Item concerntrates upon art in Germany between 1933 and 1945.

One thinks of the arts in Nazi Germany as struggling in an oppressive system, yet evidence has repeatedly shown that conditions were far more favourable than we assume. Potter conducts a historiography of Nazi arts, examining writings from the last seven decades to demonstrate how historical, moral, and intellectual conditions have sustained a distorted characterization of cultural life in the Third Reich. Showing how past research has revealed the decentralized nature of Nazi arts policies, Potter argues that the insulation of academic disciplines allowed outdated presumptions about Nazi micromanagement of the arts to persist.

Nazi art looting has been the subject of enormous international attention in recent years, and the topic of two history bestsellers, Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum and Lynn Nicholas's The Rape of Europa. But such books leave us wondering: What made thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women decide to put their talents in the service of a brutal and inhuman regime? This question is the starting point for The Faustian Bargain, Jonathan Petropoulos's study of the key figures in the art world of Nazi Germany. Petropoulos follows the careers of these prominent individuals who like Faust, that German archetype, chose to pursue artistic ends through collaboration with diabolical forces. Readers meet Ernst Buchner, the distinguished museum director and expert on Old Master paintings who "repatriated" the Van Eyck brother's Ghent altarpiece to Germany, and Karl Haberstock, an art dealer who filled German museums with works bought virtually at gunpoint from Jewish collectors. Robert Scholz, the leading art critic in the Third Reich, became an officer in the chief art looting unit in France and Kajetan Muhlmann--a leading art historian--was probably the single most prolific art plunderer in the war (and arguably in history). Finally, there is Arno Breker, a gifted artist who exchanged his modernist style for monumental realism and became Hitler's favorite sculptor. If it is striking that these educated men became part of the Nazi machine, it is more remarkable that most of them rehabilitated their careers and lived comfortably after the war. Petropoulos has discovered a network of these rehabilitated experts that flourished in the postwar period, and he argues that this is a key to the tens of thousands of looted artworks that are still "missing" today. Based on previously unreleased information and recently declassified documents, The Faustian Bargain is a gripping read about the art world during this period, and a fascinating examination of the intense relationship between culture and politics in the Third Reich.

In a radical departure form the conventional art history text, this unique volume brings together a number of the world's great artist/image-makers and thinkers on issues of art and its expression for contemporary humanity. With early seminal texts by novelist Thomas Mann, theologian Paul Tillich, art historian Herbert Read as a foundation, the content then moves through late 20th century to post September 11' material with contributions by Lucy R. Lippard, Barry Schwartz, Suzi Gablik, Vaclav Havel, Philippa Hobbs, Elizabeth Rankin, Guenter Grass, Doreen Mellor, Douglas Kellner, Robert Godfrey, Ricardo Levins Morales, Nigel Spivey and others. It bridges grass-roots to academic cultural dialogue. Focusing on prints - limited editions, hand-pulled posters and photographs - it includes images from poster collectives, work by Peter Schumann from the cheap art movement', photographs by Judith Joy Ross, Dominic Hsieh and Nick Ut's powerful image Vietnam Napalm'. There are drawings and llimited edition prints by leading artist/printmakers from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, australia, and North and South America. It is a book that intelligently celebrates the engagement of art with life - with issues of social justice, peace, human rights - paying tribute to the seldom acknowledged contribution of Modern Art to humanist thought. In so going, it reassesses what have been regional perspectives as compared to the world-wide contribution of humanist art.