I will be presenting new research at the conference, Taboo in Cultural Heritage, Reinwardt Academie, Amsterdam, 1-2 February 2024, organised by the Open University of the Netherlands; Reinwardt Academie, University of the Arts; and the University of Amsterdam. Link to event website

This paper (re)considers the contested influence of Dresden Academy of Arts professor and NSDAP member Richard Müller (1874-1954) on Otto Dix (1891-1969), an artist considered ‘degenerate’ and banned from exhibiting by the Nazis in 1933, and pilloried by Müller in a newspaper article that year. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, references to Müller’s influence on Dix and other artists of his generation is played down if not absent in Dix scholarship. Yet, published material from the Weimar years remarks on the impact of Müller’s highly academic style on Dix, who was a student and then professor at the Academy. This paper examines works by both artists to show how readdress to Müller’s influence complicates analysis of Dix’s work, including his famous triptych War, which betrays engagement with motifs in Müller’s painting and graphic work of the early post-World War I years.