Max Beckmann, Departure, Frankfurt 1932, Berlin 1933-35; Oil on canvas, 84 3⁄4 x 39 1⁄4 in. (215.3 x 99.7 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given anonymously (by exchange) Digital Image © 2014 The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY, © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

It has been suggested that the history of the twentieth century might have been different if Adolf Hitler had not been rejected both times that he applied for admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. If he had not been turned away because of what we are told was a “lack of aptitude,” he might have succeeded in becoming an artist and stayed out of politics. Of course, in light of the strict discipline and ultra-conservative aesthetic of his chosen school’s painting department, the history of twentieth-century art almost certainly would not have been affected if Hitler had fulfilled his initial ambitions. In 1907, the year that the teenage hopeful made his first unsuccessful attempt to enter the Academy, Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, but no hint of modernism had yet affected the faculty of Austria’s most celebrated art school. Egon Schiele, Hitler’s near-coeval, had already spent a year at the Academy when the future Führer first tried for acceptance. But Schiele, along with a group of similarly forward-looking students, left in disgust after three years of study because of the reactionary attitudes of the teachers.