “poor artist”. No matter what his output would have been in anything he would always have been considered low talented because of who he was. That opinion wouldn’t change had he produced “guernica”.
I knew a woman a while back who worked in an art department. She was sleeping with the dean, and was a looker. Besides that mundane job, she took promising students to various world renown museums. She related the disappointment of the students who’s portfolia didn’t cut it, some of whom took their life as a consequence.
Let’s not focus on a second rate artist, who’s motivation in art wasn’t as admirable as those students’ were, dedicating their whole being in the pursuit of a very competitive filed.
Hitler’s mind was elsewhere when he did those architectural, very commercial types of work. I suspect he chose art randomly, to try to excel, but he probably had other things on his mind, as well. The aforementioned, totally dedicated but unfortunate artists, never had a choice, they were focused.
The second option would generally follow such a renunciation. And there’s always the chance that the criticism was correct and the recipient wise enough to consequentially set more reasonable goals.
Good feelings are only the last stage in any creative work of any worth. Misery of many forms, including hearing criticism is generally necessary.
Lying as a form of long term placation?
Kindness is rarely fuel and besides all fuel must be burnt.
Maybe, though it seems likely it would only be incidentally so. Anyway, for those born relatively recently, any drastic incidental differences would have led to them never being born. It seems a hard burden to bare to speak openly of a fantasy where perhaps about 50% of all people born since Hitler’s life wouldn’t.
Right, not to assume to know what Millar meant, but should the emphasis of blame be over the death of one categorization of people, rather than all supposed victims, the priority may be on finding the motive for such a biased emphasis.
In a society where people are told to forget what happened even hours ago, applying blame rather than unbiased study for something that long past is starting to become absurd, at least for those in and from America. Someone such as Obe, born in Europe during the war, has far more voice than most when it comes to the moral implications on this matter.
I agree except the last line. If by not poor you mean not uneducated in whatever particular genre the linked paintings represent then I agree, but otherwise, I agree with Obe, his work actually does seem very uninspired.
Or we can just do what we always have done, pretense or not, apply responsibility to others based on the ability to implement self-favoring consequences.
We are still obsessed with dictators and where things began to go wrong. If not his art teacher, it would have been some other trigger.
Ground hog day man.
This is a false dichotomy. There are many different options beyond that. Plus, by his own account, it was going to art school, living in a Jewish neighborhood that created his hatred.
This makes assumptions about how he was turned away. Holding what you said as true, why don’t we blame his parents instead for raising such a panty waste.
Enjoy your road to hell, with your good intentions. I’ll deal with truth, at least there I know what is going on and am not dealing with flimsy feelings.
Maybe if Hitler’s parents had drowned him in the bathtub when he was an infant things might have been different. The game of what if is a waste of time.
There is something very profound in the romantic notion of the passage of a time of deep wonder and beauty? This is not to be passed u lightly. A whole era of the being of the depth of existence, passed up to the frivolity of soul thievery is not something to let go lightly. The oversimplification into a mere architecture of the soul, as hitler’s art signified, missed the true calling of the object, which had no true definitional signifier, a mechanic interpretation of the soul, rather, it’s traces could only be apprehended in the after-burn, as the smell of the burning coal left by the engine of the train, leaving dark , black forests of forgotten ness, the mist of a past fairy-world.
