For another couple of weeks important paintings and a few small sculptures from the San Diego Museum's collection of German expressionist art can be seen in an exhibition called  "The Human Beast."  If you live in San Diego and you haven't  seen this show, get over there right away... before the paintings are shuffled back to the archives perhaps not to be seen again for a long time.  What I like most about the art is that it disturbs me.  Without exception the artists were people who challenged notions about truth and reality in pre-World War II Europe... especially Germany.  Nazi madness spread through the population and tainted the culture.  Hitler declared that expressionist art was degenerate and ordered it destroyed.  Even Egon Shiele’s painting of his town by the river would have been destroyed if Hitler’s people could have got their hands on it. Ernst Kirchner’s paintings were declared detenerate.  My palm bark probably would not have survived because it fits the Nazi description of degenerate art.