WI Hitler was allowed to learn at the Vienna Art School?

No, they’re not.
Say what you will, I wouldn't mind 'Perchtoldsdorg Castle and Church', 'Shelter in Fournes' or some of the others on my walls.

Picasso could actually paint in numerous styles, and had an extraordinary eye. He developed his style after he’d already demonstrated his skills.
Doesn't change the fact that most of what he put out
was crap, at least to my mind.
 

Cook

Banned
Say what you will, I wouldn't mind 'Perchtoldsdorg Castle and Church
', 'Shelter in Fournes' or some of the others on my walls.
They are copies; Hitler painted copies of landscapes in art galleries – he could not paint freehand nor could he sketch. Most of his paintings ended up on the backs of chairs – it was a minor fashion at the time to put small paintings in panels on the backs of Vienna chairs, it's how he made his living.

His application was to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna – not some weekend night classes. This was to art what the Bolshoi is to ballet, and this talentless hick had fantasies that he was up to it.

Doesn't change the fact that most of what he put out was crap, at least to my mind.
Crap artists don’t get to pay for a meal in a fine restaurant by drawing a quick sketch on a napkin - Picasso did so regularly.
 
I have no knowledge on Hitlers skill as a painter or if he would be able to fit in the Vienna Art School - but I think that Hitlers basic personality already at this point was fixed.

And sooner or later Adolf Hitler would be conscripted into WW1, living in the trenches for years and experience the bitter defeat. The big change compared to OTL would be that he fought in the Austrian Army instead of the German Army.

After the war Hitler would probably be a bitter unemployed veteran - the demand of painters in Vienna 1919 wasn't that big. So Hitler may be the Austrian Nazi leader, forever complaining that he could have done so much more as a german.
 
I looked over Adolf's artwork.

He's not a bold artist. There seems to be almost...repression in his work. He doesn't take risks and his technique needs work. Also, he seems to be inhibited by something.

Almost like he's trying to hold back genocidal rage.
 
Ok, so we take Professor Cook's advice and send him to Architecture School - then what?

If he becomes an architect or perhaps more likely, a draughtsman equivalent he would be more prosperous at war time and may well stay in the A-H and join their forces. He might even be elevated to a higher rank, on the basis that he is either a professional or a man of some substance. In which case he has a very different war.

If he spends the war with Austria that surely would make it harder for him to go to Germany after the war and set up shop, given he has fought in the service of a different, if related and close empire.

He may even end up in a Russian camp, or if he serves against the Italians, with a deep hatred of such.
 

Cook

Banned
send him to Architecture School - then what?

He couldn’t get into architecture, he never graduated from school.

The remark made to him when he failed the art entry that he should try the school of architecture was nothing more than a snide remark about architects: “You draw straight lines – be an architect.”
He was quite simply a daydreamer and a dunce, and as anyone who has read Mein Kampf will attest, his writing was atrocious!
 
He couldn’t get into architecture, he never graduated from school.

The remark made to him when he failed the art entry that he should try the school of architecture was nothing more than a snide remark about architects: “You draw straight lines – be an architect.”
He was quite simply a daydreamer and a dunce, and as anyone who has read Mein Kampf will attest, his writing was atrocious!

So a draughtsman, through the apprenticeship track then. Ok, I think we can agree on that.
 
He couldn’t get into architecture, he never graduated from school.

The remark made to him when he failed the art entry that he should try the school of architecture was nothing more than a snide remark about architects: “You draw straight lines – be an architect.”
He was quite simply a daydreamer and a dunce, and as anyone who has read Mein Kampf will attest, his writing was atrocious!
Like alot of the nazis (and me) Hitler was a NEET.

But h-hey, if i work real hard someday i can become the leader of a nation too! :D

Right? :(
 

Cook

Banned
But h-hey, if i work real hard someday i can become the leader of a nation too!
If you live in a country that is suffering from an extraordinary absence of leadership that has a long tradition of blaming its faults on social outcasts, and where a third of the nation is out of work and willing to listen to any damned fool shout on a street corner and provided you are spotted by a group of otherwise sane wealthy industrialists who think “well he looks like a fool, but he could be a useful fool…” then yes, measure yourself up for an armour lined parade cap and pick out a Mercedes open top tourer.



hitlerscar_1529350c.jpg
 
Somewhere in another universe, the art history forum has established a new what if section. The first post imagines how the terrible distorting influence of the famously effective critic and polemicist Adolf Hitler on Twentieth Century painting could have been remove if only the Vienna Academy had rejected his application.

ps. I stole this idea from somewhere but alas I have forgotten where I found the original idea.
 
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