You go to a doctor when you are sick, you enlist a lawyer when you’re in trouble, but
you hire an architect or commission an artist when you have a dream. If you don’t have hope in the future, or believe you can make things better, you rarely invest the time, money and effort required to will something new into existence. People who devote themselves to making original things are generally an optimistic lot. This is why it is interesting to look at makers that tackle difficult, perhaps horrendous, subject matter. It is easy to go to the dark place and equally easy to candy coat a challenging subject. What is difficult is to walk the fine line between these two extremes — to seriously explore a dark subject without spiraling the observer into a depressive state.
An example of walking this fine line is the Nazi Drawings by Argentinian-born printmaker Mauricio Lasansky. The works deal with the gravity of atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany but in the
end are a forceful plea to dignify human life. The artist writes:
“Dignity is not a symbol bestowed on man, nor does the word itself possess force. Man’s dignity is a force and the only modus vivendi by which man and his history survive. When mid-twentieth century Germany did not let man live and die with this right, man became an animal. No matter how technologically advanced or sophisticated, when man negates this divine right, he not only becomes self-destructive, but castrates his history and poisons our future. This is what The Nazi Drawings are about.”
The drawing shown here is entitled Nazi Drawing 28. It was completed in 1967. The entire collection of drawings can be viewed at http://www.nazidrawings.com.