To degenerate means to fall down to an undesirable state, or to become inferior, particularly with respect to moral or mental traits. With relation to art, the word has relevance to modernism in contrast to the fascist aesthetic as Adolf Hitler branded it as ‘degenerate’ or ‘degenerative’ – to the modernist art entartete. All works by such artists branded as degenerate by Nazis was destroyed or confiscated from public collections in 1937.