The Holocaust Art Analysis

Art is unprecedented and uncompromising. Many tried to critique it, restrain it, curb it and asked questioned the boundary of artistic interpretation. However frequent the disfavor of the viewer, art has dealt with all phenomena, life elements and historic events. One of the most sensitive and harrowing subjects art has ever deal explored was the Holocaust.
Many years had to pass before artists dared to touch on the subject and render this event. For a long time the artistic recreation of such delicate issue was quite unacceptable. A representative of such an opinion was a German sociologist and philosopher, Theodor Adorno, who said: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (17). If someone was to dedicate his work to the Shoah, they based their piece on the three rules of conduct for presenting the Holocaust incorporated in the essay of the American writer and professor Terrence Des Press. In “Holocaust Laughter?” he states: “The Holocaust shall be approached as a solemn or even
Is it possible to fully portray such a solemn event as the Holocaust in such a seemingly infantile form as a comics or graffiti? “Maus” is the first graphic novel to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and portrays the interview between Art Spiegelman and his father Władek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew, who speaks of his experiences during the war, which significantly contributed to changes in his character. The comic presents all heroes in the form of characters, which symbolize their nationalities; the most stimulating being the allegory of cat – German and mouse – Jew. “Holocaust Lipstick” is the work of British activist and street art artist, Banksy, and is a monochromatic mural based on a 1945 photograph, depicting children looking from behind the enclosure of a concentration camp. The only colorful element of the piece is and the most disturbing one are the children’s lips, painted bright pink – as if with a