Burdened by the sight of the Nurenberg laws yesterday, I was looking forward to the Brancusi exhibit in the Neue Gallery, and the exhibit was truly interesting. Brashncusi’s development say from the human head to the egg shape of pure form. But then my old thoughts of the dehumanization of modernism in art came back to me, of how – say – my beloved Picasso was also a disector of women, pulling them apart and putting them together in his own abstract way to mean something other than their individuality.  

Then we saw two other exhibits – one on the same subject of art between the wars, and one more modern of Gerard Richter.  Oh goodness, i thought, I can’t escape the Nazis and how they came into power – the poverty of post-WW1, the mechanization, the machines taking the responsibility of humans. So I was relieved to see the bright abstractions of Richter, only to discover his art work concerning Auschwitz, in which real photos of the camp were painted over to the point where they become a cloudy grey and are placed perpendicular to a mirror, so that it is you who are part of the attempt to erase the holocaust.  

How can a German citizen feel, burdened by the blame?  How long before they become indifferent to it in order to survive?