Stéphane Velut's 'Cadence': A Novel of Degenerate Art in Nazi Munich

Stéphane Velut's novel 'Cadence,' published by Éditions Christian Bourgois, is reviewed by Jérôme Lebrun in artpress. Set during the first months of the Third Reich, the book is written as a journal of a painter living at Betracthungstrasse 18 in Munich. The painter, who secretly opposes the Nazi regime, is commissioned to create a painting that glorifies the future but instead obsessively works on a mechanical covering for a young female model, collaborating with a prosthetist. His project, which transforms the girl into a puppet and automaton, is described as a morbid futurism that contradicts official aesthetics. The artist, simulating adherence to Hitlerism, lives in hiding 'like a rat' and faces imminent destruction of his 'degenerate' work and his own fate.