The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

History would have indeed been a lot different.

Before becoming the dictator/tyrant responsible for the killing of millions of innocent people, Adolf Hitler was an aspiring artist. An auctioneer described his work as that of a "competent amateur" and indeed, his paintings pass SBP's art test of me not being able to replicate the painting in question (my rule for paintings is simple: if I can do it, it ain't art). He apparently painted over 100 works but could not capture the attention of the public or an art dealer, so he turned to, ahem, politics.

In any case, I look at one his paintings that recently fetched 10,000 pounds sterling and debated the idea of hanging a painting concocted by a person who is, by all accounts, a mass murderer. Is it immoral or somehow unethical for someone to actually like his art and display it?

Or should the purchaser immediately throw in the fireplace?

Maybe we can look at it as something to show us that, even in the most evil of men, if we look hard enough, perhaps we can find some good in them (kinda like what Luke Skywalker was trying to do with Darth Vader)?

Anyway, I don't have that kind of dough to spend on this sort of thing to begin with, but it does make for an interesting discussion.