“It is a dance, a collaboration, this outrage”. #degenerateart @OldStPublishing

Old Street Publishing is an indie press which I only came across relatively recently, but I’ve loved both of the books I’ve read from them, each by Sheila Fitzpatrick: “The Death of Stalin” and “The Shortest History of the Soviet Union“. That first title came from a series they’d launched called ‘Great Events’ which they describe as ‘short, lively books of narrative history, written by experts but aimed squarely at the general reader‘ – so, completely perfect for me! They’ve now released another two titles in the series and today I want to take a look at book number 3 – “The Worst Exhibition in the World” by John-Paul Stonard. The subtitle is “Degenerate Art, 1937”, which might give a hint as to the subject matter of the book… Stonard is a writer and art historian, with a couple of books on German art under his belt, and here he takes a look at a notorious episode in German and Nazi history. The ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition of 1937 gathered together a wide range of artworks which the…