Sofia Benz
Entartete Kunst
Lately, I’ve been dreaming in black and white. I stand in an old building, an art exhibit in Munich in 1937. I ask one of the ladies near me where I am and what the date is and every time I get the same answer: Munich, Germany, 1937. The lady never thinks it’s strange that I ask her these questions. She smiles at me.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” she says to me. We, standing side by side, are looking at Oskar Kokoschka. I know it’s him because it says so on the wall – self-portrait of Oskar Kokoschka, 1913.
“It’s loud,” I say.
“Did you see this one?” the lady asks. She points to another of the exhibit walls to a long canvas covered in boxes and lines, all different gray hues.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s nothing,” she says. She pauses. “You know, they say he will come here tomorrow. He will look upon them himself.”
“Will he?” I am not sure who it is she speaks of.
The lady nods. “Ziegler picked them well.”
It is really 1989. I am watching TV. It’s just the news. Senator Jesse Helms says something about a crucifix in a jar of piss. It’s disgusting. I am not particularly interested in art. To me, it is all just pictures. I never enjoyed painting as a child. I could never get things to look the way I wanted them to. Therefore, I don’t have any art hanging in my apartment. My walls are bare and beige. No, off-white. I don’t give my walls a lot of thought. I only began considering decorations since I’ve been dreaming of Germany. I can’t remember when they started. Maybe a month ago is when. That seems about right.
Jesse Helms says, “This matter does not involve freedom of artistic expression – it does involve the question whether American taxpayers should be forced to support such trash.”
I recall telling the woman from my dream that Oskar Kokoschka was too loud. When I come back from Munich, 1937, I find the colors of the world much too bright for me. I prefer the grays of my dreams. The most gray I see with my eyes open is the gray of my apartment. I do not see people. I am alone.
Ever since I woke up, I’ve been thinking about who it is that could be coming to the exhibit. I figure I’ll find out tonight when I go back.
Jesse Helms says, “I say again, Mr. President, he is not an artist. He is a jerk. And he is taunting the American people, just as others are, in terms of Christianity. And I resent it. And I do not hesitate to say so.”
I am not the kind of person to speak my mind. I’m not sure how I feel about that. As a child, I did not say much. And I still don’t. My poor mother once pestered me, asking if I was mute until I said, “No.”
A picture of “Piss Christ” appears on my TV.
“Disgusting,” I say aloud.
My mother, Hedwig, a small, sagging woman, comes to visit me often, maybe once or twice a week. Every visit, she makes me goulash and spaetzle in my own kitchen. Once I turn the TV off, I hear her keys at my door. I straighten up and meet her there to take the package of Bechtle spaetzle off her hands. Knowing how this goes, our silent meetings, I go the kitchen and begin to take out the ingredients we need for the goulash. I always have them. It is an unspoken rule.
“Ah, ah,” my mother says, hobbling after me, “Not yet, my son. I’d like you to take me somewhere.”
“Where?” I ask.
“The art museum. There’s a new exhibit showing.”
I take her there, leaving the spaetzle on the counter, in my own car. I know she likes it when I drive her around. It makes her think I was the one to suggest it. My mother has always liked art. Her apartment is very much the opposite of my own. Bright yellow walls adorned in framed photographs and Van Gogh prints. It’s too loud for a woman her age. All those colors will drive her mad. I think she does it because her life never had any color in it. There’s nothing wrong with that, mine doesn’t either. It’s better that way.
“Two tickets for Rothko,” my mother tells the man behind the counter at the museum, a proud tinge in her voice. The man smiles at her when she pays and tells us to enjoy.
I follow her because she knows where she’s going. I’ve been here with her a handful of times but for me it has always been a lazy walk, not an intellectually stimulating exercise. I like the landscapes, sure, they’re calm and truthful, but nothing else ever makes sense to me. Just colors on a canvas and nude women cut out of stone – purposely provocative and antagonizing. I’ve never heard of Rothko, couldn’t be bothered to know any artist beyond those forced upon me in elementary school. It turns out, Rothko is a man who feels blocks of color are evocative and telling of something internal. My mother tells me everything as we walk along the exhibit and I feel something bubbling in my stomach. My hands start to sweat and itch to move. I ball them up and furrow my brows, determined to keep this feeling at bay. What I wouldn’t give to rip this stupid orange and yellow canvas to shreds! I hate art, but I detest this kind most of all.
I ask my mother to leave when we get back. She tries to protest, seeing as we have yet to cook the goulash. I lead her to the door, put the spaetzle into the pantry, and go to bed. I do not eat, do not wash, do not change my clothes. I close my eyes and drift to sleep. I must meet him.
The lady is still next to me at the exhibit in Munich, Germany, 1937. We stand in front of a jumble of shapes titled “The Tower of Blue Horses.” Strangely, tonight, my dream is blurry so I cannot see everything clearly. The shapes in the painting look only like squares, not at all like horses, though I doubt they ever did. The lady taps me on the shoulder and points to the entrance. Five men dressed in green uniforms enter the exhibit. One of them stands center. Everyone in the room is looking at him. I can’t make out his face. He begins to look around. The room is brought to a whisper.
“The quality of these people,” he says when he reaches “The Tower of Blue Horses” where I have not moved, “what drives them to create such atrocities?”
“Are you asking me?” I say, my voice low.
“Do you have the answer?” he asks me.
I turn back to the painting, blurred by my dream-state vision. Why, I wonder, do these so-called artists long to question things with such aggravating colors? I long to reach out my hand and touch the canvas. I do it. It is a dream and there are no consequences in dreams. I push my fingers through it. The sound of it ripping is music, a symphony. It is telling.
“They do it because they hate the world. Ungrateful. Ill. Evil people.”
The man without a face pulls a lighter out of his pocket and lights it. He laughs and brings it to the canvas. Laughs as it burns.
First thing in the morning, I buy a boxcutter and a lighter. I forget breakfast because it doesn’t seem so important anymore. I don’t know how much time I have to do this, how much I’ll get away with. I drive to the art museum and pay for a single ticket to the Rothko exhibit. The person behind the counter is different from yesterday, so I am unrecognized. Unrecognized. I am always unrecognized. I’ve lived an absolutely silent life. I have created nothing, given nothing to the world. I had no dreams as a child and grew to have no dreams as an adult. Now, as I strut into Rothko’s cave of false wonders, I dream. I take the boxcutter into my right hand and the lighter in my left. There are people around me. A family: mother, father, son. Two teenage girls with notebooks. An elderly lady with a cane. I ignore them. They do not matter. They are degenerate, these people who see something in nothing.
There is a painting titled “Orange, Red, Yellow.” I push the blade of the boxcutter through its flesh and rip a line across it – quick and easy. The canvas tears, little threads of murdered color handing from its wound. There are voices in my ears. There is thundering. I raise the lighter to the cut. I watch the flame catch. I keep moving.
I am deaf. I am nearly blind. I am not feeling what I touch. There is yelling and screeching, I assume, but I continue to shred Rothko. I light him ablaze. Watch the ashes of his degenerate mind whirl around me, fall to my feet. I only stop once my hand has felled each painting and I stop to watch them burn.
Then, it comes to me that I have created something. The way the flames lick the ceiling as they fight against the sprinklers. The way the canvases crinkle and curl in on themselves. The way the people rush away. The way arms reach to grab me.
I have made art. It scares me.
When I was six years old, my mother took me to Austria to see a special exhibit. My memory of it is heavy. I don’t remember what kind of art it was or if it was about something specific or in honor of an artist. I do remember one of the paintings, though. It was called “Self-portrait of a Degenerate Artist.” It was dated 1937. There was a man who saw me looking at it. He asked me, “Do you like this painting?”
“I don’t know,” I told him, “I don’t really like art.”
“Oh, you don’t? That’s sad.”
“What’s sad about it? I just don’t like it,” I said.
“Art is a beautiful thing. It tells us the truth.”
“No, it doesn’t. This man’s chin is twice as long as his forehead.” I pointed at the self-portrait and looked at the man. He had a rather long chin too. He touched it when I pointed out what I did.
“Oh. I suppose,” he said.
“That’s not truthful,” I told him.
“But it isn’t a lie,” the man said, raising his eyebrows, “Art can’t lie.”
“Whatever.”
We stood together a bit longer. In silence.
“Who are you?” I asked the man.
“Oskar,” he said, “Who are you?”
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” she says to me. We, standing side by side, are looking at Oskar Kokoschka. I know it’s him because it says so on the wall – self-portrait of Oskar Kokoschka, 1913.
“It’s loud,” I say.
“Did you see this one?” the lady asks. She points to another of the exhibit walls to a long canvas covered in boxes and lines, all different gray hues.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s nothing,” she says. She pauses. “You know, they say he will come here tomorrow. He will look upon them himself.”
“Will he?” I am not sure who it is she speaks of.
The lady nods. “Ziegler picked them well.”
It is really 1989. I am watching TV. It’s just the news. Senator Jesse Helms says something about a crucifix in a jar of piss. It’s disgusting. I am not particularly interested in art. To me, it is all just pictures. I never enjoyed painting as a child. I could never get things to look the way I wanted them to. Therefore, I don’t have any art hanging in my apartment. My walls are bare and beige. No, off-white. I don’t give my walls a lot of thought. I only began considering decorations since I’ve been dreaming of Germany. I can’t remember when they started. Maybe a month ago is when. That seems about right.
Jesse Helms says, “This matter does not involve freedom of artistic expression – it does involve the question whether American taxpayers should be forced to support such trash.”
I recall telling the woman from my dream that Oskar Kokoschka was too loud. When I come back from Munich, 1937, I find the colors of the world much too bright for me. I prefer the grays of my dreams. The most gray I see with my eyes open is the gray of my apartment. I do not see people. I am alone.
Ever since I woke up, I’ve been thinking about who it is that could be coming to the exhibit. I figure I’ll find out tonight when I go back.
Jesse Helms says, “I say again, Mr. President, he is not an artist. He is a jerk. And he is taunting the American people, just as others are, in terms of Christianity. And I resent it. And I do not hesitate to say so.”
I am not the kind of person to speak my mind. I’m not sure how I feel about that. As a child, I did not say much. And I still don’t. My poor mother once pestered me, asking if I was mute until I said, “No.”
A picture of “Piss Christ” appears on my TV.
“Disgusting,” I say aloud.
My mother, Hedwig, a small, sagging woman, comes to visit me often, maybe once or twice a week. Every visit, she makes me goulash and spaetzle in my own kitchen. Once I turn the TV off, I hear her keys at my door. I straighten up and meet her there to take the package of Bechtle spaetzle off her hands. Knowing how this goes, our silent meetings, I go the kitchen and begin to take out the ingredients we need for the goulash. I always have them. It is an unspoken rule.
“Ah, ah,” my mother says, hobbling after me, “Not yet, my son. I’d like you to take me somewhere.”
“Where?” I ask.
“The art museum. There’s a new exhibit showing.”
I take her there, leaving the spaetzle on the counter, in my own car. I know she likes it when I drive her around. It makes her think I was the one to suggest it. My mother has always liked art. Her apartment is very much the opposite of my own. Bright yellow walls adorned in framed photographs and Van Gogh prints. It’s too loud for a woman her age. All those colors will drive her mad. I think she does it because her life never had any color in it. There’s nothing wrong with that, mine doesn’t either. It’s better that way.
“Two tickets for Rothko,” my mother tells the man behind the counter at the museum, a proud tinge in her voice. The man smiles at her when she pays and tells us to enjoy.
I follow her because she knows where she’s going. I’ve been here with her a handful of times but for me it has always been a lazy walk, not an intellectually stimulating exercise. I like the landscapes, sure, they’re calm and truthful, but nothing else ever makes sense to me. Just colors on a canvas and nude women cut out of stone – purposely provocative and antagonizing. I’ve never heard of Rothko, couldn’t be bothered to know any artist beyond those forced upon me in elementary school. It turns out, Rothko is a man who feels blocks of color are evocative and telling of something internal. My mother tells me everything as we walk along the exhibit and I feel something bubbling in my stomach. My hands start to sweat and itch to move. I ball them up and furrow my brows, determined to keep this feeling at bay. What I wouldn’t give to rip this stupid orange and yellow canvas to shreds! I hate art, but I detest this kind most of all.
I ask my mother to leave when we get back. She tries to protest, seeing as we have yet to cook the goulash. I lead her to the door, put the spaetzle into the pantry, and go to bed. I do not eat, do not wash, do not change my clothes. I close my eyes and drift to sleep. I must meet him.
The lady is still next to me at the exhibit in Munich, Germany, 1937. We stand in front of a jumble of shapes titled “The Tower of Blue Horses.” Strangely, tonight, my dream is blurry so I cannot see everything clearly. The shapes in the painting look only like squares, not at all like horses, though I doubt they ever did. The lady taps me on the shoulder and points to the entrance. Five men dressed in green uniforms enter the exhibit. One of them stands center. Everyone in the room is looking at him. I can’t make out his face. He begins to look around. The room is brought to a whisper.
“The quality of these people,” he says when he reaches “The Tower of Blue Horses” where I have not moved, “what drives them to create such atrocities?”
“Are you asking me?” I say, my voice low.
“Do you have the answer?” he asks me.
I turn back to the painting, blurred by my dream-state vision. Why, I wonder, do these so-called artists long to question things with such aggravating colors? I long to reach out my hand and touch the canvas. I do it. It is a dream and there are no consequences in dreams. I push my fingers through it. The sound of it ripping is music, a symphony. It is telling.
“They do it because they hate the world. Ungrateful. Ill. Evil people.”
The man without a face pulls a lighter out of his pocket and lights it. He laughs and brings it to the canvas. Laughs as it burns.
First thing in the morning, I buy a boxcutter and a lighter. I forget breakfast because it doesn’t seem so important anymore. I don’t know how much time I have to do this, how much I’ll get away with. I drive to the art museum and pay for a single ticket to the Rothko exhibit. The person behind the counter is different from yesterday, so I am unrecognized. Unrecognized. I am always unrecognized. I’ve lived an absolutely silent life. I have created nothing, given nothing to the world. I had no dreams as a child and grew to have no dreams as an adult. Now, as I strut into Rothko’s cave of false wonders, I dream. I take the boxcutter into my right hand and the lighter in my left. There are people around me. A family: mother, father, son. Two teenage girls with notebooks. An elderly lady with a cane. I ignore them. They do not matter. They are degenerate, these people who see something in nothing.
There is a painting titled “Orange, Red, Yellow.” I push the blade of the boxcutter through its flesh and rip a line across it – quick and easy. The canvas tears, little threads of murdered color handing from its wound. There are voices in my ears. There is thundering. I raise the lighter to the cut. I watch the flame catch. I keep moving.
I am deaf. I am nearly blind. I am not feeling what I touch. There is yelling and screeching, I assume, but I continue to shred Rothko. I light him ablaze. Watch the ashes of his degenerate mind whirl around me, fall to my feet. I only stop once my hand has felled each painting and I stop to watch them burn.
Then, it comes to me that I have created something. The way the flames lick the ceiling as they fight against the sprinklers. The way the canvases crinkle and curl in on themselves. The way the people rush away. The way arms reach to grab me.
I have made art. It scares me.
When I was six years old, my mother took me to Austria to see a special exhibit. My memory of it is heavy. I don’t remember what kind of art it was or if it was about something specific or in honor of an artist. I do remember one of the paintings, though. It was called “Self-portrait of a Degenerate Artist.” It was dated 1937. There was a man who saw me looking at it. He asked me, “Do you like this painting?”
“I don’t know,” I told him, “I don’t really like art.”
“Oh, you don’t? That’s sad.”
“What’s sad about it? I just don’t like it,” I said.
“Art is a beautiful thing. It tells us the truth.”
“No, it doesn’t. This man’s chin is twice as long as his forehead.” I pointed at the self-portrait and looked at the man. He had a rather long chin too. He touched it when I pointed out what I did.
“Oh. I suppose,” he said.
“That’s not truthful,” I told him.
“But it isn’t a lie,” the man said, raising his eyebrows, “Art can’t lie.”
“Whatever.”
We stood together a bit longer. In silence.
“Who are you?” I asked the man.
“Oskar,” he said, “Who are you?”
Sofia Benz is a self-proclaimed art enthusiast and hater of fascists. Her work has previously appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, Furrow, Glass Mountain, and more.
