Why is contemporary art so degenerate?

Some contemporary art** is purposely designed to be provocative, to make a statement, or to incite a reaction from viewers, and not necessarily a comfortable or pleasant reaction either. read more

But the examples of modern art provided on the answers so far are without exception degenerate. Something is degenerate when each new attempt is worse than the previous attempt. The history of 20 century art is a history of artistic degeneration. read more

So the Degenerate Art Exhibition was his moment to get his revenge. He had made a speech about it that summer, saying "works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people". read more

Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, which opened this week at New York's Neue Galerie, reconstructs not just the Munich exhibition that destroyed so many artistic careers, but the rhetoric that made the exhibition possible. read more