This book accompanies the first major museum exhibition devoted to a reconstruction of the infamous Nazi display of modern art since the presentation originated by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991. During the Nazi regime in Germany, "degenerate art" was the official term for much of the most important modern art of the day. "Degenerate art" was defined by the Nazi regime as artwork that was not in line with the National Socialists' ideas of beauty. Their condemnation extended to works in nearly every major art movement: Expressionism, Dada, New Objectivity, Surrealism, Cubism, and Fauvism. Banned artists included Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and Oskar Kokoschka. Richly illustrated, Degenerate Art elucidates the historical and intellectual context of the notorious exhibition in Munich in 1937, which spurred the attack on modern art. The book contains reflections on the genesis and evolution of the term "degenerate art" and details of the National Socialist policy on art. Art works from the exhibition Degenerate Art are compared to works of art from The Great German Art Exhibition, which was held at the same time and displayed the works of officially approved artists. The book also presents the after-effects of the attack on modernism that are felt even today

• From Nordau to Hitler : "degeneration" and anti-modernism between the fin-de-siecle and the National Socialist takeover of power / Olaf Peters
• Mario-Anderas von Luttichau
• Ines Schlenker
• Olaf Peters
• Ernst Ploil
• Karsten Muller
• Bernhard Fulda and Aya Soika
• Karl Stamm
• Ruth Heftrig
• Jonathan Petropoulos
• "Crazy at any price" : the pathologizing of modernism in the run-up to the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition in Munich in 1937 / Plates I
• Defining National Socialist art : the first "Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung in 1937 / Genesis, conception, and consequences : The "Entartete Kunst" exhibition in Munich in 1937 / The "Entartete Kunst" exhibitions in Austria / Plates II
• "Violent vomiting over me" : Ernst Barlach and National Socialist cultural policy / Emil Nolde and the National Socialist dictatorship / "Degenerate art" on the screen / Plates III
• Narrowed modernism : on the rehabilitation of "degenerate art" in postwar Germany / From Lucerne to Washington, DC : "degenerate art" and the question of restitution / Checklist