When Hitler Was a Young Adult

Friend: I understand you’re applying to art school! That’s great!

Hitler: Yeah, just, I really want to pursue this painting thing. I’m coming up with some great stuff whether it’s landscape, still life, you know, even some of the modernist/abstract stuff that’s happening. I’m particularly interested in experimenting more with uses of light. Evoking the warmth of sunlight through painting. I’m actually working on a satirical piece in which I show a ceiling in like a stifling business office and it’s got all these ugly industrial lamps, but, instead of the harsh cold light that they emit in reality, I paint the light coming out of them to be like sunlight and that kind of warmth, if you know what I mean. And I’d like to do a series of about 14 of those, each kind of depicting different configurations of those lamps and different offices and different levels of abstraction, you know? But just to show warmth leaking into even these harsh industrial or stuffy beaucratic or business offices. Like, how the sun pokes through even in the most isolating of circumstances. I don’t know, not to be schmaltzy, but I’m into that kind of symbol of hope and all that I guess. And I think this school I applied to has some great teachers and a wonderfully encouraging community of artists who can really help me shape these ideas, to visualize them.

F: That’s neat.

A month later:

F: Hey, I hear you didn’t get into that art school. I know you were really looking forward to going. I’m very sorry. I hope you’ll keep pursuing painting though. You will, won’t you?

H: No, I’m going to do something else.

Hitler’s hedcut from 1933 Wall Street Journal article praising the new German Chancellor

tags:art,Hitler,political humor,satire

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