Errol Morris: Bamboozling Ourselves Part 4

Mealtime at the Farm

ERROL MORRIS: The picture “Mealtime at the Farm.”

Getty Images“Mealtime at the Farm,” Han van Meegeren.

JONATHAN LOPEZ: Take a look at some of the books from the German Reich art exhibitions every year during the 1930s and flip through them. You’ll see a lot of paintings in there that may, in fact, remind you of “The Supper at Emmaus,” these scenes of people in humble Bavarian dwellings gathering around a table to have a simple meal. “The Supper at Emmaus” was not just a picture, it was a type of picture. And you could find modern equivalents of it if you went to the great Nazi art exhibitions. And during the war, when Van Meegeren revitalized his career under his own name, he openly painted pictures like these, so-called Volksgeist paintings, and exhibited them in occupied Holland and also in Germany. One of them, he even dedicated publicly to Hitler. A lot of this art looks like kitsch to us today. Some of it looked like kitsch to people then, too. But it was a living style of art. And it was vital in a way that it isn’t today. And I think unless you understand some of the visual culture of the time, you’re never going to get to the point of understanding why any of these really strange looking pictures could ever have been accepted as Vermeers. Read more at NYTimes.com…