A Nazi altar for Trump

The all-out war declared by Donald Trump against "inappropriate ideology" in the arts would have a starkly tragicomic air if it weren't for the fact that it seems like a tactic learned from the dictator's handbook. In any case, those who see chilling parallels with the Nazi persecution of degenerate art in the presidential purge are not entirely wrong. In one of the most infamous exhibitions in 20th-century history, the leaders of the Third Reich and their followers brought together hundreds of works previously confiscated from those they considered "mentally ill" and "scum": Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Klee, Otto Dix, and Chagall; Jews and communists; enemies of the regime or suspected enemies; pioneers of abstraction, Cubists, Dadaists, and Expressionists.

On the walls of the Munich gallery where they were first exhibited in 1937, a proclamation by Hitler, who was a painter before entering politics, could be read in the form of a manifesto: "It is not the task of art to wallow in filth for filth's sake, to paint human beings only in a state of putrefaction, to draw cretins as symbols of motherhood, or to present deformed idiots as representatives of virile strength." They destroyed 5,000 works and countless artistic careers, many of them because they were considered "an insult to German sentiment."

Trump, the self-proclaimed president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, has also promised on social media that he will not allow “ANY MORE DRAG SHOWS OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.” His plan is called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History (an attempt to control a past in which racism and social injustice were nothing more than the delirium of a gang of liberals), and he has ordered the removal of any proposal promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion from museums or any event that represents the United States. This is wringing the neck of culture until it is almost breathless, suffocating its moral courage.

Andrés Serrano wants to create a mausoleum for the American president at the Venice Biennale.

So, with no apparent way out, artist Andrés Serrano has presented a project for the 2026 Venice Biennale in which Trump would be the protagonist. "I can't think of anyone better to represent the United States than the president himself," he said. His idea is to create a mausoleum or altar in which Trump would be represented by the thousands of objects Serrano has been collecting in The Game All Things Trump since he bought a miniature chocolate cake in 2019 to give to the guests at his wedding with Melania Trump.

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The deadline for submitting proposals closes today, and the decision will be announced in September. For now, it has emerged that Serrano's main rival for 2026 is far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin, who is plotting a plan to "Trumpify the Biennial" and threatening to "rebuild the American arts with a single violent executive order and take over everything." If this is a joke, it's not funny.