Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism 0367196271, 9780367196271

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
List of Plates
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Modernism, Fascism, and Cultural Rebirth
2 The Folk Machine: Fortunato Depero’s Cloth Pictures, 1919–1927
3 The Men Who Turn Around: Scipione and Religion in 1930
4 Mario Radice: Abstraction and Architecture, 1934–2014
5 Conclusion: Recreations and the Fascist Age
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism

This book examines the work of several modern artists, including Fortunato Depero, Scipione, and Mario Radice, who were working in Italy during the time of Benito Mussolini’s rise and fall. It provides a new history of the relationship between modern art and fascism. The study begins from the premise that Italian artists belonging to avant-garde art movements, such as futurism, expressionism, and abstraction, could produce works that were perfectly amenable to the ideologies of Mussolini’s regime. A particular focus of the book is the precise relationship between ideas of history and modernity encountered in the art and politics of the time and how compatible these truly were. Anthony White is Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Cover image: Fortunato Depero, War = Festival, 1925. Pieced wool, 330 x 243 cm (129.9 x 95.7 inches), Roma, ­Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività ­Culturali. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

Routledge Research in Art and Politics

Routledge Research in Art and Politics is a new series focusing on politics and government as examined by scholars working in the fields of art history and visual studies. Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed. Constructing the Memory of War in Visual Culture since 1914 The Eye on War Edited by Ann Murray Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture Making and Being Made Edited by Corey Dzenko and Theresa Avila Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China Voices from Below Meiqin Wang The Danish Avant-Garde and World War II The Helhesten Collective Kerry Greaves Migration, Diversity and the Arts The Postmigrant Condition Moritz Schramm, Sten Pultz Moslund and Anne Ring Petersen Social Practice Art in Turbulent Times The Revolution Will Be Live Kristina Olson and Erec J. Schruers Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art Marta Filipová Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism Anthony White For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/RoutledgeResearch-in-Art-and-Politics/book-series/RRAP

Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism

Anthony White

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Anthony White to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: White, Anthony, 1964– author. Title: Italian modern art in the age of fascism / Anthony White. Description: New York: Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge research in art and politics | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019011616 | ISBN 9780367196271 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429203541 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Art—Political aspects—Italy—History—20th century. | Fascism and art—Italy. | Modernism (Art)—Italy. | Art, Italian—20th century— Themes, motives. | Ideology in art. Classification: LCC N72.P6 W49 2019 | DDC 709.45/0904—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011616 ISBN: 978-0-367-19627-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-20354-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

For Anne and Joseph

Contents

List of Figures List of Plates Acknowledgments

viii xiii xiv

1 Introduction: Modernism, Fascism, and Cultural Rebirth 1 2 The Folk Machine: Fortunato Depero’s Cloth Pictures, 1919–1927 20 3 The Men Who Turn Around: Scipione and Religion in 1930 66 4 Mario Radice: Abstraction and Architecture, 1934–2014 113 5 Conclusion: Recreations and the Fascist Age 158 Bibliography Index

165 185

Figures

1.1 S cipione, The Men Who Turn Around, 1930.  Oil on panel, 99.8 × 79.5  cm (39.3 × 31.3  inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 2 1.2 Mario Sironi, The Shepherd’s Family, 1929.  Oil on canvas, 160 × 215 cm (63 × 84.65  inches), FAI—Fondo Ambiente Italiano, Villa Necchi Campiglio, Milano. Collezione Claudia Gian Ferrari. Foto di Alberto Bortoluzzi, 2006 © Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI). © Mario Sironi/SIAE. Copyright Agency 2019 5 1.3 Fausto Melotti, Sculpture n. 21, 1968 (reconstruction of 1935 original). Steel, 55 × 35 × 35 cm (21.65 × 13.78 × 21.65  inches), Museo del Novecento, ­M ilano. Copyright Comune di Milano—tutti i diritti di legge riservati. © Fondazione Fausto Melotti 8 1.4 Carlo Carrà, Lot’s Daughters, 1919.  Oil on canvas, 111 × 80 cm (43.7 × 31.5  inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Collezione VAF-Stiftung. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited © Carlo Carrà /SIAE. Copyright Agency 2019 10 1.5 Giorgio de Chirico, The Mute Woman, 1920.  Oil on canvas, 65 × 47 cm (25.6 × 18.5  inches), Private collection. Mondadori Portfolio/Walter Mori/Bridgeman Images © Giorgio de Chirico/ SIAE. Copyright Agency 2019 11 2.1 Depero Room at the Grand Palais: International Exposition of Decorative Arts, Paris, 1925.  Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 21 2.2 The Depero Art House, Rovereto, Depicting Work in Progress, 1920.  Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/ Copyright Agency 2019 22 2.3 Fortunato Depero, Serrada, 1920.  Pieced wool, 330 × 245 cm (129.9 × 96.5  inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 23

Figures  ix 2.4 Fortunato Depero, War = Festival, 1925.  Pieced wool, 330 × 243 cm (129.9 × 95.7  inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 26 2.5 Fortunato Depero, War: The World’s Only Hygiene, 1934.  Medium and dimensions unknown. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 28 2.6 Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero, Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe: Futurist Manifesto—11 marzo 1915, 1915.  Leaflet, 29.2 × 23 cm (11.5 × 9.1  inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Giacomo Balla/Copyright Agency 2019 30 2.7 Fortunato Depero, Elements of the “Plastic Flora” for “The Song of the Nightingale”, 1916.  Dimensions unknown, lost. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 30 2.8 Fortunato Depero, Figures for the “Plastic Ballets”, 1918. Dimensions unknown, lost. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 31 2.9 Fortunato Depero, City Mechanized by Shadows, 1920.  Oil on canvas, 120 × 190 cm (47.2 × 74.8  inches), private collection. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/ Copyright Agency 2019 37 2.10 Fortunato Depero, Wooden Father and Son, 1920.  Pieced wool, dimensions unknown, lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 45 2.11 Fortunato Depero, The Magician’s House, 1920.  Oil on canvas, 150 × 260 cm (59.1 × 102.4  inches), private collection. © 2018.  De Agostini Picture Library/Scala, Florence. © Fortunato Depero/ Copyright Agency 2019 47 2.12 Oskar Schlemmer, Figure for the Triadic Ballet, The Abstract, 1922. Wood and fabric, 202 × 126 × 65 cm (79.5 × 49.6 × 25.6 inches), Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. bpk/Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 52 2.13 Preparations for the Veglia Futurista by Fortunato Depero in 1923.  Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/ Copyright Agency 2019 54

x Figures 2.14 Fortunato Depero, The Festival of the Chair, 1927.  Pieced wool, 330 × 257 cm (129.9 × 101.2  inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 58 3.1 Scipione, The Octopus (The Molluscs, Pierina Has Arrived in a Big City), 1929. Oil on panel, 60 × 71 cm (23.6 × 28 inches), Macerata, Fondazione Carima—Museo di Palazzo Ricci 66 3.2 S cipione, The Apocalypse. The Sixth Seal, 1930. Oil on panel, 65 × 78 cm (26 × 30.7 inches), inv. P/1105, Torino, GAM—Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Photo: Rampazzi 1988. Su concessione della Fondazione ­Torino Musei. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited 67 3.3 Scipione, Contemplation (Sunset), 1928. Oil on canvas, 48 × 59 cm (18.9 × 23.2 inches), Private collection, Milan 68 3.4 S cipione, Self-Portrait, 1928.  Oil on panel, 46 × 37 cm (18.1 × 14.6 inches), Collezione Gori, Fattoria di Celle, Pistoia 70 3.5 Scipione, The Awakening of the Blond Siren, 1929. Oil on panel, 80.5 × 100.2 cm (31.7 × 39.4 inches), Torino, Castello di Rivoli, Collezione Cerruti 73 3.6 Scipione, The Manikin Painter, 1930. Ink on paper, 21.5 × 32 cm (8.5 × 12.6 inches), Fondazione R. Longhi, Firenze. © Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Firenze 74 3.7 Scipione, To the True Surrealism/Et Voilà!, 1930. Ink on paper, 21 × 43 cm (8.3 × 16.9 inches), Antonello Falqui collection, Rome 75 3.8 Scipione, The Opening of the “Season.” The Models Arrive from Paris, 1930. Ink on paper, 24.5 × 42 cm (9.6 × 16.5 inches), Antonello Falqui collection, Rome 75 3.9 S cipione, Adam and Eve, 1925. Ink on paper, 37 × 29.5 cm (14.6 × 11.6 inches), private collection, Rome 76 3.10 Scipione, Hermaphrodite, 1931. Ink on paper, 31 × 21 cm (12.2 × 8.3 inches), private collection 77 3.11 S cipione, Trajan’s Forum, 1930. Ink on paper, 16 × 22 cm (6.3 × 8.7 inches), private collection, Rome 79 3.12 S cipione, The Roman Courtesan, 1930. Oil on canvas, 49.6 × 40.9 cm (19.5 × 16.1 inches), Milan, private collection. © 2018. Photo Scala, Florence 82 3.13 Scipione, The Road that Leads to St. Peter’s (I Borghi), 1930. Oil on panel, 40 × 47.8 cm (15.7 × 18.8 inches), Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, Rome 84 3.14 Scipione, The Flagellation, 1929.  Ink on paper, 20.6 × 26.1 cm (8.1 × 10.3 inches), Giuseppe Iannaccone collection, Milan 85 3.15 Scipione, The Dean Cardinal, 1930. Oil on panel, 133.7 × 117.3 cm (52.6 × 46.2 inches), Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, Rome 86 3.16 Scipione, Piazza Navona, 1930. Oil on canvas, 80 × 82 cm (31.4 × 32.2 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 99

Figures  xi 3.17 Scipione, Study for The Men Who Turn Around, 1930. Ink and water color on paper, 23 × 18.7 cm (9.1 × 7.4 inches), Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone, Milan 103 4.1 Mario Radice, Composition A.3, 1934. Oil on canvas, 61 × 68 cm (24 × 26.8 inches), Gian Enzo Sperone collection. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto/Barbara Radice 114 4.2 Atanasio Soldati, Marine Landscape, 1933. Oil on canvas, 65 × 50 cm (25.6 × 19.7 inches), Museo del Novecento, Milano. Courtesy Archivio Atanasio Soldati 117 4.3 Mario Radice, Composition C.F.O., 1934–1935. Tempera on canvas-covered board, 44.5 × 54.8 cm (17.5 × 21.6 inches), private collection. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto Barbara Radice 118 4.4 Mauro Reggiani, Abstract Composition, 1935. Oil on canvas on board, 33 × 41 cm (13 × 16.1 inches), Cardelli & Fontana Arte Contemporanea Collection. Courtesy Cardelli & Fontana artecontemporanea / Archivio Reggiani 119 4.5 Fausto Melotti, Sculpture No. 17, 1968 (Reconstruction of 1935 original). Stainless steel, 196.8 × 59.3 × 24 cm (77.5 × 23.3 × 9.4 inches), Museo del Novecento, Milano. Copyright Comune di Milano—tutti i diritti di legge riservati. © Fondazione Fausto Melotti 120 4.6 V Triennale di Milano 1933, Ceremonial Hall. Photograph. © La Triennale di Milano—Archivio Fotografico 123 4.7 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–1936.  Photograph: Anthony White 126 4.8 Mario Radice, Monolith and Portrait of Mussolini for the Assembly Hall of the Casa del Fascio di Como di Terragni, 1936. Dimensions and medium unknown, lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice 127 4.9 Mario Radice, Panels for the Assembly Hall of the Casa del Fascio in Como, 1935–1937. Fresco on reinforced cement, 124 × 230 cm (48 × 90 inches), lost. Photograph. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice 127 4.10 Mario Radice, Plastic Fresco Mural for the Directory Room of the Casa del Fascio, Como, 1935–1936. Painted bas-relief, 400 × 600 cm (157.5 × 236.2 inches), lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice 131 4.11 Mario Radice with Cesare Cattaneo, Fountain for Corsica Square in C ­ omo-Camerlata, 1936–1962. Reinforced cement, 896 × 493 × 155 cm (352 × 194.1 × 61 inches), Corsica Square, Camerlata. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of

xii Figures Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice 133 4.12 Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, Colonial Exhibition Celebrating the Imperial Victory, 1937.  Medium and dimensions unknown, lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice 138 4.13 Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–1936.  Photograph: Anthony White 141 4.14 Mario Radice, Plastic Fresco Mural for the Directory Room of the Casa del Fascio, Como, 1935–1936 (Reconstruction by Studio Terragni and Exnext, 2002). Photograph © Paolo Rosselli. Courtesy of Barbara Radice 147 4.15 Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, Colonial Exhibition Celebrating the Imperial Victory, 1937 (Reconstruction by Studio Beretta, ­Pinacoteca Civica, Como, 2005). Photograph © Sergio Beretta. Courtesy of ­Barbara Radice 149

Plates

1

2

3

4

5 6 7

8

Scipione, The Men Who Turn Around, 1930. Oil on panel, 99.8 × 79.5 cm (39.3 × 31.3 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali Fortunato Depero, Serrada, 1920. Pieced wool, 330 × 245 cm (129.9 × 96.5 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 Fortunato Depero, War = Festival, 1925. Pieced wool, 330 × 243 cm (129.9 × 95.7 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019 Fortunato Depero, The Festival of the Chair, 1927. Pieced wool, 330 × 257 cm (129.9 × 101.2 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency Scipione, The Roman Courtesan, 1930. Oil on canvas, 49.6 × 40.9 cm (19.5 × 16.1 inches), Milan, private collection. © 2018. Photo Scala, Florence Scipione, The Dean Cardinal, 1930. Oil on panel, 133.7 × 117.3 cm (52.6 × 46.2 inches), Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, Rome Mario Radice, Composition A.3, 1934. Oil on canvas, 61 × 68 cm (24 × 26.8 inches), Gian Enzo Sperone collection. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto/Barbara Radice Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, Colonial Exhibition Celebrating the Imperial Victory, 1937 (Reconstruction by Studio Beretta, Pinacoteca Civica, Como, 2005). Photograph © Sergio Beretta. Courtesy of Barbara Radice

Acknowledgments

The research and writing of this book were generously sponsored by the University of Melbourne through the Special Studies Program, an Arts Faculty Internal Grant, and the School of Culture and Communication Publication Support Scheme. Significant progress on the project was made in 2006 during my appointment as Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. While undertaking research in Italy, I was assisted by many institutions and p ­ eople. I am especially grateful to Federico Zanoner, archive of the Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART); Paola Ippoliti, Archivio dell Scuola Romana in Rome; Marina Catalon, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna e ­Contemporanea in Rome; Alessandro Taddei, l’Archivio del Novecento della Sapienza in Rome; Assunta Porciani, Archivio Biblioteca, La Quadriennale di Roma; ­Lanfredo ­Castelletti, Musei Civici, Como; Elisa Mori, Fondazione Cassa di ­R isparmio dell ­Provincia di Macerata; Piero Cadoni, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin; and Risha Paterlini, Giuseppe Iannaccone collection in Milan, for granting access to works, photographs and archives. In the process of writing, I benefited greatly from the support of several colleagues. Romy Golan, who gave helpful feedback on an early chapter draft, invited me to present at a City University of New York Rewald Seminar in 2016. Ara Merjian secured a Global Research Initiatives grant to fund my research visit and lecture at New York University in 2013. Thanks are due to Tatiana Flores for asking me to present as part of Rutgers University’s Distinguished Speaker Series in 2013; to Hee-Young Kim (Kookmin University) and Eun Young Jung (Hannam University) for giving me the opportunity to present my research in Seoul during 2010 and 2012; and to Greg Thomas at The University of Hong Kong, and Sue Russell at the British School at Rome, for inviting me to lecture in 2009. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Schnapp for his assistance during my visit to Milan in 2006. Among the other individuals who contributed significantly to the project are ­A ngelo Lo Conte who worked tirelessly to obtain images and copyright permissions for the book, Jane Brown and Vanessa White who provided invaluable assistance with ­photography, and Katie Armstrong who ably steered this project for Routledge. Portions of Anthony White “Surrealism in Italy? Sexuality and Urban Space in the Work of Scipione (1904–1933).” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 14, no. 2 (2014): 168–182, and Anthony White, “Abstract Art, Ethics and Interpretation: The Case of Mario Radice.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 5, no. 1 (2004): 43–56, copyright © The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Inc.

Acknowledgments  xv are reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com on behalf of The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Inc. Parts of this book appeared previously in Anthony White, “Futurism, Territory and War in the Work of Fortunato Depero.” Journal of War & Culture Studies 8, no. 2 (2015): 125–142, https://www.tandfonline.com/. Finally, I would like to express how grateful I am to my family for their support throughout this project.

1 Introduction Modernism, Fascism, and Cultural Rebirth

Two naked men are walking along a path which leads away from the viewer (­Figure 1.1 and Plate 1). A lone figure in the background, who provides the only relief within the otherwise stark and overheated landscape, bears witness to the progress of the painting’s protagonists. As they advance into the dark chasm at the center of the ­composition—which seems to draw everything toward it magnetically—the men turn to look over their shoulders. One, who embraces his torso as if to protect himself from the elements, wears an expression of pain and displeasure. The other lifts his arm in a gesture of leave-taking and grins excitedly or perhaps hysterically. Painted in 1930 by the Italian artist Scipione, and exhibited at a gallery in Rome which had been inaugurated that year by Benito Mussolini, The Men Who Turn Around depicts figures who move forward while looking backward and display conflicting responses to the nature of their journey.1 In the years leading up to the creation of this work, Italy emerged from the catastrophe of a global war and, following years of social and political instability which led to the downfall of the liberal democratic order, granted power to Mussolini’s Fascist government. In the realm of the arts, following a brief period at the beginning of the 20th century which saw the ascendancy of such novel artistic styles as divisionism, symbolism, and futurism, after World War I artists began to draw upon examples provided by much older artistic traditions indigenous to Italy. This phenomenon, which affected artists across Europe and came to be described as the “return to order,” saw artists turn away from the international avant-gardes toward a more familiar visual vocabulary drawn from regional folk cultures and the national monuments of antiquity and the Renaissance. 2 Among the many artists to reengage with the past in this manner was Pablo Picasso whose “neo-classical” figure paintings from 1917 had an enormous influence across the continent. Scipione’s work, which makes explicit reference to familiar icons of historical art—in particular Masaccio’s fresco Expulsion of 1425—can be identified with this broader European interest in traditional painting, not only in its theme but also in the rendering of the torsos and lower limbs of the central figures wherein the academic techniques of chiaroscuro and foreshortening have been used to create a convincing illusion of three-dimensional form and space. At the same time Scipione also relied upon an approach to painting based upon the work produced by avant-garde artists just prior to World War I—such as the ­ German-born Otto Dix during his expressionist phase—visible in the monochromatic dark red tone which unifies the figure with the landscape, the crudely depicted, masklike details of the facial features, the evident marks of the pigment-loaded paintbrush as it made contact with the canvas, and the scratches created by dragging the handle

2  Introduction

Figure 1.1  S cipione, The Men Who Turn Around, 1930.  Oil on panel, 99.8 × 79.5 cm (39.3 × 31.3 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

of the brush across the paint while still wet. In this way, although Scipione belongs to a generation of artists who were deeply inspired by the national traditions of ancient and early modern art, he did not simply acquiesce to the artistic conservatism promoted by many of his peers in the 1920s and actively encouraged—if not literally mandated—during the 1930s by officials in the Italian Fascist regime. Rather,

Introduction  3 like many of the artists examined in this book, he also continued to explore the innovations pioneered by artists belonging to European avant-garde movements such as futurism, expressionism, and abstraction, who repudiated conventional artistic skills, focused on the impact of modern industrialization, and destabilized inherited concepts of identity. If, as the Italian art critic Giuseppe Marchiori observed in a monograph on Scipione published in 1939, there is “a contrast, an incoherence of language” in this work “between the expressionist character of the faces and the normal, even academic drawing of the nudes,” Scipione’s painting embodies a conception of art’s relationship to history that rejects any simplistic opposition between backward-­ looking conservatism and progressive radicalism.3 The artists who form the principal focus of this study, Fortunato Depero, Mario Radice, and Scipione (Gino Bonichi)—who were born in 1892, 1898, and 1904, ­respectively—were aligned with a tendency that has been recently identified by several art historians working on the history of 20th-century art. Contrary to earlier theories explaining any modern artist’s recourse to the past as a form of cultural regression, historians like Devin Fore have argued that artists and writers who returned to more traditional forms in the interwar period “did not reiterate previous paradigms naïvely, but rather invoked them self-consciously.”4 As is evident in the work of artists like Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico and many other artists in this period, this return to preexisting visual cultures was far from constituting an uncritical veneration of the past. On the contrary, it could take the form of an iconoclasm which worked to de-realize the national traditions of the past rather than merely continue them. 5 Moreover, as Antonio Del Guercio has argued in The Future Behind in relation to the art of this period, If a general discourse of “restoration” circulated throughout Europe, the figurative re-articulations that occurred—beginning with those in Italy—not infrequently avoided the most regressive impulses of that environment to reveal in one way or another significant facts about the human condition in the modern world.6 Drawing upon the past as a source of inspiration, and as a standard against which to measure the present, did not necessarily mean a rejection of the contemporary ­moment of history in which artists found themselves. The picture we obtain of modern art between the wars in Italy from work like that by Scipione therefore differs significantly from dominant accounts of 20th-century ­European art.7 The relationship between past and present embodied in these works is not grounded in the idea of a historical forward march toward ever more radical positions and thus refuses the stark opposition between traditionalism and modernism. At the same time, as I argue throughout this book, these works also resist the synthesis of tradition and modernity that historians like Roger Griffin and Mark Antliff have observed as one of the defining features of art produced during the 1920s and 1930s in societies under the sway of fascism.8 Although these Italian modern artists engaged in no outward opposition to the dominant political ideologies of their time, they produced artworks that ran counter to what much official cultural policy promoted in the realm of fine art between the wars. Furthermore, the disjunctive way in which these artists’ works are both of their own time and yet redolent of other times forces us to rethink the periodizing and qualifying terms like “Fascist art” that are used to explain the history of 20th-century European visual culture. As part of this rethinking process, the present

4  Introduction study—which examines artworks produced or exhibited prior to, during, and after the years of Fascist rule in Italy—stresses that “the age of Fascism” began well before Mussolini’s rule over Italy and has cast a long shadow over that country since the end of World War II. In so doing, it deals with the broader historical questions involved in understanding the complex interconnections between art and ideology.

Italian Modern Art and Politics between the Wars One of the questions this book sets out to answer concerns the relationship between the formal qualities of the art works that form the subject of the study and the broader sociopolitical context of a period dominated by the rise and fall of fascism after World War I. After 1945 it was commonly assumed, particularly by left-leaning art historians, that avant-garde artistic movements such as geometric abstraction—which were disdained by the Nazis and publicly vilified in exhibitions such as “Degenerate Art” of 1937—must be inherently antifascist. In 1975 the Italian historian Umberto Silva, for example, argued that the accusation by hardline Fascist writers during the 1930s that all modern art is communist was correct because “there is no real art which is not revolutionary, and there is no modern revolution that is not Marxist.”9 It is now clear that this approach has little validity for a study of Italian art between the wars. This is not principally the case because it is a negative rather than positive definition of art’s relationship to politics, nor even because it can be more readily applied to Germany than to Italy, but rather, and most significantly, because works of avant-garde art such as futurism, expressionism, and geometric abstraction were constantly on display throughout the Fascist period in Italy at both private and official exhibitions and were frequently acquired by state collecting organizations. Clearly, a more sophisticated and less essentializing method is required to fully understand the connections between modern art and Fascism in this period. An alternative approach involves examining the individual political choices of artists. This also presents difficulties because there are many cases of ambiguous political ­positioning on the part of individual artists in this period, including compliance, opportunism, resistance, and collaboration, sometimes shifting back and forth over time, or even manifesting at the same time.10 Furthermore, in some cases, archival records are (sometimes deliberately) incomplete or inaccessible and evidence connecting artists to political beliefs is not available. In isolated instances, we may look to individuals like Carlo Levi, who was a known anti-Fascist and declared his art to be such, for information about the political content of his images, but the existence of others working in a similarly expressionist vein who were politically pro-Fascist such as Mario Sironi, makes that approach problematic (Figure 1.2).11 Information about individual political allegiances can certainly provide a useful background to the works, but in the majority of cases, it alone does not yield a deep understanding of how the visual characteristics of the art relate to the political context. The reason for this is that the works’ ideological valency is a distinct question from the artists’ precise political allegiances. The lives of the creator and the art work, while connected, are inevitably separate, which means that the author’s presumed intention has to be weighed against how the work’s meaning can exist outside and beyond that. Another way to approach the issue of modern art’s relationship to politics in this period, one less fraught with difficulties, is to ask a more limited question—what was the art’s relationship to official cultural policy? In 2003, the then Prime Minster of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, was quoted as saying that “Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on

Introduction  5

Figure 1.2  Mario Sironi, The Shepherd’s Family, 1929. Oil on canvas, 160 × 215 cm (63  ×  84.65 inches), FAI—Fondo Ambiente Italiano, Villa Necchi Campiglio, Milano. Collezione Claudia Gian Ferrari. Foto di Alberto Bortoluzzi, 2006 © Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI). © Mario Sironi/SIAE. Copyright Agency 2019.

vacation in internal exile.”12 Such comments are a reminder that the task of the historian remains an important one, particularly given the rise of neofascist movements during the 21st century, both in Italy and elsewhere. To set the record straight, according to one reckoning the list of atrocities committed under Mussolini includes at least 100,000 Libyans who were deported to concentration camps where they were left to starve, 10,000 Slovenes who were ethnically cleansed, and 7,500 Jewish people who were killed.13 Did such appalling statistics have their parallel in the cultural domain? The truth is that Fascist policy toward art during the 1920s and 1930s, like that toward certain other domains of Italian society, was multifaceted. For many years after World War II, it was argued that Fascism embodied a total and extreme form of intolerance not only to political and human diversity but also to the kind of cultural freedom associated with the historical avant-gardes.14 Over time this picture began to change as historians began to stress the degree to which Fascism was a rather ill-­defined movement. Historians like Adrian Lyttelton began to argue in the 1970s in favor of Fascism’s open-ended character at an ideological and cultural level.15 Certainly the period just prior to and just after Mussolini’s 1922 appointment as Prime Minister of Italy can be characterized as relatively eclectic at an artistic level. Multiple different movements coexisted, with some following preexisting forms of 19th-­century academicism, others—including the futurists— continuing prewar avant-garde tendencies, and yet others investigating historicist forms of neoclassicism. To a degree this plurality came to characterize the fine arts

6  Introduction under Fascist rule. Antonio Maraini, an important official in the cultural hierarchy of the regime, argued in 1936 that all manifestations of art in their most sane forms were encouraged by the Fascist government, and that Fascism neither took sides in regard to artistic tendencies, nor imposed its wishes.16 If such statements reflect an ideologically motivated interpretation of Fascist liberality toward the arts, for more recent commentators, the idea of defining a Fascist style nevertheless remains fraught because of the heterogeneity of approaches that have been described or promoted as Fascist culture. As Richard Golsan argues for the case of literature, “writers associated with fascism include both traditionalists and modernists,” and in the artistic domain, many exhibitions promoted fundamentally opposed aesthetic tendencies, including both iconoclastic dynamism and somber classicism.17 An associated idea that there was simply no policy with regard to artistic style has been influential and, in the writings of Jeffrey Schnapp, has led to a view that the “unstable ideological core” of Fascism was compensated for by an “aesthetic overproduction” whereby contradiction at the level of policy and attitude toward artistic styles and approaches became a positively “productive principle.”18 What this latter view of Fascist cultural policy tends to underemphasize is the extensive system of inducements encouraging artists to work for and with the Italian state. Prizes, competitions, state exhibitions, commissions, and other schemes invited artists to devote their practice to the government’s wishes.19 Beyond this, there were also significant coercive dimensions to Fascist policy toward the fine arts. By the 1930s, in Italy political parties had been abolished, there were secret police investigating individual political allegiances, a monopoly on education had been created, and there was no free press worthy of the name. Furthermore, closer to the cultural domain, even if many artists worked in their own style and exhibited independently, in the late 1920s the government set up a series of provincial Fascist Art Unions to which artists were asked to belong in order to earn the right to participate in regional art exhibits and receive official patronage. 20 Union members were expected to demonstrate “good political and moral conduct,” and those who spoke openly against the regime were punished by being disciplined, sent into exile, or imprisoned. 21 One of the effects of the Fascist Art Union system, as Simonetta Fraquelli argues, was that it “stifled any free associations of artists… [and] it all but destroyed the nascent art marketing gallery system.”22 This strongly tethered professional artists to the prerogatives of the centralized national government. Moreover, there were certain aesthetic constants in officially declared theories of Fascist art, even if these were frequently contested and not consistently adhered to. One of the most pervasive of these—the doctrine of “plastic solidity,” first promulgated by Mussolini in 1926 in a speech given at the first exhibition of the tradition-oriented novecento movement, and later by such important cultural officials as Giuseppe Bottai—explicitly characterized Fascist art in stylistic terms as a figurative painting or sculpture, with clear outlines and solid volumes, which was reminiscent of the autochthonous traditions of Italian art. As Fernando Tempesti argued in 1976, the works produced by the Milan-based novecento movement, which, for a brief period in the late 1920s, embodied the kind of art envisaged in such a formula, were not defined by their political content. Rather in his discussion of the movement, he stresses “the adherence of much art to the intentions and the reactionary quality of the Fascist regime through strictly formal modes.”23 In view of this, the work of historians stressing the pluralism and incoherence of Fascist cultural policy have accordingly been contested by scholars who view the apparent diversity of artistic production under Fascism within the broader context

Introduction  7 of these more prescriptive dimensions of Mussolini’s attitude toward visual art. After all, to insist on the lack of an official style in Fascist art runs the risk of making Italy look relatively liberal and benign, particularly in comparison with Germany during Hitler’s reign, when the reality was quite different. 24 Nevertheless, the story of art under Fascism in Italy is not as simple as an authoritarian model of a top-down enforcement of aesthetic paradigms. Rather, as Günter Berghaus has maintained, under Fascism one party of artists, for example the traditionalists, was played off against another, for example the modernists, with both being given sufficient power to criticize each other and keep each other in check, thereby relieving the state of the necessity of exercising open suppression or brutal discipline.25 The strategy was to support a traditional approach to art at an official level in order to prevent a more progressive one from attaining ascendancy rather than to eliminate the latter altogether. Marla Stone has pursued this line of thinking further and argued that there was a deliberate policy of “hegemonic pluralism” in which the Fascists pursued consent, not by insisting on one or other style but by endorsing a variety of aesthetic languages, thereby encouraging participation from a broad swathe of artists—who were induced through various exhibiting and purchasing opportunities—and thereby preempting the creation of an artistic underground.26 Similarly, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, while acknowledging that mainstream discussions of cultural affairs in Italy under Fascism were characterized by an elusiveness that avoided openly dictating the political role of art, also argues that freedom with respect to such views was accompanied by a push to achieve ideological unity by dialectically overcoming opposing views into a grand synthesis.27 A recent and influential account of fascist culture, one which seeks to move beyond the pluralism thesis and identify precisely what form such a grand synthesis would take, has been proposed by Roger Griffin in a series of articles written over the last 20 years and his 2007 book Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler. Griffin’s thesis is that fascism, far from being a politics without an ideology, was a form of “palingenetic hypernationalism”—an alternative political form of modernism. He argues that since their origins in the early 20th century both modernism and fascism promoted an ideal of cultural rebirth or national renewal, which would resist the forces of decadence in modernity caused by such forces as materialism, secularization, and “disembedding.”28 Both fascism and modernism, in ­Griffin’s view, shared an interest in achieving a sense of transcendent meaning that would overcome the deleterious cultural and social effect of such phenomena.29 He explains that the large variety of different aesthetic styles and ideologies which found themselves in sympathy with fascism can be explained neither by opportunism on the part of artists nor by the idea of creative paradox. Rather, because fascism, like its aesthetic and literary counterparts, was not represented by any particular style but was deeply invested in the idea of a cultural rebirth—involving a simultaneous rejection of the recent past and a mythic appropriation of a more distant past conceived as a source of regeneration—it could take many different, even apparently opposite forms.30 Griffin’s argument offers a powerful explanatory model for reconciling some of the apparent contradictions within both fascism and modernism and helps to explain how the work of certain Italian modernists active in this period could find common cause with fascist ideals. From the early 1920s, artists such as Ardengo Soffici—the erstwhile futurist who became an ardent supporter of the Fascist regime—argued that art should not choose between reaction and revolution but aim to “reunite in itself the experience of the past and the promise of the future.”31 There is certainly evidence to suggest that Fascism drew upon and only slightly modified conceptions of history and

8  Introduction culture, such as early 20th-century primitivism, which had been previously adopted by the historical avant-garde. As Giuliana Tomasella has argued, directly after World War I and well before Mussolini’s rise to power, an “epochal upheaval” had taken place among erstwhile avant-garde artists, which led to a reversal of existing terms: Progress and future become palingenesis and origin, while the subversive primitiveness of African idols makes way for the recognizable and noble remains of an autochthonous past. It is a short step from here to the rehabilitation of classicism.32 This return to an indigenous past took many, often contradictory forms in Italy, informing for example the critical writing of art historians during the 1920s such as Roberto Longhi and Lionello Venturi, who for all their differences, were equally invested in a rehabilitation of Italian trecento and quattrocento painting while taking an intense interest in modern art.33 Artists who were affected by this broader ­tendency include the aforementioned Mario Sironi whose expressionist canvases of the 1920s emulated the primordial qualities of Byzantine art, and the sculptor Fausto Melotti, who explicitly connected the formal purity of his mid-1930s geometric abstract sculptures to the highest achievement of the classical past (Figure 1.3).34

Figure 1.3  Fausto Melotti, Sculpture n. 21, 1968 (reconstruction of 1935 original). Steel, 55 × 35 × 35 cm (21.65 × 13.78 × 21.65 inches), Museo del Novecento, ­M ilano. Copyright Comune di Milano—tutti i diritti di legge riservati. © Fondazione Fausto Melotti.

Introduction  9 However, the capacity of Griffin’s paradigm to account for the specific aesthetic strategies adopted by artists in this era is limited. There are two reasons for this. First, as Andrew Vincent argues, Griffin’s argument for “a common core of ‘palingenetic ultranationalism’ at the heart of fascism” does not surmount “the internal deep tensions within the various fascist arguments.”35 Second, Griffin engages in almost no detailed analyses of individual artworks. This is a problem because if we accept the basis of ­Griffin’s argument even provisionally, it is still necessary to test the hypothesis by demonstrating how particular aesthetic features of individual works fit into the more general definitions of both modernism and fascism he proposes. The most significant attempt to do this has been Mark Antliff’s 2007 book Avant-Garde Fascism: The ­Mobilisation of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939.36 Antliff extends Griffin’s arguments about how modernism and fascism are related to a discussion of specific artworks and artistic techniques. Using examples of art largely taken from the Italian and German contexts, he outlines five areas where modernism and fascism can be shown to share concerns: ideas of cultural regeneration, avant-garde techniques of montage, notions of secular religion, primitivism, and anticapitalist ideas of time and space. Antliff’s analysis is a useful summary of some of the commonalities between specific works of modernist or avant-garde art and fascism. When it comes to analyzing specific artworks however, his argument still raises more questions than it resolves. I would question for example identifying Soffici’s work of the 1930s or that of the contemporary German painter Ferdinand Staeger with modernism except in the most qualified way. Their paintings of rural peasants and military laborers—with their reproduction of academic routines of modeling the human figure modified by a relatively superficial layer of broken brushwork borrowed from impressionist painting— are a far cry from the more radical dimensions of modernist or avant-garde aesthetics in a stylistic sense.37 His discussion of the pro-Nazi, German expressionist painter Emil Nolde is certainly important as a case study of the connection between modernist primitivism and fascism. What seems most significant however, as Antliff points out, is that Nolde failed to gain approval from prominent right-wing critics for his borrowings from Oceanic art, as the primitivism favored by fascists did not celebrate difference in anything like the way proposed by other modernists such as Pablo ­Picasso.38 Furthermore, contrary to the impression the author gives, there were many types of avant-garde or modernist art produced during the birth and ascendancy of the Fascist movement in Italy that did not conform neatly to the definition of cultural rebirth that Antliff adopts from Griffin. Rather than aiming for a transcendent realm beyond the profane, everyday character of modernity wherein a golden past meets an ideal future, several artists deliberately produced aesthetic forms of temporal disturbance that ran completely counter to the idea of cultural rebirth. Just as there were many who resisted the official Fascist doctrine of “plastic solidity,” for every artist who claimed to reinvent the future on the basis of the past, there was another who could be defined as a decadent, or as deliberately mired in precisely the disembedding, materialist, and secular society that the Fascists were supposed to abhor. Another option available to artists, one overlooked by both Griffin and ­A ntliff, was to suggest more or less openly that the ideal of cultural rebirth was deeply problematic or even dysfunctional.39 A model for how this might be manifested artistically was provided by a work produced by Carlo Carrà in 1919. Around this time Carrà—who would play a significant role in the Italian art world during the 1920s and 1930s as both artist and a critic—put his earlier futurist work behind him

10  Introduction and critiqued the idea of progress dear to earlier generations of avant-garde artists. Returning to the idea of what he called “The Italian idea of the originary solidity of things” he began to emulate the archaic style of the Italian trecento painter Giotto.40 In his idiosyncratic painting The Daughters of Lot of 1919 Carrà chose a subject that referred to the sexual intercourse of a father with his own daughters (Figure 1.4). In this work, which was severely criticized by the artist’s colleagues for its excessively “archaic” quality, the artist suggested that a future for modern painting could be assured by what Jennifer Ruth Bethke has characterized as “unnatural, incestuous borrowing from the past.”41 Contrary to his constant calls for the renewal of modern art through a restorative return to the old masters, in this anomalous painting Carrà problematized a straightforward or recuperative return to tradition. This type of relationship to the past has a corollary in the approach I perceive as central to several artists working in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the work of Depero, Scipione, and Radice may seem, at first glance, to be in line with Antliff and Griffin’s definitions of fascist modernism, I argue in this book that they strongly resisted many of the formulations linking modernism and fascism in such accounts, and in particular the concept of cultural rebirth. Before commencing my analysis of these three artists’ works, I will elucidate my remarks by analyzing the work of a painter who loomed large over this period of Italian art—Giorgio de Chirico.

Figure 1.4  Carlo Carrà, Lot’s Daughters, 1919. Oil on canvas, 111 × 80 cm (43.7 × 31.5 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and ­Rovereto, Collezione VAF-Stiftung. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited © Carlo Carrà /SIAE. Copyright Agency 2019.

Introduction  11

Giorgio de Chirico: Rivalry and Difference De Chirico has remained a puzzling figure within the history of 20th-century art.42 The Greek-born Italian artist’s “metaphysical” paintings of 1911–1919, distorted scenes of deserted piazzas populated by classical statuary, faceless manikins, and mundane objects were lauded by artists belonging to avant-garde movements such as the French surrealists. When de Chirico began to emulate Renaissance, baroque, and romantic styles of painting in 1919, however, he was summarily expelled from the movement.43 Since that time, his reputation has been subject to several shifts: once hailed as the originator of avant-garde forms of modernism, he was redefined during the 1980s as the archetypal postmodernist. What is interesting for our present purposes, however, is the precise meaning behind the works he created in 1919 wherein he produced faithful copies of existing works by old master painters. In mid-1919, de Chirico went to the Villa Borghese in Rome to copy paintings, a new thing for him at that time. Pitching himself against the most significant European artists throughout history, including Durer, Raphael, Rubens, and Renoir, de ­Chirico sought to embody and demonstrate the superiority of the inherited traditions of western culture. By choosing, in his copies after Raphael and other artists, to openly reproduce the works of well-known, highly respected but not living artists, de ­Chirico

Figure 1.5  Giorgio de Chirico, The Mute Woman, 1920. Oil on canvas, 65 × 47 cm (25.6  × 18.5 inches), Private collection. Mondadori Portfolio/Walter Mori/ Bridgeman Images © Giorgio de Chirico/SIAE. Copyright Agency 2019.

12  Introduction paid his respects to the past and emphasized the importance of traditional and outmoded painterly craft. Contemporary responses to this unusual exhibition were scant; some were favorable, while another described de Chirico as “a mediocre collector of antiques.”44 However, as Jennifer Mundy argues, while other contemporary Italian artists were looking to the past as an inspiration for their work during this period, in works of 1920 such as The Mute Woman, de Chirico’s decision “to make and exhibit exact copies” constituted a strange new form of originality (Figure 1.5).45 Rather than a straightforward assertion of technical competence, I argue that de Chirico was engaging in a creative misreading of Raphael’s work as a means of assuaging what the American literary historian and theorist Harold Bloom once ­described as the “anxiety of influence”—that insignificance authors sometimes feel in the face of the “terrible splendor of cultural heritage.”46 In a 1920 article discussing the Urbino artist’s work at some length, de Chirico argues as follows in regards to Raphael’s portraits: From the cranial sphere, down through the folds of the clothes and drapery, to the hands and the angles of the volumes where the figure sits like a statue on its pedestal, there is a static, immobile, and intense quality, which makes us think about the eternity of matter. The painted figure seems as if it existed even before the painter had created it. This is perhaps why, when we are faced for the first time with certain works of genius, we find ourselves asking with amazement: “But where have I seen this before?” “Where have I caught sight of that face?” And we remain disturbed, as when in life, we do something or see someone already featured in a dream.47 This important passage in de Chirico’s writings requires a close analysis. He argues that Raphael’s paintings give the impression of something solid and eternal, like a statue. So far, this is similar to contemporary art theory in Italy by artists like Carrà who stressed the solidity of the forms and the timeless quality of their art: a commonplace of what came to be known as the “return to order” movement of the 1920s.48 But then the text takes a peculiar turn. Raphael’s painting seems to have existed before the artist painted it, clearly an impossibility—except in so far as the work is itself an emulation of a prior model. To the extent that the latter is true, the artist, and here de Chirico means Raphael specifically, comes belatedly to the work, is not the work’s originator. Moreover, the painter is not actually the author of the work but repeats something seen before, somewhere else, which predates the work itself. The artist, particularly when that artist is a genius, paints something that is not new, which resembles something which came before and which the viewer has seen before. Raphael, in other words, is a plagiarist. In this sense, de Chirico’s view of Raphael cannot simply be described as a straightforward homage to a master who, possessed of a sense of absolute originality, is necessarily superior to de Chirico, the latter being viewed as his belated epigone. Nor should this work be understood, as Albert Barnes argued in the 1930s for de Chirico’s later paintings, simply as an attempt to give “a new and fuller meaning to the Florentine form as found in Raphael.”49 Rather, by invoking Raphael through a copy while simultaneously arguing that Raphael himself is an artist who evokes a sense of déjà vu in the viewer, the artist’s work can be identified with a tendency that Devin Fore has described as “an active and deliberate strategy to expropriate the capital of the ‘cultural heritage’.”50 De Chirico relegates the master’s

Introduction  13 paintings to the status of copies of other images, experiences, and paintings—just as his own work faithfully reproduces Raphael. As Alexander Nagel and Chris Wood have argued for early modern Europe in their landmark study Anachronic Renaissance, and which I maintain is an important dimension of de Chirico’s works of 1920, at certain times in history there has been an “apprehensiveness about the temporal instability of the artwork,” which leads artists to produce objects that engage in a “re-creation of the artwork as an occasion for reflection on that instability.”51 In de Chirico’s model, works of art—both his own and that of the Renaissance master— are caught between two incompatible time zones, both reproducing a lost past while instantiating their own present. Repudiating his metaphysical paintings of distorted urban landscapes in the 1920s to embark upon a seemingly heedless pastiche of historical styles, de Chirico resisted modernism’s obsession with newness and ruptured the concept of an unproblematic return to the past.52

There Is No One Time of History Within publications claiming to provide a general overview of the history of modern art, the work produced in European countries governed by totalitarian administrations between the wars is frequently overlooked. Although there are several studies of individual artists working under dictatorships, and a number of histories of “totalitarian art” during the interwar period have been published, leafing through broader surveys of 20th-century art we search in vain for a proper account of important artists working closely with fascist regimes such as Arno Breker in Germany or Mario Sironi in Italy.53 Whatever the rationale for excluding such figures, be they aesthetic, political, or otherwise, the narrative told about the art of the previous century is consequently distorted. One of the difficulties for contemporary scholars is that history went in a completely different direction than someone living during that time might have anticipated. As Mussolini and many of the cultural policies his government promulgated were disavowed in the wake of World War II, the aesthetic ideologies, and attitudes to history which Fascism embodied became a dead end or a tributary rather than the direction in which things would go. Much of the art produced during the era of Fascism would not belong to the tradition of the victors, of those who wrote the dominant narratives of history. Rather, the entire period was characterized as a parenthesis, as in the famous description of Fascism put forward by Benedetto Croce after World War II. 54 The attitude to the past embodied in many works produced during the 1920s and 1930s was relegated to the status of an exception, and an earlier model belonging to liberal democracy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was restored, in which a continually sustained linear evolution was presumed as a given. For a brief period in the 1980s at the height of postmodernism, it seemed that the conventional assumptions about the relationship between modern art, the historical past, and stylistic innovation was in abeyance.55 However, today the historical continuity created by suppressing a greater part of interbellum artistic production largely remains in place, lending a false pedigree to postwar art and overlooking the various ruptures which radically intervene in that narrative. Among such ruptures are the fact that forms of modernism lauded in the postwar moment as culturally progressive such as geometric abstraction had been instrumentalized as Fascist propaganda, as happened in the case of Mario Radice; or that certain cultural phenomena invented and promoted by Fascism continued after

14  Introduction the war including the many touristic celebrations of folk culture which still take place today in Italian cities.56 Furthermore, continuities at the level of discourse between the postwar period and the disavowed Fascist era were also submerged. For example, as Kris Ravetto has argued, similarities between postwar aesthetic debates—in which the unassailable moral purity of avant-garde practices was pitted against a traditionally inspired figuration viewed as corrupt and outmoded—and the doctrines of absolute purity versus abject decadence within Fascist discourse were completely overlooked.57 Although the parallels that can be drawn between the ideas underpinning Fascism and modernism perform a rupture within dominant histories of modern art, it is important to recognize, contrary to Griffin’s thesis, that modernism is not simply congruent with Fascism, whether considered inherently or in a historically specific sense. This is not because of the continuity of a liberal democratic point of view, which safely brackets and relativizes that period and argues that examples of modern artists collaborating or even believing in Fascist ideology should be seen as misguided aberrations, examples of opportunism or accommodation. Rather, it is because many works of modern art produced during the Fascist era, and in particular the ones examined within this book, are sites of contestation which disrupt conventional narratives about the advancement of history away from a dark past toward an enlightened future as well as the ideal of a return to a golden age. In making this argument I have drawn upon Walter Benjamin’s thinking about historiography in his Arcades project composed during the early to mid-1930s. In “Konvolut N” of that text, he maintains that a truly critical history writing would involve the “rescue” of historical phenomena, not however from “the ill repute and contempt into which they’ve fallen, but from the catastrophic way in which they are very often portrayed by certain forms of transmission, by their ‘value as heritage’.” As Benjamin concludes, such phenomena can only be properly rescued “by the demonstration of the fissure in them.”58 Against a view of history as continuous progress, which he associates with catastrophe, with the endless continuity of an already existing state of affairs, Benjamin insists on “the points at which the transmission breaks down… The roughness and jaggedness that offers a hold to someone wishing to get beyond those points.” With such arguments he advocated a theory of historiography that would unravel the inevitability of time as a process leading from “a legendary beginning” to a “legendary end of history.” By focusing on those seemingly “fruitless, backward, extinct” parts of any historical period and on the moments where cultural transfer through time is interrupted, he hoped to bring a halt to the seemingly inexorable forward thrust of linear development and focus on those historical moments, encapsulated in rejected objects and practices, that harbor a revolutionary promise for a world hurtling towards what he saw as a catastrophic end.59 In the spirit of Benjamin’s methodological speculations, this study seeks out those caesuras in the historical record, those works that interrupt the smooth evolution of the history of 20th-century art. In the process I concentrate on works that reveal the parallels between Fascism and modern art as well as the breaks, those instances where modern art did not find itself in harmony with Fascism as it was defined in the period. To the degree that the paradigm of cultural rebirth can be seen as defining for the Fascist ethos and in particular for identifying what modernism shares with Fascism, this can only make sense on the understanding that the paradoxical, and incongruous dimension of such a rebirth be acknowledged. And to do this, to acknowledge that

Introduction  15 dimension, is to question the very concept of rebirth itself. If taken literally, the idea of a past fully realized in the present—embodied in the Italian Fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile’s theory of actualism in which history is made in the present rather than reconstructed retroactively—is an impossibility similar to the idea of actually returning to the past, or that of completely surpassing the present moment.60 After all, the idea of being reborn, of fully realizing the glories of the past in a hitherto decadent present, depends upon an impossible suspension of disbelief. One can no more go back and redo one’s birth than one can, having already been born, be born again. The first implies an acuity or power beyond the human; the second constitutes a cancellation of something absolutely fundamental to human experience, the memory of things past. By the same token, the idea that a person or nation can under no circumstances be “reborn,” that one can simply never return to the past and reanimate it, denies the fact that individuals and communities continually live in and through the past, inventing and reinventing tradition through fiction, art and other cultural forms at every living moment.61 As Elena Pontiggia points out, in this period of an apparent “return to order” within the European artistic community of the 1920s and 1930s the past was not considered to be a “closed chapter, but an alive magma of events, voice and figures still in becoming.” Additionally, “the conception of a past ‘in becoming’ induced the reformulation of the concepts of newness and originality.”62 In this sense, every birth, whether of an individual or an artwork, is a rebirth, a reiteration. Equally, what distinguishes one idea of cultural renewal from another is whether that rebirth is considered a synthesis fully realized in the present or an artifact, a rhetorical strategy, a trope modeled on a paradoxical sense of disjunction.63 The ideal of cultural rebirth does inform many of the artworks that were produced in the period covered by this book. However, in the examples I have chosen to focus upon in each chapter, this rebirth appears not as a seamless synthesis of past and future, but as a more or less open recognition of its impossible or implausible character, at least in the manner in which it was theorized within Fascist doctrine. There is a tension in the idea of palingenesis in these works which leads to a radical instability of the concepts of time by which that idea is underpinned. In tracking down this instability throughout the chapters that follow, I have drawn inspiration from a concept Aby Warburg invented during the 1920s as a critical alternative to the ideology of rebirth: Nachleben or survival. As the German art historian argued, traces of the pagan cosmological struggle between Saturn and Jupiter in Albrecht Durer’s Melancholia demonstrate that in 1514 the great humanist artist of the early modern period “has yet to break quite free of the superstitious terrors of antiquity.”64 In a similar fashion—to paraphrase George Didi-Huberman’s account of Warburg’s challenge to conventional art history—I argue that the artists in this study worked to “anachronize” time and render it impure. They did this by undermining the idea of a coherent zeitgeist through which any work may be exclusively understood and by problematizing the idea of one consistent and triumphant or golden past that any artwork or era may seek to restore.65 These artworks show that any historical period, but particularly one dedicated to the concept of cultural rebirth, embodies multiple, contradictory ideas of temporality.66 As I argue in Chapter 2—which focuses on the period between World War I and the mid-1920s when the Fascist movement was emerging and triumphed as a political force—Depero appropriated long-standing textile production techniques, and made frequent references to rural or folk-art contexts, as part of a futurist practice, which

16  Introduction also celebrated the mechanization characteristic of modernity. In so doing he enabled the viewer to measure the new industrialized world of the 20th century against its primitive predecessors in such devices as the marionette or mechanical toy. ­Rendering the image of the machine in artisanal, handcrafted techniques did not reflect the artist’s incapacity to fully commit to the futurist program but rather his resistance to a mechanistic teleology which would preset the destiny of art and humanity. ­Scipione’s overheated and troubled scenes of the urban landscape of Rome, as well as his apocalyptic paintings dealing with religious themes, as I maintain in Chapter 3, questioned the palingenetic ideology that was foundational for a great deal of thinking about the role of art and culture under Fascism. In opposition to a broader tendency to assert the seamless continuity between the glories of the ancient world and the achievements of 20th-century Italian modernity at a time when Mussolini had consolidated his dictatorship, in 1930 Scipione counterposed the image of a corrupted Italian capital, which symbolized a deeper spiritual decline—one which Fascism was not helping to resolve but was, in fact, exacerbating. In Chapter 4, which opens at the high point of Mussolini’s power leading up to and during Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–1936, I demonstrate that Radice’s abstract geometric works from 1935 were aligned with those ideologies of the Fascist movement which promoted the integration of the individual with society, the artwork with its broader context, and the present with the past. At the same time, alternative understandings of Radice’s geometric compositions suggest that the fit between Fascist ideology and abstraction was an uneasy one. As critical interventions both before and after World War II—as well as more recent installations and reconstructions—have made visible, the principles of openness within his geometric structures, which allowed the individuality of his work to be subordinated to a higher purpose, also permitted counter readings which were both starkly opposed to, and yet in some cases ironically reinforced, Mussolini’s political program. Before moving to discuss each of the three artists in earnest a note on the selection of artists and works examined, and on the scope of the study, will help to clarify the overall purpose of the book. Rather than a comprehensive overview, which runs the risk of superficiality, or a single-artist study, which achieves deeper knowledge at the expense of a broader history, this book accounts for Italian modern art in the age of Fascism by examining three significantly different “positions” within it—futurism, expressionism, and abstraction. The book does not aim to produce a representative survey: rather it is a study of exceptional works, which, although not necessarily representative of a widespread tendency, nevertheless oblige us to rethink conceptions of historical time in 20th-century Italian art. The methodology of the study is to identify a relatively small number of these key works and to probe their meaning in depth, thus paying tribute to their uniquely nuanced and complex character. The fact that the artists and works studied are starkly different from one another in style, medium, and content demonstrates that art before, during, and after the period of Mussolini’s rule over Italy was by no means homogeneous, either stylistically or in terms of its relation to time and history. As for the book’s scope, although the focus of the discussion in each chapter is on the relationship between visual art, concepts of history and the politics of Fascism, the discussion often ranges beyond the strict temporal boundaries of Mussolini’s rule over Italy between 1922 and 1943. The analysis of Depero’s work, for example, shows how the period during and just after World War I is integral to understanding

Introduction  17 the later emergence of Fascism, and highlights the impact of that political movement on art by focusing on the connections and discontinuities between the artworks produced before and after Mussolini’s ascension to power in 1922. The analysis of Scipione’s work, by contrast, addresses art’s relationship to the politics of the period by looking at an artist whose entire career was encompassed by the Fascist years and yet not entirely determined by the dominant artistic and political discourse of the time. In the process of investigating the works Radice produced during the 1930s, this book also examines post-World War II interpretations and reconstructions of them, the object being to reveal how the “afterlife” of these geometric abstract works has affected their meaning for us today. The study’s broader project of resisting linear or progressive accounts of history, of which the works themselves are foremost examples, is complemented by a methodological approach which pushes against the chronological limits of any defined historical period. The investigation of historical events and artworks which lie outside the boundaries of the 20 years of Italy’s Fascist government is an embodiment of the larger examination of time and history in which this book is engaged.

Notes 1 Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco and Valerio Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere (Turin: U ­ mberto Allemandi, 1988), 116–125. 2 Among the many studies of this phenomenon see Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Il futuro alle spalle: Italia – Francia. L’arte tra le due guerre, exh cat., Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (Rome: Edizioni De Luca, 1998); Christopher Green, Art in France: 1900–1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Kenneth E. Silver, ed., Chaos & Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936, exh. cat., S­ olomon R. ­Guggenheim Museum, New York (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2011); Devin Fore, Realism after Modernism: The Rehumanization of Art and Literature (­Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012); Fabio Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013). 3 Giuseppe Marchiori, Scipione (Milan: Hoepli, 1939), 22. All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated. 4 Fore, Realism after Modernism, 10. See also Green, Art in France: 1900–1940, 216–217. For the regression hypothesis, see Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting,” October, no. 16 (Spring 1981), 39–68. 5 Diane Daval Béran, “‘D’APRES’ ovvero i grandi maestri riveduti e corretti,” in Il futuro alle spalle, 124. 6 Antonio del Guercio, “L’immanenza della storia,” in Il futuro alle spalle, 256. 7 See for example Sam Hunter, John M. Jacobus, and Daniel Wheeler, Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography, 3rd edition (New York: Prentice Hall, 2004). 8 See Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Mark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilisation of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 9 Umberto Silva, Ideologia e arte del fascismo (Milano: Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, 1975), 110. 10 See Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre, 247–260. 11 On Carlo Levi, see Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre, 260–261. For a discussion of the political complexities of style in fascist Italy see Guido Armellini, Le immagini del fascismo nelle arti figurative (Milan: Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, 1980), 152. 12 Richard Owen, “PM ‘Defends’ Mussolini,” The Weekend Australian, 13 September 2003, 14.

18  Introduction 13 R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London: Arnold, 1998), 4. 14 See Carla Sanguineti Lazagna, “La concezione delle arti figurative nella politica cuturale del fascismo,” Il movimento di liberazione in Italia 4, no. 89 (October–December 1967), 23. 15 Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929, 2nd edition (­Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 364–393. 16 Antonio Maraini, “Italian Art under Fascism,” The Studio CXII, no. 525 (December 1936), 297. 17 Richard Golsan, “Introduction,” in Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, ed. Richard Golsan (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992), xii–xiv. 18 Jeffrey Schnapp, “Epic Demonstrations: Fascist Modernity and the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution,” in Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, ed. Richard Golsan (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992), 3. 19 For a comprehensive study of these initiatives, see Sileno Salvagnini, Il sistema delle arti in Italy: 1919–1943 (Bologna: Minerva Edizioni, 2000), 13–126. 20 Marla Susan Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 27. 21 Philip V. Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso: fascismo e mass-media (Rome-Bari: ­Laterza, 1975), 31–38. 22 Simonetta Fraquelli, “All Roads Lead to Rome,” in Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930–45, exh cat., Hayward Gallery (London: The South Bank Centre, 1995), 131. 2 3 Fernando Tempesti, Arte dell’Italia fascista (Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 1976), 67. 2 4 Mariana G. Aguirre, “Artistic Collaboration in Fascist Italy: Ardengo Soffici and Giorgio Morandi” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2008), 279. 2 5 Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996), 227. 2 6 Stone, The Patron State, 65. ­ alifornia 27 Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of C Press, 2001), 22. 28 On “disembedding”, see Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 29 Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, 116. 30 Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, 232. 31 Ardengo Soffici, “Opinoni sull’arte fascista,” Critica fascista, no. 20 (1926), 384–385. 32 Giuliana Tomasella, Avanguardia in crisi nel dibattito artistico fra le due guerre (Padova: Cleup, 1995), 121. 33 See Andrée Hayum, “Lionello Venturi, Roberto Longhi and the Renaissance ‘primitives’,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17, no. 3 (2012), 343. 34 On Sironi, see Emily Braun, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); On Melotti, see Fausto Melotti, “Introduzione,” Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione 13, no. 40 (1935), n.p. 35 Andrew Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies, 3rd edition (Chichester: Wiley, 2010), 137. 36 Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism, 17–62. 37 Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism, 43, 57. 38 Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism, 47–48. 39 See Jennifer Ruth Bethke, “From Futurism to Neoclassicism: Temporality in Italian Modernism, 1916–1925” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2005), 149. 40 Carlo Carrà, “Dello stato della pittura italiana,” in Pittura Metafisica (Florence: V ­ allecchi, 1919), quoted in Testimonianze e polemiche figurative in Italia: Dal Divisionismo al Novecento, ed. Paola Barocchi (Messina and Florence: Casa Editrice G. D’Anna, 1974), 401. 41 Ardengo Soffici to Carlo Carrà, January 1920, quoted and translated in Jennifer Mundy, “The Daughters of Lot 1919,” in On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910–1930, eds. Elizabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy (London: The Tate Gallery. 1990), 56; Bethke, “From Futurism to Neoclassicism,” 149. 42 See Ara H. Merjian, Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Modernism, Paris (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 43 André Breton, “Le surréalism et le peinture,” La Révolution Surréaliste 2, no. 7 (15 June 1926), 4.

Introduction  19 4 4 A. Giacconi, “Espoizioni milanesi,” Il secolo illustrato 9, no. 4 (1921), 106, quoted in Elena Pontiggia, “De Chirico in Milan, 1919–1902,” Metafisica, nos. 5–6 (2006), 173. 45 Jennifer Mundy “La Muta, after Raphael 1920,” in Cowling and Mundy, On Classic Ground, 75. 46 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 32. 47 Giorgio de Chirico, “Raffaelo Sanzio,” Il Convegno, no. 3, 1920, partially quoted and translated in Jennifer Mundy, “La Muta” 1990, 75. 48 Kenneth E. Silver, “A More Durable Self,” in Silver, Chaos & Classicism, 23. 49 Albert C. Barnes, “Giorgio de Chirico,” in Recent Paintings by Giorgio de Chirico (New York: Julien Levy Gallery, 1936). Reprinted and translated in Metafisica, nos., 7–8 (2008), 726. 50 Fore, Realism after Modernism, 10. 51 Alexander Nagel and Chris Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 17. 52 Emily Braun, “Kitsch and the Avant-Garde: The Case of de Chirico,” in Rethinking Art between the Wars: New Perspectives in Art History (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2001), 73–90. See also Norman Bryson, Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 85–176. 53 See for example Hunter, Jacobus, and Wheeler, Modern Art; Hal Foster, et al., Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004). 54 See Benedetto Croce, Scritti e discorsi politici (1943–1947), vol. 1, ed. Angela Carella (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1993), 61. 55 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Turn (New York: The Guilford Press, 1997), 181. 56 See Luciano Caramel, Mario Radice: Catalogo generale (Milan: Electa, 2002), 123; D. Medina Lasansky, “Tableau and Memory: The Fascist Revival of the Mediaeval/ Renaissance Festival in Italy,” The European Legacy 4, no. 1 (1999), 26–53. 57 Kriss Ravetto, The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 1–19. For more on the continuities between fascist and post-fascist culture in Italy, see David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930–50,” The Journal of Modern History 67 (1995), 627–665. 58 Walter Benjamin, “N (Theoretics of Knowledge; Theory of Progress),” The Philosophical Forum 15, nos. 1–2 (Fall–Winter 1983–84), 21. 59 Benjamin, “N (Theoretics of Knowledge; Theory of Progress),” 22, 27, 4. 60 On Gentile See Claudio Fogu, “To Make History Present,” in Donatello among the Black Shirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy, eds. Claudia Lazzaro and Roger J. Crum (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 33–34. ­ uture 61 See Stephen Prickett, Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition: Backing into the F (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 62 Elena Pontiggia, Modernità e classicità. Il ritorno all’ordine in Europa, dal primo ­dopoguerra agli anni Trenta (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2008), 76. 63 See Jean-Luc Nancy, “Myth Interrupted,” in The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 46. 64 Aby Warburg, “Pagan-Antique Prophexy in Words and Images in the Age of Luther,” in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. David Britt (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program, 1999), 647. 65 Georges Didi-Huberman, The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg’s Theory of Art (University Park: University of Pennsylvania, 2017), 49. 66 See Didi-Huberman, “Before the Image, Before Time: The Sovereignty of Anachronism,” in Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art in and out of history, eds. Claire J. Farago and Robert Zwijnenberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 37–38.

2 The Folk Machine Fortunato Depero’s Cloth Pictures, 1919–1927

Among the numerous displays at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris was a room dedicated to Italian futurism. Italy’s contribution to the Exhibition had been coordinated by Margherita Sarfatti, a significant figure within Italy’s artistic establishment.1 The avant-garde credentials of futurism did not normally recommend them to members of the Italian cultural hierarchy who, with the support of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, regularly expressed a strong preference for artistic traditions and classical ideals of order. Nevertheless, in response to a demand by the Exhibition organizers that artists exhibit “clearly modern tendencies” and avoid the “copying or counterfeiting of ancient styles,” Sarfatti granted the avant-garde movement pride of place within the broader representation of Italian artists, artisans, and architects on show in Paris. 2 The futurist room, not located within Armando Brasini’s neoclassical Italian Pavilion but in the massive glass and iron structure of the Grand Palais, included the work of Giacomo Balla, an elder statesman of the movement, and two of his pupils, Fortunato Depero and ­Enrico Prampolini. For the 32-year-old Depero, this event—the culmination of several years’ work on the part of the Trentino-born painter and sculptor—was the pinnacle of his career both in terms of international exposure and official state endorsement. Like his colleagues Balla and Prampolini, Depero displayed a wide variety of objects in Paris. These included paintings, photographs, posters, sculptures, architectural sketches, and objects made of textiles such as wall hangings and cushions. The explicit call to the decorative arts in the Exhibition made the textile works, which were explicitly designed to decorate an architectural interior, a natural choice of medium on the part of the futurists. Balla had worked as an interior designer since 1912 and, with Depero, had published a 1915 manifesto, “The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe,” which outlined the futurists’ ambition to alter everyday life through a radical transformation of the built environment.3 As is evident from contemporary photographs, one of the most prominent features of the display were several large-scale cloth pictures—described in the catalogue as “fabric mosaics”—in which brightly colored fragments of woolen cloth had been joined together to create a two-­dimensional scene (Figure 2.1). One of these works, visible on a rear wall of the exhibition in the center of one of the installation photographs, was Modernity of 1925. It presented the viewer with a virtual catalogue of industrial activities, objects, and beings. Above a locomotive which sweeps down the center of the image and fills the space with billows of colored steam, a car races off into the distance on the right and a biplane soars into the upper left. Below, mechanical figures signal, point upward, drive, or cycle. The location depicted is overrun by forms of transport normally associated with the urban

The Folk Machine  21

Figure 2.1  D  epero Room at the Grand Palais: International Exposition of Decorative Arts, Paris, 1925. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

environment of train stations, airports, and busy paved roads, giving vivid expression to the modernity of metropolitan experience. As if to celebrate the joyous quality of this new, modern reality, brilliant, star-like forms and shapes seem to erupt like fireworks from the decorative border surrounding the central panel. The subject matter of this cloth picture closely followed the futurists’ vigorous celebration, in a series of writings, performances, and art works orchestrated by the group’s leader F. T. Marinetti since 1909, of the most dynamic aspects of modernity, including the urban environment, modern transport, and industrialization.4 The technique in which it is rendered, an assemblage of differently colored fabric pieces stitched together and attached to a canvas backing, also bore significant similarities to earlier collage works by futurist artists and reiterated the radical modernity of such works at a technical level. For example, in Dynamism of a Man’s Head of 1914, a fragmentary portrait of a machine–man hybrid, Umberto Boccioni had taken preexisting, mechanically printed newspaper fragments and assembled them in a manner that emphasized the figure’s constructedness. Similarly, Depero’s Modernity is assembled from prefabricated textile elements cut into shapes and pieced together to render the human figure as a collection of fragments whose external form approximates the mechanical devices that roar past at breathtaking speed. As Depero wrote in 1925, his work was motivated by “the most devastating artistic vision, finally outside of any traditional ties, born violently from electromechanical contemporaneity.”5 At the same time, Depero’s cloth pictures—which were designed by the artist and cut and sewn together by his wife Rosetta Amadori with a group of female employees at their workshop in Rovereto

22  The Folk Machine

Figure 2.2   The Depero Art House, Rovereto, Depicting Work in Progress, 1920. ­Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

in northern Italy—eschewed the more heterogeneous, mass-produced materials and chaotic compositions of futurist collage and revived a technology that significantly predated industrialized modernity (Figure 2.2).6 As Virginia Gardner Troy has shown, the artist’s works in this medium belong to a folk tradition known as “inlaid patchwork,” which has a long pedigree in northern and central Europe going back to the 1500s.7 Such works, which often depicted religious narratives or historical events in a naïve style, were once used by provincial tailors to train apprentices and to demonstrate their technical skills. The painstaking processes of cutting, arranging, and stitching involved in making the elaborate patchworks were, however, no longer in use and, by the early 20th century, had been replaced by other, more modern textile techniques. This and other similar works by Depero presented at the 1925 Exhibition provoked a diverse range of reactions among viewers. A French reviewer focused on the modernity of the works: “This apostle of modernolatry has, in my view, seized the pace of our contemporary sensibility, interpreting the mechanical life of our days in its metallic luster.”8 However, another reviewer commenting on Depero’s work noted that the artist seemed to have been won over by the coloring and the representation of flowers and monsters in the work of ancient Japanese decorators, and the musical grace of the mosaicists from Ravenna. Futurism seeks its colors and forms in the most venerated antiquity.9 Depero’s evocations of the past sat rather incongruously with many aspects of the futurist’s stated program and were distinct from the modern collage technique by which the manufacture of the work was inspired.

The Folk Machine  23 Similar incongruities are to be observed in other works by Depero on display at the Paris exhibition. Serrada (1920) depicts a scene in a small village in Trentino at the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy close to where Depero lived (Figure 2.3 and Plate  2). In the middle distance a small church is surrounded by cattle, trees, small houses, a well, a wooden fence, and a colored patchwork pattern defining the landscape. In the foreground are two figures: a seated man with an outsized moustache smoking a pipe and a woman wearing a traditionally decorated folk costume who balances a pitcher on her head. When this work was first exhibited, ­Margherita

Figure 2.3  F  ortunato Depero, Serrada, 1920. Pieced wool, 330 × 245 cm (129.9 × 96.5 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

24  The Folk Machine S­ arfatti praised its strong rural and regional emphasis. Describing Depero as “a ­mountain-dweller from Trentino” she lauded Serrada for its calm and peaceful atmosphere, its “line of small, placid cows, the woman, the little alpine house and the delightful, rustic mountain well: motifs of the solemn and majestic peace of our mountains.”10 Although Depero’s choice of this rural village as a subject was part of a broader interest in local, vernacular cultures among contemporary Italian artists and architects in this period, several aspects of Serrada distance it from a straightforward restatement of historically based regional traditions.11 Gugliemo Jannelli, in his review of the 1925 Exhibition, described this and other works by Depero as depicting “mechanical fantasies, luminous masks, women in bizarre, extremely festive regional costumes interpenetrated by environments of sharp mountains, and magic houses, sun, and clouds.” In so doing he drew attention not only to the rural theme but also to the fact that the figures and the landscape are depicted using flat, squared-off planes of color borrowed from the works of cubist and futurist painters produced in the earlier 20th century, as well as to the borders of the picture which are ornamented with figures that have geometric body parts—rectangular heads, semicircular limbs, and rudimentary graphic symbols in place of anatomical details—giving the ­impression that they are mechanical automata. Here, as with Modernity, antipathetic characteristics and themes—rural and urban, ancient and modern—sit side-by-side.12 Within the literature on 20th-century European art, several explanations are available to account for the stark contrasts within these works, three of which I discuss here. First, Depero’s work of the 1920s has frequently been associated with a ­Europe-wide tendency which saw hitherto avant-garde artists including Pablo Picasso and Carlo Carrà return to more historically familiar approaches to art.13 Under this interpretation the cloth picture, a singular object with figurative motifs set within a pictorial composition rather than a more thoroughgoing transformation of the lived environment through abstraction—as had been promised in the “Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe” manifesto of 1915—would represent a watering-down of the iconoclastic, de-sublimating impulses of early futurism. Second, at the 1925 Paris Exposition, an event that saw the birth of the international art deco style, many works were characterized by a simplified, streamlined version of the avant-garde mixed with an eclectic range of historical references. Although contemporary decorators paid lip-service to the idea of industrializing the decorative arts, they largely remained faithful to the craft traditions of the past.14 Moreover, as Rossana Bossaglia argues, “there appear to be close links between Depero and Art Deco, precisely because of the contamination that he implements, with unabashed genius, between cubo-futurist formulas and the recovery of folk craftsmanship.”15 Depero’s works might therefore be conceived as a form of timidity or compromise with regard to the industrialization of decorative art. Third, Depero’s references to the past can be understood within the framework of European primitivism. Although the primitivist artists Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso had attacked the classical tradition by seeking inspiration in cultures at a great geographical distance from Europe, others—in a trend that came to characterize the postwar artistic climate—looked closer to home at local artworks produced in national, folk, or peasant cultures. Counting Depero among this latter tendency, Michelangelo Sabatino has noted the influence of traditional Neapolitan and Sicilian decorative arts on the artist and described his work as “a novel synthesis of modernity and primitivism” which establishes a connection between contemporary art and more traditional aspects of Italian vernacular design.16 According to this reading, the combination of past and present in Depero’s work would be interpreted

The Folk Machine  25 as suggesting an ideal continuity between the modern urban world and an earlier, more rural Italian national culture. I argue that none of these explanations account for the peculiar combination of past and present encountered in Depero’s works of the early to mid-1920s. Among the many reasons for this, to take just one example, is that Depero’s attitude to so-called “primitive” art differs markedly to that of the majority of European and, in particular, Italian artists of this period. The Russian neoprimitivist artists Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov—with whom Depero came into contact during the time of his collaboration with the Ballets Russes in Rome during World War I—had brought together machine-like forms drawn from cubist and futurist painting with Russian peasant decorative motifs in a series of works beginning in 1910. However, whereas some neoprimitivists argued for the continuity between contemporary art and traditional peasant artefacts as the basis for a strong national culture, in his Katsap Venus of 1912 Larionov combined two identities, the “urban degenerate” and the “rural peasant figure,” which in the contemporary context were seen as totally incompatible.17 Furthermore, Larionov radically re-theorized the lubki, popular Russian broadsheet prints from the 1700s, as related to both 20th-century futurism and ancient Assyrian monumental sculpture in a manner that completely undermined contemporary revivalist fantasies of a coherent Russian identity based in historical continuity.18 Similarly, Depero, who drew upon folk art techniques from southern parts of Italy while emphasizing the assembled, mechanical nature of his cloth pictures, referred to ancient decorative art practices which had their origins in countries at the furthest geographical and cultural remove from Italy such as Japan. Moreover, he had revived an outmoded tradition of inlaid patchwork whose origins lay in neighboring countries including Austria—a former occupier of the territory where the artist was born—against which Italy had recently fought a bitter and catastrophic war.19 The connections his work makes between the mechanical routines associated with the metropolitan avant-garde, and the traditional, hand-made conventions of folk decorative art, were not associated with the continuity of a native Italian genius. Rather, they highlighted deep temporal and geographical disjunctions which cannot readily be explained as an enfeeblement of futurism’s radical force, a compromised attitude to industrialization, or a concession to dominant narratives of the historicist pedigree of Italian national art. An important framework for understanding Depero’s peculiar combination of past and present is the formation of Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento in 1919, his election to Italian parliament in 1921, and appointment as Italian Prime Minister in ­October 1922. The culture of fascism both within Italy and throughout Europe between the wars lauded the achievements of modern technology while simultaneously promoting the values of more traditional societies.20 Roger Griffin and Mark Antliff explain this aspect of fascism through the ideal of “palingenesis”—that society be born anew by a return to origins, a principle that saw many artists engage in various forms of reconciliation between ideas of modernity, and even futurity, and the eternal values of an ancient past.21 Depero’s combination of past and present, alongside his frequently stated enthusiasm for Mussolini’s political program, might therefore be explained as simply a manifestation of fascist ideals. We can test this proposition by turning our attention to another cloth picture exhibited in the Italian futurist room at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. War = Festival (1925), a pendant to Modernity, is not set in the metropolis but rather in a mountainous terrain (Figure 2.4 and Plate 3).22 The composition is dominated by a sweeping band of color that cuts across the central and lower right areas of the image. Whereas in Modernity that sweep represented the movement of a series of train

Figure 2.4  F  ortunato Depero, War = Festival, 1925. Pieced wool, 330 × 243 cm (129.9 × 95.7 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. © Fortunato Depero/­ Copyright Agency 2019.

The Folk Machine  27 carriages moving from background to foreground, here the thrust is in the opposite direction, from near to far, and represents a different kind of vehicle—an exploding projectile—which has been shot out of a cannon in the foreground and bursts in flashes of light and color at the top edge of the picture. In between are geometrically shaped soldiers who project rays of light or clouds of smoke from their mouths and attack each other with guns and knives. Others are throwing up their hands in terror or lying on the ground bleeding to death from mortal wounds. The subject of War = Festival explicitly recalls the belligerent manifestos of Marinetti, who in 1909 had notoriously described war as the “world’s only hygiene.”23 Christine Poggi, who has recently compared it to “primitive’ or Aztec representations of ritualized sacrifice,” argues that such an aestheticized treatment of violence serves the political purpose of inuring the nation to the quotidian loss of life (of both enemies and patriotic Fascists) while simultaneously allowing for the “heroic” discharge of unmastered, sadistic inner drives.24 Poggi thereby connects the work to the futurists’ celebration of military combat and the human suffering and destruction that it entails. On this basis War = Festival could be viewed as turning the futurist idea of a hygienic war into an equation between combat and ancient folkloric celebration to justify “the perennial necessity of fighting,” a central tenet of Fascism’s belligerent ideology. Such ideas likely underpin recent interest in the artist’s work on the part of the neo-Fascist political party CasaPound, which in 2013 held a conference on the artist’s work in northern Italy. 25 Critics writing about this and related works by Depero, however, have often been divided about their significance. The futurist artist and musician Luigi Russolo praised the artist in 1926 for creating “a whole festival for the eyes, a marvel of cheerfulness, freshness and of decorative grace” so that one exits the exhibition “more serene and more optimistic.”26 At the same time, other reviewers focused on a less positive side to such pictures. Referring to the 1925 installation of War = Festival at the Fourmi Theatre in Paris, another critic—who drew attention to such details as the “dense bloody flora of gushing wounds”—described the work as a “strange and fantastic, sacred, tragic festival.” In the socialist newspaper Avanti the reviewer of a 1926 Milan exhibition where War = Festival was displayed described the artist as “charging at full steam his fanciful and grotesque machine, which is puppet-like and playful and succeeding in a mocking sort of mechanization, and often a winking irony, of nature and man.”27 As such comments reveal, contemporary viewers were attuned both to the hopeful and the pessimistic or even ironic dimensions of Depero’s works. To add to the diversity of responses, the website of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome once stated that War = Festival has “an apparent consonance with the contemporary earliest cabaret appearances of Dada,” suggesting that the work should be seen, like many works by the Dadaists in this period, as condemning the absurdity of a civilization which had produced the catastrophe of World War I.28 As one reviewer noted archly in his mock caption to a 1925 newspaper illustration of War = Festival, the work might well have been called “Who knows what?” Not only simultaneously modern and traditional but also joyful and apocalyptic, works like War = Festival constitute a kind of giant fabric question mark.29 In the analysis of these and other works by Depero below, which considers whether Depero’s work of the first half of the 1920s should be seen as commensurate with the emergent political ideologies of Fascism, I trace the artist’s career from his early futurist sculptures of 1916 through to the invention, development, and transformation

28  The Folk Machine of his cloth picture works from 1919 onward. In so doing I seek to account for an aspect of the artist’s work which has never been addressed fully in the literature to date. Although I agree with Giovanni Lista’s observation that “The new era of industrial civilization, so celebrated by Marinetti, has for Depero a flavor of the antique,” I diverge from his conclusion that the artist belongs to a continuous lineage dating back to ancient Greek philosophy of seeing the organic and mechanical as completely integrated.30 By juxtaposing primitive predecessors to the machine with modern forms of mechanization, Depero certainly belongs to what Lucia Re has described as a broader futurist project of celebrating the “mutuality of civilization and barbarism.”31 At the same time, by focusing on the “out of sync” qualities of the work Depero produced up to 1925, I insist on a radically unresolved aspect within this period of the artist’s career, which—differently to later works such as War: The World’s Only ­Hygiene (1934) depicting robotic infantry surrounded by dazzling arrays of military ­hardware—puts paid to the idea that his practice can be seen as a pure celebration of either traditional culture, industrialization, or warfare (Figure  2.5). In making this argument I have been guided by Ara Merjian’s analysis of the design work of D ­ epero’s colleague and mentor Giacomo Balla, in particular his argument that the latter exposes “some of the larger paradoxes at the heart of European modernism.”32 I have also been informed by the example of the German artist Oskar Schlemmer who, like Depero, sought accommodation with fascism.33 As Juliet Koss argues, Schlemmer’s

Figure 2.5  F  ortunato Depero, War: The World’s Only Hygiene, 1934. Medium and dimensions unknown. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

The Folk Machine  29 theatrical performances at the Bauhaus involving actors dressed as dolls of the later 1920s—comparable in many respects to Depero’s exploration of the figure of the marionette and the automaton—were “neither wholly celebratory nor entirely critical of their environment” and were resistant to easy political readings.34 In a series of textile works, which, similar to a tendency which would come to characterize Fascist culture more broadly, addressed industrialized modernity while making strong references to traditional artistic techniques and genres, Depero’s work achieved several things. It exposed the brutal impact of World War I on inherited ideas of the human figure and the landscape; drew attention to the fraught situation of traditional crafts under the rule of mechanization; and explored the idea that a critique of art’s autonomous ­status—a shared preoccupation of both avant-garde art and Italian Fascism—might be predicated upon the body’s reification. The groundwork for this artistic undertaking was lain down during the war years in the artist’s sculptural and theatrical works.

From Machines to Marionettes: Depero’s Early Art and Theater In 1914 Depero composed a manifesto titled “Plastic Complexity—Free Futurist Play—Artificial Living Being” in Rome. This text, which informed the “Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe” manifesto copublished with Balla the following year, marked the first theorization of concepts which would become central to Depero’s work and thought. 35 The “Plastic Complexes” and “Artificial Living Beings” he proposed in this text were extensions of, and reflections upon, the ideas of dynamism that had been put forward already by the futurists in several writings on this topic.36 In an effort to realize his theoretical reflections in a concrete form, in 1914–1915 Depero produced several mechanical devices with moving, abstract color planes such as Motor-Noisy Color Plastic Complex of Equivalents in Motion, kinetic works in which the predominant subject of traditional sculpture—the human body—was replaced by a whirring, pulsing mechanism made out of dozens of moving, interlocking parts. These objects were reproduced in the 1915 manifesto and also displayed at a Rome exhibition in 1916 (Figure 2.6).37 Although these works were originally envisaged in a nontheatrical context as a self-sufficient spectacle, Depero’s ideas actually came closest to realization in his plans for the theater. In 1916 he was commissioned by the Russian impresario ­Sergei Diaghilev to design sets and costumes for a Ballets Russes theatrical production titled The Song of the Nightingale (Figure 2.7). This ballet, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a mechanical bird, was set to music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Depero’s designs featured “rigid costumes, solid in style, mechanical in movement; grotesque enlargements of arms and large flat legs; hands made of cans or discs.”38 In a series of other contemporary theatrical works Depero conceived from 1917, the artist also designed “ballets constructed with applications of automatic contraptions which dance.”39 The idea behind these productions was to turn the dancer into a machine, just as the bird which features in the story The Song of the Nightingale is a mechanical creature. None of these ballets using Depero’s designs was to be fully realized, and the works in progress toward them were destroyed. In 1917 Depero began reconceiving his theatrical work with his friend and colleague Gilbert Clavel during a temporary stay on the island of Capri. Live actors in costume were now replaced by brightly colored and geometrically shaped marionettes, which appeared on stage, manipulated by puppeteers, at the Teatro dei Piccoli in Rome in

Figure 2.6  G  iacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero, Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe: Futurist Manifesto—11 marzo 1915, 1915. Leaflet, 29.2 × 23 cm (11.5 × 9.1 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Giacomo Balla/Copyright Agency 2019.

Figure 2.7  Fortunato Depero, Elements of the “Plastic Flora” for “The Song of the Nightingale”, 1916.  Dimensions unknown, lost. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/­Copyright Agency 2019.

The Folk Machine  31

Figure 2.8  Fortunato Depero, Figures for the “Plastic Ballets”, 1918. Dimensions unknown, lost. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

April 1918 (Figure 2.8). As Depero argued the following year about the specific choice of these mechanical, toy-like figures for his work: “Liberating myself from the human element, I attained the maximum autonomy and the maximum liberty in my beloved living constructions, and so were born the Plastic Ballets.”40 The choice of the figure of the marionette, which appears as a subject in Depero’s work from 1918 forwards into the 1920s, therefore needs to be understood as a development of the artist’s earlier concept of the machines and kinetic sculptures described as “artificial living beings,” but also in connection with Depero’s idea of the “futurist toy.”41 In Depero’s thinking, as we learn from his manifestos of 1914–1915, the futurist toy would have among its objectives that of habituating children to courage, loud noises, and war. Although there are certainly Dada-like elements of noninstrumentalized, ­illogical, and sensual play in Depero and Balla’s idea of futurist toys, they were ­conceived only months after the opening of World War I and were informed by the interventionist campaign conducted by the futurists to bring about Italy’s entry into the war. The futurist group began organizing a series of events, publications, and art works in favor of Italy’s participation in World War I including, in May that year, Balla’s The Anti-­Neutral Suit and, in September, the pamphlet Futurist Synthesis of War.42 Under the influence of the interventionist climate, Depero wrote blood-curdling poetry such as “A Toast,” part of which reads “Let’s shout: Down with Austria! Death to Austria! Death to the Germans! Let’s kill the Emperor… To kill, annihilate, destroy Austria. Ferociously, gloriously. Fight, triumph for Trento and Trieste.”43 The war had a special significance for the artist who saw it as his duty to “march on our land to

32  The Folk Machine be redeemed” to return territory which he felt rightly belonged to Italy.44 Having fled his home town in Trentino, at that time part of an Italian enclave within the Austro-­ Hungarian empire, he signed up to fight in the war on the Italian side, serving for a brief time on the eastern front where he engaged in combat with the Austrian forces. Judging by the belligerent tone of these and other pronouncements by the artist throughout his life, including the appalling 1943 book of Fascist doggerel The Roman Step extolling the virtues of the war being conducted by the Axis forces in World War II, and his extensive catalogue of propaganda for the Fascist g­ overnment—such as his Proclamation and Triumph of the National Flag of 1935, which is replete with Fascist symbols celebrating Mussolini’s military victories—Depero’s attitude to armed conflict may seem to have been untempered by reservations about the human and social cost of battle, and his associations between toys and fighting the sign of a mentality in which the human subject was treated as a plaything to be disposed of heedlessly in war.45 However, Depero’s own accounts of World War I combat—found in letters penned to his fiancé from the front— which he described in terms of “wounded, dead, night marches, stretchers, moaning, bloody bandages… terrible dysentery,” paint a rather different picture, and were akin to many other contemporary descriptions of the actual experience of ground warfare, including those by Marinetti during his time at the front between 1916 and 1918, in that they focused on the individual injuries, fear, and physical privations of wartime.46 Depero’s choice of the toy as a medium through which to engage with the idea of warfare, and in particular his interest from 1917 onward in the figures of the doll, marionette, and automaton, did not explore the most up-to-date technological advances in industrial machinery and their application to military combat—as one might expect from someone belonging to a futurist movement—but rather drew upon long-standing Western traditions relating to children’s theater and toys. This aspect of Depero’s work is emblematic of the place of toys more generally within the history of machines. As Daniel Tiffany argues in Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric, “The first complex, self-activating machines were not tools but toys, and, more precisely, singing birds and other parerga (ornamental devices), including moving or talking statues.”47 In his shift from an earlier emphasis on the modern dimension of the machine in 1914–1915, to some of its most ancient predecessors in 1918, the artist applied what he termed the “mechanical means which already exist in a still primitive state in the marionette theatre” and brought the modern world of machines together with regional folk art traditions.48 In the eyes of more radical art and theater critics, this was highly retrograde. In his review of the 1918 Plastic Ballets, for example, Jacques Fox-Laurier argued that Depero’s desperately old-fashioned attempts… surprised the few, who at any rate, came to praise and spur on the latest new-comer… Depero showed us forms in motion, which, if not pre-Noah, were at least rather near that epoch… Old fashioned and far too obvious.49 Rather than simply accept Fox-Laurier’s interpretation of this element of the artist’s work as a retreat from the visually innovative dimension of avant-garde practice in favor of a conservative dependence on the past, I read the artist’s work of this period in a different way: as a deliberate form of anachronism.50 I argue that Depero’s untimely combination of modern and more traditional forms, emblematic of the primary place of toys more generally within the history of machines, enabled the artist and his audience to reflect more broadly upon the place of industrialization in art and society.

The Folk Machine  33 As we know from contemporary accounts, the appearance of marionettes in Depero’s Plastic Ballets in April 1918 was perceived as having a strong connection to the ongoing war, which would not reach its conclusion until November of that year. The conflict would have been difficult to ignore at this time, not only because of the news coming regularly from the front, but also because of the presence of at least one member of the audience, Marinetti, who attended the ballet in his military uniform.51 Furthermore, in his review of the performance, Cipriano Efisio Oppo argued that “The absence of the hands and feet in the synthetic heroes remind him of the atrocities in Germany and he wonders if he is not witnessing a spectacle of patriotic propaganda.”52 Walter Vaccari, addressing the relation between these works and the global conflict, noted that today there is war. And by the way: can one speak of such things at this sacred and agonizing hour? My God it is a fatality and a fact… this, which seems to reach the maximum of idle and decadent aestheticism, also reconnects to the problems of our present life. Example: the Italian toy industry and work for amputees.53 As Vaccari was pointing out, one of the several trades in which mutilated Italian soldiers were trained upon their return to civilian life was carpentry and wood turning, and a contemporary documentary film shows amputee Italian soldiers displaying their wooden toys.54 Others suggested, nevertheless, that this connection was something strange rather than natural, and ill-adapted to the times. Umberto Fracchia, in an article of early 1919, noted that Depero left us perplexed by the idea that someone, at a time of such tragic, grave and solemn revolutions, would seriously think of an ideal revolt against the conventionalism of scenography systematically beginning his reforming effort from the first step: the theatre of puppets and children.55 Similarly, Giuseppe Sprovieri recalled that when Depero and his collaborator Clavel transported the life-size marionettes in 1918 across the Piazza del Popolo in Rome on their way to the theater in preparation for a performance, passers-by stopped amazed and then followed along behind, asking questions such as: Were they living men or puppets? And was this the time, with the country at war, for such masquerades? The explanations would have been impossible because it would have meant stopping, but finally they arrived at the theater and this explained everything and placated even the most furious madmen.56 It is hard to genuinely credit the Roman public of 1918 with the belief that ­Depero’s clunky and gaudily colored marionettes could have been real people. However, Sprovieri’s recollection about the reception of these puppets outside the theater in wartime is worth dwelling on further. The period during which Depero was creating his Plastic Ballets had seen a massive mobilization of military forces throughout Europe. On the World War I battlefield, the soldier, increasingly unrecognizable in their carapace of gear, was turning into a novel mechanical creature. The large number of things the soldier had to carry and wear made him resemble a kind of alien, mechanical being.57 Moreover, alongside the inevitable mutilations of the human body, warfare also turned it into an automaton.

34  The Folk Machine Returning soldiers who were maimed or mutilated were given prosthetic limbs, and shell-shock had terrible effects on combatants, some of whose psychological injuries were so severe that they were rendered blind, deaf, mute, or paralyzed.58 On this basis, as Kate Elswit argues, the carnage of World War I meant that human bodies were subjected to a process of “desanctification” and “no longer set apart by their intrinsically whole nature but were entirely alterable by human means.”59 Although it was only later, in 1927, that Depero would explicitly and approvingly cite “experiments with amputees” including the introduction of “mechanical elements to man” as “the first steps toward a future of mechanical races,” the desanctification and mechanization of the body in war is one of the important resonances of the mechanical figures that populate Depero’s work in the late teens, not only those in the Plastic Ballets but also those which adorn the border of his later cloth pictures such as Serrada.60 At a deeper level, when military conscription became an ever more pressing need during World War I as the casualties accumulated on both sides, the human body in war became a requisitioned commodity, not a free agent, but rather a kind of materiel to be hurled at the enemy. It was this fact that the interest in dolls, marionettes, automatons, and puppets in Depero’s work at this time also registered. Father Gemelli, the Italian army chief psychologist, argued in a tract published in 1917 that “The empty consciousness of the soldier must be invaded by the real image of the official; in this way the action of the soldier becomes involuntary, for that reason easy, automatic, therefore unconscious and certain.”61 The very nature of World War I, in its totalizing and increasingly mechanized quality, meant that one of the few means of escape or respite for soldiers from this thoroughly regimented domain was to an interior world, a route which risked a descent into madness. The only viable protection from this seemed to be, in the thinking of Gemelli, the complete vacuity of the soldier’s mind and their conversion into an automaton. Depero’s automata and marionettes from 1917 and their later appearance in his fabric mosaics speak to a new model of man in which the psyche was emptied out in preparation for total war. There are other important aspects to these marionettes that emerge in a reading of the critical reception of their first performance. Some critics simply reported their enjoyment of the show. Settimelli noted that they had immersed him in “an intense, child-like joy that is in this day and age difficult to experience in our complicated and hectic lives.”62 Other critics recounted how the ballets “transport us into a realm of pure fantasy” and that the replacement of the actors with marionettes endowed with an expanded range of formal possibility created a greater sense of freedom.63 Other critics, however, were far more circumspect about Depero’s work. Oppo argued that “this world has one defect: that of a lack of agility. Traditional marionettes move much better and with much less difficulty,” and Alessandro Gasco complained that the various ballets… are tediously monotonous due to the absence of any plot, and because of the too frequent re-appearance of certain characters, and the useless repetition of the same mechanical gestures.… It is really annoying. “Mother, it’s the same thing over and over again” commented an adorable French boy sitting next to me.64 Mario Tinti, encapsulating both the positive and negative reviews in a single sentence, maintained that Depero had “succeeded in creating the fantastic simulacrum of an absurd world of automata animated by grotesquely human geometric gestures” and ­Settimelli, in his otherwise positive review, confessed that the dance of the marionettes

The Folk Machine  35 had produced “the strangest sensations I have ever experienced in my entire life.”65 To understand the peculiar range of effects these performances had on audiences, it helps to look more closely at the history of these mechanical figures within the realm of literature. One of the concepts central to the figure of the automaton, doll, or puppet is their double quality, as evidenced in several literary treatments of that topic over the past two centuries including in Heinrich Kleist’s “On the Marionette Theatre” of 1810. The ostensible conclusion of that short text is that marionettes are able to achieve levels of grace and perfection in performing dance movements that far outstrip that of living dancers because, among other things, they are entirely unselfconscious: “as reflection grows darker and weaker, grace emerges ever more radiant and majestic.”66 So far, Kleist’s argument seems to foreshadow Gemelli’s regarding the soldiers’ empty consciousness. Nevertheless, as several commentators have noted, Kleist’s story is shot through with deep ambivalences which render that prima facie reading of the essay problematic. As Paul De Man notes, underpinning the central idea of “grace” in this text are narrative vignettes recounting experiences of pain and violence that render the story troubling, from the story of an ephebe who becomes virtually paralyzed in his attempt to emulate a statue of a boy removing a thorn, to an account of a man fencing with a bear, and of dancing, mutilated men wearing prostheses.67 This ambivalence would become a common feature in discussions of these humanoid figures in European literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ernst Jentsch argued in his 1906 article “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” that peculiar effects are produced when the reader is left “in uncertainty as to whether he has a human person or rather an automaton before him.” Jentsch linked this sensation to the stories of E. T. A. Hoffman, the author of a 1816 story The Sandman wherein a man goes mad after falling in love with such a mechanical creature.68 Hoffman’s story is also discussed at length in Sigmund Freud’s 1919 theory of “The Uncanny,” which describes a sensation combining strangeness and familiarity associated with the return of “surmounted ideas” or repressed psychic material, and which has its origins in taboos around sexuality and, in particular, one’s relationship with the maternal figure.69 A similar kind of duality is to be observed in theorizations of the role of toys within childhood development by D. W. Winnicott who argues that they play the role of “transitional object,” having the capacity to be self and other at the one time.70 For this reason, the argument runs, toys play a role in helping the child to establish their own identity at a time when they are beginning to understand that their parent is a being separate from them and this realization is taking place in a manner that the child cannot control. That a sense of the blurred line dividing self from other persists into adulthood was evident in other artworks involving puppets and toys staged in the period leading up to Depero’s early work. Igor Stravinsky’s ballet about puppets titled Petrouchka—which audience members in 1911 described as a story about “characters who straddle the animate and the inanimate”—is a work which “moves toward a deconstruction of the persistent binary between the machine and the living, human creature,” as Linda M. Austin has argued.71 Critics frequently noted the influence of Stravinsky on Depero, and the artist’s use of the marionette figure—with its ability to provoke child-like sensations of joy, fantasy, and freedom, while simultaneously connoting limitation, repetition, and the grotesque—retains a strong connection to the Russian ballet. Addressing the mechanization that had as its outcome the carnage of World War I in his use of dolls, puppets, and automatons, Depero’s figures took on the dual characteristics of an autonomous yet manipulated figure in a period of history where the individual was

36  The Folk Machine undergoing experiences of great import over which he or she had little or no control. Hence, the audience’s perception of the puppet or toy figure as both alienating and comforting, autonomous, and heteronomous: it embodies characteristics that individuals endure not only in infancy, but under certain circumstances such as in wartime and, more generally, in an increasingly industrialized world, also in adulthood. This, however, brings me—in contrast to other writers on Depero such as Giovanni Lista—to resist the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny as an explanatory framework for Depero’s work.72 As Joshua Ramey has maintained, Freud missed the fact that the uncanny “derives not from something known about fantasy (that is a regression) but something as yet unknown about reality—namely, that the reality principle itself cannot establish the certainty of a disenchanted, silent universe of inert matter and indifferent force.”73 I would add that the reverse also applies: human beings can be radically disenchanted, be treated as and act like “inert matter and indifferent force” both in fantasy and in reality, in a manner which was transparently evident in the early years of the 20th century. Importantly, for many contemporary art writers and avant-garde artists, this situation was not necessarily something to be seen as regrettable or tragic. In the work of the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, for example, the making-machine of the body was conceived as having the power to liberate the subject. In depictions of interrelations between animate and inanimate life, as Matt Biro argues, Hausmann was determined to explore “the positive aspects of the technological enhancement of human beings.” However, this was “not without a consistent admixture of ambivalence.”74 I argue that Depero’s representations of automata, dolls, and puppets, not only in his World War I era theater projects but also in his textile works of the 1920s, entail a perception of the same kinds of dualities and that the anachronistic quality of the marionette—its ability to interleave a strange, mechanized present with a more familiar but now distant past—is what enables that figure to exert a critical force in his work, overturning normative ideas about the human body, the landscape, and the nature of art’s relationship to its broader cultural context. This will be demonstrated through an interpretation of the cloth pictures that Depero produced, which incorporated such figures into a two-­ dimensional medium, beginning with the 1920 fabric mosaic Serrada.

The Cloth Pictures and Serrada (1920): The Body and the Machine The village depicted in Serrada is just over 8 kilometers away from the city of ­Rovereto where the artist spent a significant part of his childhood and where he would live for the greater part of his adult life. Following a significant absence between 1914 and 1918, partly due to professional obligations but also due to the war, the artist returned to this region with a sensibility informed by his recent contact with futurists and other artists in major cities like Rome and Milan, as well as in other regional centers in Italy, and by his experience of combat on the eastern front. A sense of the artist’s thinking upon his return to his native country can be gleaned from several documents and works from that time in Depero’s career. Depero included several recollections of his early life, including an account of his 1918 experience of returning to Rovereto, in a book published in 1940. Under the heading “Armistice” he writes: End of 1918. End of the war. End of unspeakable sufferings. With a few bundles, with little money, with my tail between my legs I returned to my tormented

The Folk Machine  37 land. I return to see our mountains formerly bombed and now decorated with Italian flags. I return to embrace my father whom I had not seen for years and with whom I could not correspond. Two armies divided us. I meet him on a cold morning, on his way to his daily mass. That day he renounces it and returns home with us. I can still feel that embrace, close, deep, and warm.75 In this text the experience of being reunited with homeland and family is depicted as a return to the fold and a restoration of a former state of affairs, with the province won to Italy, the conflict over, and Depero grasped to the paternal bosom. The fact that in Serrada Depero depicts a site very close to his home city and, with its bucolic landscape of cows, trees, mountains, peasant costumes, and rural architecture, seemingly unaffected by the world of mechanization, seems commensurate with the postwar “return to order” and all that entailed for the avant-garde between the wars. However, as Maurizio Scudiero has pointed out, things were not straightforward for Depero after his return.76 Given the destruction wrought upon the city of Rovereto during the war it wasn’t immediately possible for Depero to support himself financially in his home town as it had been badly bombed and lacked proper electricity and mains water supplies. Rovereto therefore provided insufficient means to relaunch an artistic career in postwar Italy. Accordingly, not long after being reunited with home and hearth, the artist traveled for several months through northern and central Italy to earn funds through sales or gifts and only definitively returned to his home town of Rovereto in June of 1919.77 As we read in Carlo Belli’s account of the circumstances under which City Mechanized by Shadows was created in 1920, the limited light available to the citizens of Rovereto created spectral effects, which Depero’s work recorded (Figure 2.9):

Figure 2.9  Fortunato Depero, City Mechanized by Shadows, 1920. Oil on canvas, 120 × 190 cm (47.2 × 74.8 inches), private collection. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

38  The Folk Machine The war had destroyed the power plants, and moreover in the winter of 1920 there was a great drought. At 11 pm electric light was turned off in the city. Hence the gleam of the full moon created sharply outlined shadows on the ground. It seemed as though one were being followed not by one’s own shadow, but by a monstrously flattened, living person like a lurking beast… Depero danced around himself uttering hoarse cries, turning to step on the ghost that of course eluded him, which exasperated him to obsession… Around us, the lunar landscape in the intense cold was unreal.78 This work, with its absurd theatrical spaces, zooming perspectives, confusion between negative and positive space, and illogical shadows, suggests that the town of Rovereto has become defamiliarized and, through references to architectural monuments in Rome, including Palazzo Venezia, Santa Maria in Trastevere, and the Tempio di Ercole Vincitore (which appear across the upper middle of the canvas from left to right, respectively), hints that the Italian capital, and by extension, the entire country, had a chaotic, nonsensical dimension to it. In 1921, Margherita Sarfatti, in response to an exhibition of the artist’s work that year in Milan, argued that the influence of Russian Ballets Russes performances had led to what she saw as inappropriate elements in Depero’s work: From this exotic origin is derived something excessive, unrestrained, and frenetic in his earliest works, that simulated or could give the illusion of joy, but in reality… left a bad taste in the mouth and provoked a poisoned sardonic smile. His first tapestries lacked and lack stability, rest, and balance; a neurasthenic orgy, troubling to contemplate for too long!79 For Sarfatti, however, in Serrada Depero had abandoned a negative, overly capricious element of his earlier work in favor of a more balanced and salutary focus on the stable and the quiet.80 In spite of these arguments that a note of sanity, stability, and solidity had emerged in his work in recent years reviewers continued to perceive strange incongruities in Depero’s career and in Serrada in particular. Cipriano Efisio Oppo who argued in a 1921 review that the works are “well sewn and cut” and “so pleasant,” in a description of Serrada noted “those bare trees that seem like stuffed snakes and for which I seek in vain the name; those oxen in a row with legs like those of tables.”81 In this way Oppo drew attention to the inanimate quality of the organic world and the strange vitality of the artifacts depicted in the work. Renato Mucci, in a review published in 1924, noted the green unbalanced moustaches that land like flying caterpillars on the lips of his characteristic personages… trees without foliage and branches that you would classify more readily in the family of underwater corals rather than within terrestrial botany… village scenes that seem to have escaped from dreams, because we have never seen them in reality. The shadows… are the cause of the dynamic that defamiliarizes and flares up and overwhelms the scenes of his poetry… a copper basin carried on the shoulders of a multi-colored country woman in peasant costume sears its bloated image onto the wall opposite by the light of an invisible sun.82 Far from a comforting image, then, this cloth picture evoked congress between insects and humans, between botany and marine life, between nightmares and reality.83

The Folk Machine  39 The incongruities created in the play of light in this picture, which are comparable to similar effects observed in City Mechanized by Shadows, contributed to the perplexing quality of a work which brings together temporal, spatial, and cultural opposites. For example, the scale of the shadow which outlines a double of the woman’s head and the vessel she carries, is significantly oversized when one considers the scale of the building against which it is cast; unless the building is understood to be a miniature model directly behind the figure, the dimensions of that shadow make no sense in relation to the other spatial cues in the picture.84 Elsewhere too, shadows defy the understanding of the source of light. The bare tree and trough, for example, have shadows pointing in different directions. Summing up these conflicting accounts of the artist’s work, a critic reviewing a 1922 exhibition of the artist’s work in Trento looked back over the recent literature on Depero’s work, and, noting the diverse variety of sources, traditions, and cultures made reference to therein, argued that I do not think many artists can boast of having raised such opposite and different feelings, nor to have been able to communicate such and so many moods, to have penetrated so deeply into the human psyche, and to have released and activated all of those possibilities which generally remain wrapped in the cold mass of our subconscious.85 In spite of the fact that critics such as Sarfatti saw Serrada as marking a salutary return to order, symmetry and balance in contrast to his more fantastic work of the preceding years, in this work Depero had dressed up a bucolic, provincial landscape from his home country in forms that strongly evoked elements of the international avantgarde, which so many of his colleagues were currently leaving behind, including geometricization, spatial ambiguity, confusions between the organic and the inorganic, and the mechanical figure. Of particular significance would have been the technique itself, which, by rendering the scene as an assemblage of interconnected but evidently distinct parts—like works of collage and montage produced by artists belonging to the historical avant-garde—evoked a machine-like materiality of having been put together from pieces. As a result, it fundamentally resists being read as an individual scene presented at a particular time. Furthermore, the inlaid patchwork technique, which had its origin in a centuries-old tradition of recycling used army uniforms to create decorative panels, would have evoked the achievements of European military forces, reminding viewers of the recent global conflict.86 In this sense, Depero was relying upon a medium which had strong associations with the activities of combat. Moreover, within the decorative border of the picture —not immediately evident today due to the fact that part of the work has been removed—were a series of geometric figures, who, joined together at hands and feet, appeared to whirl across the bottom and top of the image. These figures echoed the mechanical beings who, proudly adorned with beaming heart-shape emblems, ascend the left side of the picture and tumble, upside down, descending on the right. These mechanical figures, which in the immediate postwar context had the capacity to remind viewers of what happened to the human body in the industrialized warfare of World War I, signal that for Depero his region and his own felt citizenship of that region were akin to the ruined, hollow interiors visible through the shattered windows of bombed buildings he encountered upon returning to Rovereto, and the mechanized, dancing figures who had populated his Plastic Ballets of 1918.87 To be

40  The Folk Machine sure, because of their pedigree within European decorative arts, the puppet-like figures and the geometric patterns around them had the capacity to convey the longevity of the traditional culture that defined regional village life and potential continuity with the historical phenomenon of modernity.88 And yet the repetitive chains of dancing, mechanical puppets in the border, with their references to the automata of war, and the scene within, with its spectral, flat, intensely colored surfaces, distorted angular forms and bizarre shadows, which were described by one contemporary viewer as possessing an “enormous visual brutality” suggests that this is no longer the familiar landscape of folklore.89 Indeed, when Depero in 1919 began exhibiting two-dimensional works containing painted and sewn representations of his marionette figures, they were described as depicting a world in which human beings are shown as “all angles and all iron, an atrocious puppet whose massive limbs move with ironic squeaking.”90 Filtering the world of industry and the machine through the image of the puppet, Depero did not seek to unify present and past, city and country, man and machine. Rather, he aimed to highlight the glaring antithesis between industrialization and its consequences in suffering, death, and destruction on a hitherto unimagined global scale, and the desire to return to a locale somehow unchanged, unaffected by that appalling knowledge. Even if the “redemption” of Trentino—to use a phrase coined by the contemporary Italian irredentist movement which agitated for the return of certain border territories to Italian dominion—had only been made possible by the war which destroyed so many lives, what this picture demonstrated was that the culture and experience such towns once embodied could no longer stand as the comfortable antithesis to that destruction. That this situation was not something to be contemplated either in a state of horror or of melancholic regret is suggested by the festive gear in which the locale and its inhabitants are garbed. What interested Depero was the possibility of finding a way of relating to the machine and to the making mechanical of the body as evidenced in wartime, which was neither nostalgic for a rural past nor entirely captured by modern industrialization. Rather than interpret Depero’s interest in toys and puppets in the early 1920s simply as a training for the depersonalization of warfare, as tantamount to a Fascist-era policy of “inuring the nation to the quotidian loss of life” as Poggi argues for War = Festival of 1925, I argue that we should see the puppet or automaton figure in Depero’s work around 1920 as a strategy to highlight an aspect of contemporary human experience—its relationship to the machine—that seemed to promise many exciting possibilities but was not without significant drawbacks.91 Contrary also to his later, far more straightforward celebrations of military might of the 1930s, in the years directly after the close of World War I Depero was still interested to explore the psychological and cultural ramifications of the complete upending of Italian society that took place in the aftermath of that conflict, the profound destabilization of concepts of self, of home, and of identity to the point of their virtual unrecognizability. To fully appreciate this dimension of the artist’s practice, the following analysis investigates in greater depth the relationship between his work and the transformation of the local landscape brought about World War I.

The Cloth Pictures and Serrada (1920): The Landscape of War There are important geographical reasons to see Serrada, in spite of its bucolic setting, as closely related to the horribly destructive battles that had only recently taken place around the northeastern frontiers of Italy. The town of Serrada did not formally become

The Folk Machine  41 part of Italy until 1919. Before that time, like several other towns in ­Trentino—­including Fondo, Depero’s birthplace, and Rovereto—it was within a largely Italian-speaking enclave inside the territory of Austria–Hungary. When the war broke out, the inhabitants of towns in this region were evacuated to refugee camps in Braunau and Mittendorf, while others found work in Innsbruck, similar to the fate of many other townspeople in Trentino during wartime.92 When, not long after the outbreak of hostilities in May 1915, Depero, who had fled to Rome, signed up to fight on the side of Italy, Serrada was in the territory that was vigorously claimed by the Italian nationalists and the irredentist movement as belonging within the natural boundaries of Italy.93 So, while in the early 1920s Serrada could be viewed as a simple pastoral scene, in a technique that evoked the time-worn traditions of provincial handicrafts, it was also a landscape that had a significant political meaning in the wake of the Great War. Near the Italian town of Serrada lies an important Austro-Hungarian fortification known as the Dosso del Sommo, which today is crumbling but was once a stronghold of the Imperial forces in World War I.94 The alpine region where this seemingly impenetrable fortress stood passed to Italy in the final reckoning of the war one year before Depero’s picture was completed. Serrada can therefore be seen as a representation of the local, regional identity over which the bloody battles of World War I were fought.95 In support of this idea the geometricized figures surrounding the central image can be viewed as uniformed guards or sentinels who, like the Italian forces in World War I, preserve the town from outside attack. The particular significance of the unique cultural heritage of these regions in the national public imaginary after the war was the focus of a series of articles published in 1920 by the Italian war poet Piero Jahier on the topic of Alpine art. Jahier noted that The rustic milking stools shaped by a hand untrained yet eager for beauty reminded me of Italy. In their humility was the rare sign of that eternal destiny of building and harmony that would have saved our homeland yet another time.96 The decorative arts of such regions were therefore open for interpretation after the fact as connected to the destiny of the nation. In spite of the strong sense of regional specificity in the picture, which has the capacity to draw attention to a location which can be pinpointed on a map as an important field of battle within the course of the recent war, there is a significant abstraction of place in this image. Although the title of the work and the characteristic church architecture allow one to trace the site of this work to the specific region in northern Italy where the artist was born and raised, other regional cultures from Italy have been allowed to contaminate the picture, bringing to it a quite different sensibility. In Serrada, as contemporary writers noted, the woman represented in the scene is not a typically Trentino figure but a “Ciociara,” a woman belonging to a population south of Rome in central Italy identifiable by the brightly colored apron embroidered with a floral design and the loose leaved white camisole.97 Furthermore, the figure of the woman repeats motifs developed three years earlier during the artist’s sojourn in the island of Capri in the south of Italy, a place where, while working on his Plastic Ballets of dancing automatons, he also worked on a whole range of images evoking the local folk culture including the Tarantella dance. In such images the figure of a woman holding an amphora on her head appears frequently, as in Woman Water Bearer of Capri from 1917.98

42  The Folk Machine The motivation for Depero to draw on these traditions was multiple. The artist actually spent very little time in Trentino during the war, when, after returning from the eastern front, he resided in Capri, in Rome, and then in Viareggio on the central west coast of the peninsula. His time spent in the nation’s capital and then at two Italian seaside resort towns in 1917–1919 is reflected in the details of local decorative culture that began to pique his interest, such as those visible in the painting City Mechanized by Shadows of 1920. Moreover, while writers such as Jahier strove to connect the applied arts of the northern reaches of Italy to that country’s national narrative, the reality was that Trentino had been part of Austria for over a century and the local costumes were not strongly coded enough as “Italian” for a postwar identity that sought to consolidate a national identity and mark it out clearly from bordering nations including Austria.99 Rather than relying exclusively on Trentino culture Depero therefore preferred to lean on cultural traditions readily identifiable as Italian, which emanated not only from his home province but also from the center and south of the country, and in particular those which had some national and international renown, including the figure of the Ciociara and the Tarantella.100 Similarly, the design featuring alternating colored triangles nested within squares on the rises of the stairway in the foreground of Serrada has a precise pedigree within the work of Depero, related in particular to his research into the decorative arts in ­southern Italy, which he undertook in Capri in 1917, and which, as Michelangelo ­Sabatino has recently pointed out, saw him draw upon the vividly painted Sicilian horse cart, which appears in several pictures of Depero’s wartime production such as Neapolitan Cart of 1918.101 There is therefore what we might describe as a multiregional sensibility to the Serrada picture, which draws it out of its precise geographic or regional specificity and connects it to a more general sense of Italianness that, through details of geography and the title, insists on the importance of the northern town with its recent history of warfare, while at the same time promoting it as the site of a more generalized Italian culture that is not restricted to one particular region. From this we understand that for Depero the township of Serrada is important in two senses: both as the site of intense fighting over the boundaries of Italy with the ­Austro-Hungarian Imperial forces and as the location for a broadly imagined Italian culture not limited to any one region. In this sense it is not entirely correct to conceive of this work as an exclusively regional picture as it is firmly embedded in a broader assertion about the identity of Italy as a whole. In spite of its historical and geographically borderline qualities, in this image the town of Serrada, having been “redeemed” in wartime, is shown to have transcended the potentially fragmented picture of I­ talian local cultures to become emblematic of a much broader national identity. Yet the assertion of an identity based on locality in this picture does not stop at a simple statement of nationhood based on the Italian peninsula. The technique of ­“inlaid patchwork” belonged to a tradition of textile art, which had its European origin in areas of Bohemia and Austria which once formed part of the Austria-­ Hungarian empire.102 In the aftermath of World War I, which saw Trentino—­together with the ­German-speaking region Alto Adige/Südtirol to its north—occupied by ­Italian forces and administered by a military government, a concerted campaign of de-Austrianization took place in the lead up to the formal annexation of the region to the kingdom of Italy, as part of the Treaty of Saint Germain signed in September 1919. Immediately after the occupation, for example, all communication with ­Austria was forbidden, and German-speaking officials were forced out and replaced with Italian

The Folk Machine  43 103

ones. Depero’s utilization in the early 1920s of a tradition with strong connections to former Austrian occupiers of Trentino opposed what Robert Lumley has described as the Italian state’s postwar attempts to “impose homogeneity in the place of plurality of identity” and emphasizes the “ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity” of the region in which the artist was born.104 The artist’s designs in this period were also thought by reviewers and scholars to draw on traditions far beyond Europe. Oppo remarked that Depero’s fabric mosaics reminded him of brightly and unnaturally colored fabrics that he saw “in Tripoli and that came from Sudan.” Another critic compared the artist’s work to “African primitiveness.”105 Moreover, Egyptian zig-zig and checkerboard-like patterns visible in his work from around the time of his stay in Capri with the Egyptologist Gilbert Clavel, for example, appear to be straight of out of the Egyptian section of Owen Jones’ book on ornament.106 This international, even primitivist flavor to Depero’s work was not foreign to either contemporary futurist or later Fascist conceptions of nationhood expressed in Italy during the first half of the 20th century. As Jeffrey Schnapp has pointed out, in Marinetti’s writings we see an “alternation between a militant advocacy of internationalism and an imperial conception of culture and ­politics.”107 The desire to colonize and occupy neighboring countries, including Libya, Dalmatia, and Eritrea, had been part of Italian nationalist ambitions since unification, and such ideas were subsumed under the rubric of the “Mediterranean,” which was gaining momentum in the early 1920s.108 When critics noted comparisons between Depero’s work and, for example, artworks from Africa, it could represent part of a colonialist, expanded notion of Italy, which would incorporate such countries including Libya and Eritrea as the subject of invasions and occupations by Italian forces in recent times. In this sense, it could be argued that Depero was subscribing to a discourse of Italian imperialism, or even the related concept of emporium, a Latin term describing the interconnectedness that Marinetti promoted between the continents of Europe and Africa, which bordered the Mediterranean basin, and which had resonances with both futurist activity, and, it is important to note, the ideologies of the Fascist movement, from their inception to their decline.109 Moreover, as Lucia Re has argued, when futurists such as Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni made reference to African cultural artifacts in their work they seized upon the conventional image of Italy as primitive and uncivilized in relation to its northern European neighbors in order to set about “reclaiming and affirming as a positive value the ‘southern’ barbarity of Italy.”110 In this sense, when Depero combined references to places, artifacts, and people identified as Italian and those identified as African he may well have been engaging in a similar kind of inversion of contemporary stereotypes about Italy. However, the cultural identity of this picture and of Depero’s work more broadly in this period cannot be adequately captured by these relatively affirmative concepts of Italian national identity. Critical reviews of the artist’s exhibitions describing the works as “oriental” first emerged in 1918 and 1919, the years in which critics also began comparing his works to Polynesian, Chinese, and Japanese art.111 Similarly, in a review of a 1922 exhibition in which Serrada was discussed, a critic noted the similarity between works by the artist depicting dancing demons and tropical masks and certain mosaics from Vietnam and Tibet, and in subsequent years ­Depero’s work would be compared by critics to “ancient Japanese decorators.”112 Some of these Far Eastern references in Depero’s work can be traced to Depero’s time in the Ballets Russes, when

44  The Folk Machine he was exposed to the exoticism of their earlier productions such as Scheherazade. Inspired by the Russian ballet company’s productions, during ­1919–1920 Depero painted several compositions with imaginative references to C ­ hinese decorative arts, including The Court of the Great Doll (1920), which, as Guido Bertoldi noted, comprises “a procession of mustached Chinese masks.”113 Notably, the mask-like figure with a moustache makes a reappearance in Serrada, and the unusually shaped flowers on the windowsill of the building in the foreground of the same work, with their triangular, spiky forms echoed in the patterned garments worn by the peasant woman, bear significant similarities to the famous centerpiece of Depero’s theater design for The Song of the Nightingale, a ballet set in China. Given the full extent of the cultural references in Depero’s art in this period I argue that it is difficult to assimilate it to a straightforward assertion of Italian identity. Depero combined a broad range of regional and international cultural references in Serrada. These included not only the northern and southern extremities of the peninsula from Trentino to Tuscany and to Capri and Naples, as well as the northern and central regions of Europe, but also, in an acknowledgment of the influence on Depero of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, across the Mediterranean to Egypt as well as North Africa but also to Russia, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. As one critic remarked of Depero’s work in this period, “continuing along this path one will cancel everything that decorative Italian art has produced in the past.”114 Having proudly asserted Serrada’s identification with a pan-Italian identity, which took in cultural traditions from north, central, and southern Italy, in a broad and heterogeneous series of references to the most far-flung destinations around the world, Depero also re-estranged his picture from its ostensible cultural origins in Trentino and Italy more broadly. In the process the very idea of locality and its distinction from what is foreign is radically destabilized in a manner similar to the troubling identity of the unusual mechanical figures who circulate in the periphery of Serrada, figures whose disposition partakes of liveliness and the inanimate in equal measure. As a further sign of this destabilization, in a work Depero created in 1920 titled Wooden Father and Son, which we know the artist held to be of considerable importance, two mechanical puppet-beings, a father and son, greet each other in what may be interpreted as a kind of threshold or doorway (Figure 2.10).115 Seemingly reunited as in the story of the prodigal son, a narrative strongly associated with connecting present and past and taken up by other contemporary Italian artists including Giorgio de Chirico, it seemed that no matter how warm the paternal embrace, how triumphant the personal or national victory, or how evidently warm and cheerful the intergenerational feelings involved, such emotions would now be exchanged between wooden beings, limited in movement and frozen in expression. Having explored the ways in which Depero’s cloth pictures addressed the utter transformation of the human body and the landscape that took place as a result of World War I, the analysis now turns to examine how these works set into relief questions concerning the very nature of art and its role in the industrialized society that was emerging in the early decades of the 20th century. The analysis will be focused on two problems central to futurism and to the historical avant-garde more ­generally— the status of traditional craft skills in a newly mechanized industrial context for art, and the importance of theater in mediating between the artwork and the broader social sphere.

The Folk Machine  45

Figure 2.10  Fortunato Depero, Wooden Father and Son, 1920. Pieced wool, dimensions unknown, lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

The Cloth Pictures and Serrada: Forms of Art From its very beginnings, the futurist movement had celebrated the mechanized world and advocated the introduction of modern industrial materials such as cement, iron, and electric lights into art.116 Not surprisingly then, in his description of Depero’s exhibition at the 1923 International Biennial Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza, Marinetti argued that the artist’s cloth pictures “seem to have been given birth to by the great power stations or by huge factories that make tires and metallic cables.” Similarly, another commentator would argue that Depero’s applied art of this time represented “a great program of art applied to industry.”117 Italian debates about art’s relation to industry at this time were intense. Critics like Vincenzo Costantini argued in 1922 that Decorative art has to conform to the utility and practical considerations of the object. This is a democratic criterion. It also has to be made in large quantities. The limited personal production of rustic art are all snobby things, personal vanity, far from the needs of everyday life of today. Objects must adapt to industrial production.118 Among the exhibition organizers, artists, and artisans involved in the Monza exhibition, however, there was very little stomach for the kinds of modernization and

46  The Folk Machine mechanization seen as essential to modern design in many other European countries. This was reflected in the works exhibited in the Biennale, such as the major 1920 cloth pictures by Depero titled Fantastic Cavalcade and The Court of the Great Doll, which, similar to the works he exhibited at Paris two years later, produced in the same inlaid patchwork technique, could scarcely be described as industrial in manufacture in any conventional sense of that term. Rather, as Guido Bartorelli has argued in regard to the decorative arts production of the futurist group as a whole in this period, “The machine as an instrument of production, whose concrete technical needs are directly taken on with the view to unseating the artisanal logic for an industrial one of large numbers and low cost, is of no interest.”119 Depero did engage in a dialogue, however, with traditional and regional folk routines of artisanship, inheriting attitudes to the decorative arts which emphasised the unique, handmade object, and had their origin in the thinking of William Morris and the Jugendstil period of Depero’s training at the Scuola Reale Elisabettiana in Rovereto.120 The contrast with the modernist design prerogatives at institutions located in other parts of Europe, including the Bauhaus, was quite stark. For Rossana Bossaglia, Depero’s “passionate artisanal application” in the workshop that he opened in Rovereto in the late teens was “home to a picturesque and whimsical production” which quite simply turned its back on the machine.121 The critical commentaries about Depero’s room in the Monza 1923 exhibition, where Serrada was shown along with a broad range of other works of fine art and decorative art including easel painting, sculptures, drawings, cushion covers, knick-knacks, toys, and other items were mixed. Some were critical of the modernity of Depero’s work. Giovanni Papini, criticizing the “pictorial uproar” of the objects included in the exhibition, asked “who could live in these rooms for more than a quarter of an hour without having one’s vision dazzled?” Sarfatti for her part described the exhibition as “imaginative, original and sometimes full of inspiration” but condemned the artist’s “spasmodic frenzy to be new and without precedents in the past” and his art for being “violently uprooted from all tradition.”122 Other critics, however, were well aware of the more traditional, regional resonances of his work. This prevented one reviewer from classifying Depero’s work as futurist: the rustic tradition, which is there, without doubt, is dreamed up again by him so that it seems to have been recreated from scratch.… Is it new? We don’t think so… It’s not a new thing, …. he draws, draws, draws, from rustic art, whether from Rovereto or Bolzano or from Ciociaria… Along this road, that is to say of decoration, one can’t be futurist, Trentino yes, but not futurist.123 These contradictory responses to Depero’s work encapsulate an important feature of the artist’s enterprise in these years. Describing his appreciation of the “peasant cart as an ancient machine of considerable dynamism and vitality,” Michelangelo Sabatino argues that Depero was one of several interwar modernist artists and architects in Italy who sought to synthesize the aesthetics of industrialization with long-standing traditions of Italian vernacular art.124 I diverge from this interpretation insofar as Depero’s bringing together of the machine and the hand, the metropolitan and the rural, the past and the present did not synthesize the two conceptions of artistic practice but rather left them

The Folk Machine  47 sitting alongside each other uncomfortably. It is this quality of Depero’s work that led Pierpaolo Vetta to argue regarding the exhibitions of 1923 in Monza and 1925 in Paris: Depero’s mechanical decors remind us of the car wheel sculpted in wood by the master axe of the steppes to substitute the one destroyed in the Peking to Paris Rally. Depero also imitates a model (the industrial universe), designing it with another technique, similar to the one used by craftsmen (the painter), faithful to their tools and materials, but not beyond them. In creating this cardboard technology Depero would appear to have set to work with a handyman’s scissors, rather than an engineer’s compass.125 For many commentators on Depero, what Vetta describes as a “cardboard technology” to designate a craft or artisanal technique being used to imitate the world of industry has the flavor of a failure or an insufficiency with regard to modernity, all the more risible due to the frequently outlandish statements in favor of industrialized modernity made by the futurists including Depero himself. In Modernity for example, for all the novelty of the fabric mosaic technique and the modernity of its subject matter which focuses on the rapidly moving world of modern transport ­piloted by machine men, the labor-intensive process of assembling of pieces of colored textile and uniting them is redolent of centuries-old craft procedures which have their ­origins in rug and quilt making, weaving, and costume design. What are the broader implications of this peculiar combination of the modern and the traditional, of the handmade and the machine made in Depero’s work of this period? One way of answering this question is to examine a work depicting art making and artisanship that Depero produced in 1920. The Magician’s House renders a scene of the interior of the artist’s workshop in Rovereto (Figure 2.11). In 1923,

Figure 2.11  Fortunato Depero, The Magician’s House, 1920. Oil on canvas, 150 × 260 cm (59.1 × 102.4 inches), private collection. © 2018. De Agostini Picture ­Library/ Scala, Florence. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

48  The Folk Machine Depero described the work as being a “mediumistic-mechanical vision” illuminated by “imaginary, alogical and artificial light.” The workers are automata made of pink rubber and of metal and “From the window you can see houses, lamps, sidewalks of ice. The mechanized painter paints on a solar canvas with a flame-­ paintbrush.”126 In this house where workplace and residence fuse in the Art House, the artist-worker does not simply engage with the machine as in other modernist conceptions of how art should meet industry that were proposed by the Bauhaus. The image is pervaded by concepts of liberated, genius-inspired creation, and the individuals are surrounded by traditional means of artistic creation, not only palette, brush, and canvas but also the materials and processes of sewing, weaving, and hand-crafting of objects. And yet far from a peaceful or reassuring vision of the regional, domestic craft center as a clear alternative to modernity and its mechanization, these figures have internalized something about that modernity, rather than simply refuting its existence. Although the room appears to be a sanctuary from the ice-cold world outside with its identical buildings in endless rows, in fact the machine has entered the studio and rendered it strange by exposing another side to art’s industrialization—made visible in the looming shadows which pervade the space. In this sense, Paolo Fossati is justified in drawing attention to the “tense and mysterious scenography” of Depero’s work and its connection to the early metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico.127 Unlike other initiatives in Italy between the wars, including those which would find favor with Fascism’s urge to integrate seamlessly aspects of the urban mechanical with the regional vernacular, Depero’s reflections on this combination of traditional and modern, of regional and metropolitan, of the machine and the hand has an unsettled dimension, in which a celebration of the potentially anonymous, industrial aspects of artisanal manufacture creates a spectral undercurrent. In this way, throughout Depero’s work of this period, we observe examples of what Filiberto Menna described as a “reservation with regard to the world of the machines and its products” and “an ambiguous, suspended judgement about the mechanical adventure of modern man.”128 The cardboard technology of Depero, with its bringing together of machine-made and the handmade, the technological and the human, the metropolis and the rural, was the artist’s way of registering these issues.

The Cloth Pictures and Serrada: Theater Another realm of creativity to which these works refer, as we have seen, is theater. The figures in Depero’s pictures, virtual humans who seem both independent beings but also constructed creatures half way between animate and inanimate, occupy distorted scenes which have the appearance of stage sets. Serrada, one of the fabric mosaics on view in 1925 in Paris, was no exception. The schematized figures who travel around the border of this work, whose bodies are constituted by a set of elementary geometric components such as rectangles, semicircles, triangles, and ovals, have their pedigree in the earlier theatrical works of Depero. The theater performances Depero designed in 1916–1918, in both their realized and unrealized forms, had involved a merging of the figure with the environment. This took place initially by virtue of the costumes, which, by encasing the performer in rigid clothes and maintaining “the rigidity and unbending quality of sculptures,” limited movement and accommodated him or her to the constructed environment on

The Folk Machine  49 the stage. In a later iteration, the living actor disappeared altogether and was replaced by the marionette.129 Depero, in introducing this mechanical figure to achieve an integration of actor and set, was following trends in avant-garde theater initiated by dramatists such as the Munich-based Georg Fuchs. These involved insisting on the shallowness of the theater stage, and a range of techniques, including dehumanizing the actor and replacing him or her with a marionette or puppet, to achieve what Fuchs describes as retheatricalizing the theater. Edward Craig, the English theater director and theorist who had significant contact with Italy in this period, also argued for the use of marionettes on stage in place of living people.130 There is a further implication, however, behind the use of the marionette in Depero’s theater work. He used it to produce not only an integration of figure and ground—actor and set—within the theater, but also a crossover between the art work, the proscenium, and the stage with the world around it. Such ideas were central to Depero and Clavel’s thinking at the time of the Plastic Ballets, in which an interpenetration between the figure and background—and in particular between the actor and the stage—was envisaged.131 It was one step from here to conceiving of a more ambitious contamination of the stage with what lay beyond it.132 As Clavel suggested in a letter of October 1918 to Depero in which he talks about making the puppets in the Plastic Ballets go into the audience: We have to also think about transforming the room in which the spectators are, not just the stage… the important problem, beyond the question of space, is to link the spectators with the actors, that is to say, that the former no longer remain passive but a part of the organism which is represented… One of the first things would be to animate the auditorium, that is to say, to transport a part of the theatrical action there. For example, make marionette spectators that at a certain point move onto the stage… this new connection would put the spectator out of their stupid passivity.133 In this way, the Plastic Ballets of 1918 looked back not only to the idea of the artificial living beings and plastic complexes created by Depero in 1915, but also to the more ambitious statements in the “Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe” manifesto he penned with Balla about the creation of a world totally transformed by artists who populate the earth with strange mechanical and artificial creatures, in a kind of festival of warring mechanical automata.134 In writings on theater going back to the 18th century, as David Roberts argues, the medium has been conceived as needing to break down the boundaries separating the stage from what lies outside it. One example Roberts gives is how “theatre repeatedly strives to partake of the festival by escaping from the confines of representation that separate action and spectators.”135 Furthermore, in the history of modernist aesthetic debates, theater critics and practitioners have taken a central role in advocating for the idea of the festival, most vigorously undertaken in theories of the “total” work of art—or gesamtkunstwerk—to describe a large-scale opera production involving a fusion of the various arts into a festival-like experience. In the decades leading up to the period currently under discussion, in the works of Richard ­Wagner but also Friedrich Nietzsche and, in an intense period of debate and innovation around 1908 just prior to the launch of the Italian futurist movement, theater practitioners and theorists in Germany and England experimented with a

50  The Folk Machine broad range of techniques for bringing the kind of all-encompassing, socially unifying experience of the festival into being. The cloth pictures that Depero began producing in the late teens might seem to signal a complete shift away from the medium of theater on the part of the artist, particularly in its more broadly encompassing form as theorized above. However, several connections to theater remained in this series of works. The brightly colored marionettes designed for the 1918 Plastic Ballets reappear in the later cloth pictures such as Serrada as figures in various kinds of scenographic interiors and landscapes, thereby connecting his decorative art works to his earlier efforts in theater. The technique that Depero used in creating his cloth works, joining together vividly colored pieces of fabric, strongly evoked the theater. When Roberto Papini argued in 1923 that the artist “uses cut-out pieces of cloth joined together because no shading must exist among the colors, which must blare, alive and rudely, like Arlecchino’s suit,” he directly referred to a character emblematic of the Italian commedia dell’arte street theater tradition.136 Moreover, the cloth picture medium had its origins in the fact that Depero, after working on his designs for The Song of the Nightingale, had reused the fabrics Diaghilev had given the artist for making theatrical costumes as the materials for his first textile compositions.137 Finally, some of his cloth pictures, including Modernity and War = Festival, were used as backdrops in performances given in 1925 by Marinetti in Paris, where, according to one contemporary reviewer, “illuminated by spotlights they composed a bizarre scene behind the orator.”138 Examples such as these of the hybrid quality of the artist’s work, of his deliberate cross-overs between interior design, decorative arts, and theater, justify Vetta’s comment that in many of their art exhibitions Depero and the futurists were engaged in “the creation of ‘lyric’ events through the invention of interiors/shows.”139 These evocations of theater costumes and sets in Depero’s cloth pictures, which refer to the artist’s earlier 1915 critique of the isolated, autonomous artwork, lead in two directions simultaneously. One path leads to the ecstatic physicality and social communion of the festival. The vivid and jaunty coloration, the processions of bodies, masks, and grotesque figures, the outlandish scale and proportions, and the dynamic sense of movement encountered in the easel paintings My Plastic Ballets (1918–1919) and Flip-Up Rubber Devils (1919), as well as in the cloth picture The Court of the Large Doll (1920), all contain references to festival-like parades and celebration. Moreover, if we look at the dancing, puppet-like figures in the decorative border of Serrada of 1920, it is framed, supported, and carried along by the repetitive movements, mask-like caricatures, and outlandish costumes associated with historical and contemporary forms of folk-art performance including the festival. A full awareness of these details, which are marginal in a literal sense but in their relative size and coloration are by no means merely supplementary to the work, sends our gaze back to the main image. Although there are seemingly no explicit images of festival therein, we find ourselves noticing certain details, such as the unnaturally colored, mask-like faces of the two main figures; what one critic described as the “extremely festive regional dress” of the woman in the foreground; the parade of almost identical cattle in the background; and the intensely colored planes of which the image is constructed.140 Once all of these elements are considered together Depero can be seen to have invoked a conception of festival very close to that proposed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the 18th-century Swiss philosopher’s thinking, the festival

The Folk Machine  51 need not contain any predetermined props nor any particular decorations. At one point he asks: what will be the objects of these entertainments? What will be shown in them? Nothing, if you please. With liberty, whenever abundance reigns, well-being also reigns. Plant a stake crowned with flowers in the middle of a square; gather the people together there, and you will have a festival.141 Rousseau is arguing that it is not the presence of stock characters or particular performances that is crucial for a festival; even a barely transformed, empty square can be the setting for such a celebration. Even more significantly for our present purposes, Rousseau also recalls an improvised festival that he once witnessed as a child in ­Geneva, a city, like Depero’s home town of Rovereto, in close proximity to the Alps. According to the philosopher’s recollection, a battalion, after completing their military exercises and dining, began dancing all together, officers and soldiers, around the fountain, to the basin of which the Drummers, the Fifers and the torch bearers had mounted. A dance of men, cheered by a long meal, would seem to present nothing very interesting to see; however, the harmony of five or six hundred men in uniform, holding one another by the hand and forming a long ribbon… a certain military pomp in the midst of pleasure, all this created a very lively sensation that could not be experienced coldly.142 A lively dance of uniformed men holding hands and forming a ribbon around a fountain or a bunch of flowers in a town square: Depero’s Serrada with its virtually identical figures, which are borrowed from the Plastic Ballets wherein they had reminded contemporary viewers of the events of the contemporary war, and moreover, who are upright on the left but inverted on the right, suggesting a change of direction that gives the sense of a ring of moving dancers around a village square, could readily serve as an illustration of Rousseau’s childhood recollection. Rousseau’s argument was intended as a critique of theater. However, festival and theater, as we have seen, are closely related. In any case, the reciprocity imagined between spectator and performer in radical works of modernist theater, such as those staged at the Bauhaus in the later 1920s, was often expressed through the medium of festival. The effect of performances created by Oskar Schlemmer and his students at the radical German art academy depended upon an active ambiguity between the person and the doll by means of the costumed performers (Figure 2.12). As Juliet Koss argues: Bauhaus performances re-created the human body—literally and symbolically, on stage and off—in the shape of the doll, its childlike simplicity combining a comforting and seemingly animate charm with an unnerving absence of human personality. […] Vessels of empathy and estrangement, they expressed and encouraged a reciprocal relationship between performers and spectators.143 One method for imagining the total work of art throughout history has been, along the lines discussed by Rousseau, a union between the living beings on the stage and

52  The Folk Machine

Figure 2.12  Oskar Schlemmer, Figure for the Triadic Ballet, The Abstract, 1922. Wood and fabric, 202 × 126 × 65 cm (79.5 × 49.6 × 25.6 inches), Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. bpk/Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

the everyday people in the audience. But to the degree that performers are by their very nature not just living beings but also objects at some level, even if only the objects of our attention, such a merger would imply a dissolution of that very same object quality.144 This would be followed by a removal of the difference between the work and already existing reality, that is to say the bourgeois, decadent society that the total work of art was invented to overcome. Another solution to the idea of unifying stage and auditorium would be to insist, as Koss outlines for the Bauhaus, upon the object-like, reified, and automatic character of the audience as well as the performer. In this paradigm, the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk actively relies on the ambiguity between the person and the thing, a quality shared by actor and audience alike. Equally, the meeting which takes place in ­Depero’s work between the hand and the machine—not only in The ­M agician’s House but particularly in Serrada where the technique suggests the hand-crafted artisanal object while the subject matter and form strongly refer to the world of ­mechanization—blurs the boundaries between human and nonhuman, suggesting that the living, breathing world of spontaneous creative action and the industrialized realm of predetermined machine activity have something in common, just as in the total work of art the boundary between ordered performance on the stage and the relatively voluntary activity in the auditorium is ideally porous.

The Folk Machine  53 Above I argued that Depero’s evocation of theater in his cloth pictures points to a critique of the autonomous artwork, which leads in two directions. The first was the festival’s sense of euphoric, communal celebration as described by Rousseau. The second direction is connected to the first but has a quite different character. The schematized, automaton-like figures which have their pedigree in the earlier theatrical works of Depero and circle around the decorative border of Serrada—similar to the way in which the entire work has been put together—have faces and bodies assembled out of geometric components of fabric. In this respect the difference between the two human figures within the main image and their cousins in the margin is only one of degree; their rudimentary physiognomies suggest that, within the paradigm set up by the work’s pictorial structure, the artificial world of decorative geometric patterns in the borders and the realm of living beings inhabiting an actual landscape between those borders have several things in common. In this way Depero reminds the viewer that his theater or festival figures are not so much independent beings as constructed artefacts—types of automata. Moreover, in Serrada certain details of the landscape are strongly evocative of scenography and stage illumination, such as the flat surfaces of which the foreground building is composed; the unnaturally sloping perspective which rises rapidly as a vertically oriented plane; and the peculiar lighting effects. An odd effect is produced, for example, by the shadow of the woman’s legs and hips, which are cast upon what may be read as a receding orange horizontal plane as suggested by the shadow of the fence to the left but, given the close correspondence between the body and its shadow, reads more as a vertical surface directly behind the woman. Equally peculiar is the fact that this shadow abruptly ceases at the upper limit of the orange plane behind her, leading us to interpret it as a vertical surface in comparison with what must be a relatively horizontal brown plane beyond it, as suggested by the shadow of the fence to the left. Worthy of note here also is the fact that the woman’s eye does not cast a shadow, which leads the viewer to conclude that her head is hollow. The figures are, in other words, as puppet-like as those which adorn the decorative frame of the image. In showing people to be partway between living beings and things in this way, Depero’s intent was not to suggest that this condition is a throwback to some originary traumatic event or even something to be avoided or repressed. Rather, similar to the way in which the unwieldy, geometric costumes for his early theatrical projects such as The Song of the Nightingale sought to integrate actor and set, he proposed that a revolutionary artwork which seeks a closer relationship with society at large—as set out in his early futurist manifestos—would depend upon the body’s reification. So much was suggested during the Veglia futurista, which Depero held in his house in Rovereto in 1923, a kind of party featuring art works, dancing, costumed guests, readings, and music (Figure 2.13). Among the many works on display were Depero’s cloth pictures as well as a sculpture representing a living automaton, and performances in which actors dressed as locomotives moved—not on a stage but among the guests—and made rhythmic, mechanical sounds. As Carlo Belli recalls, the performers “made piston-like actions with their arms and had stove pipes on their heads.”145 Through these means Depero sought to overcome the separation of the arts and produce a contamination between audience and actor, which, accompanied by riotous behavior and gaudily colored decorations, was compared by journalists of the time with carnival celebrations. Significantly, a reviewer of one of Depero’s Rome exhibitions in 1919, in which

54  The Folk Machine

Figure 2.13   Preparations for the Veglia Futurista by Fortunato Depero in 1923. ­Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Fortunato Depero archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

two-dimensional works containing depictions of his marionettes were displayed, argued that the marionettes were presented in a confused way in the room so that it is difficult to know where you are and you struggle to understand the connection between your own life and that of the impertinent puppets. You can conclude by saying that the world expressed in that room is one of thousands of years ago or that which will have to come. But once you have exited, you seem to discover Depero’s marionettes again in Via Condotti walking and dancing dizzyingly.146 Depero’s work, which simultaneously evoked an ancient past and an equally distant future, raised broad questions about the mechanical puppets’ relationship to people both in the exhibition and on the street outside. The idea of festival was a key reference in one of the works exhibited in the 1925 Paris exhibition with which I began this chapter. In War = Festival, Depero’s explicit evocation of festival culture suggests that for him warfare was linked to the repeated popular celebrations that take place at designated points in the calendar year. Such ideas of the commonality between warfare and seasonal events seem, at first glance, deeply incongruous. However, similar ideas have been put forward in E ­ urope since the beginning of the 20th century. Marinetti, in his 1912 poem The Pope’s ­Monoplane, described social conflagrations such as revolution and war as “Great festivals of fire” and Roger Caillois has argued that “war has every right to take the place

The Folk Machine  55 of the festival in the modern world and to excite the same fascination and fervor.”147 Such ideas, which would also inform Mussolini’s thinking, have been described by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi as viewing war as “a festival in which the expenditure of energies, almost in an ethnological sense, emphasised life’s fullness… War would thus clean Italy from passatismo and open the way to future renewal.”148 With its provocative title and colorful, jaunty, outlandish images, War = Festival—pieced together in a manner similar to traditional inlaid patchworks once made from repurposed army uniforms—clearly has an explicit and direct relationship to the theme of warfare. What precise relationship, however, does the 1920 cloth picture Serrada have to the later work War = Festival alongside which it was exhibited in Paris in 1925?149 An important consideration for reading a work like Serrada, produced prior to Mussolini’s appointment as Prime Minister of Italy in 1922, is the cyclical conception of time to which the recurring ritual of festival refers. Along with the reification of the body that is suggested by the automaton or puppet, the routines carried out by this figure are not richly differentiated but rather have a limited range, which means that repetition is unavoidable. Because the puppet plays out scripted gestures and movements that are preordained rather than spontaneous, a certain circularity ensues. Within conceptions of time that would be central to fascist ideology, in contrast to the time of rationalist, enlightenment progress, which is described as moving inexorably forward on an empty stage with no culturally grounded coordinates, the festival involves a more densely textured conception of temporality, in which time does not simply go on but circles around on a regular basis.150 Although this circular conception of temporality, with its reassuring sense of seasonal renewal, has the capacity to meaningfully fill the perceived emptiness of modern time, it may also draw our attention to a darker, more fatalistic aspect of time wherein human identity becomes assimilated to the puppet or automata, figures who are rarely considered to be self-sufficient and are always in a dramatic scenario, part of a broader spectacle over which they have no control, and one which repeats. The puppet is therefore locked into a certain order of fate, to “implacable laws that exceed the body’s mortal span” from which it is impossible to escape.151 Within this paradigm the human-puppet is neither free nor destined for great things, but rather doomed to celebrate its mechanization, its inorganic quality, even its fatality as thing. So much is suggested by the wheel of destiny, which circulates around the image of Serrada, in which fate is handed out at every turn of the wheel. In this sense Depero’s conception of festival is close to that described by Jean Grondin, who writes: “A festival always celebrates the enduring in the perishing, but in such a way that the enduring as well as the perishing are contemplated at the same time.”152 In the 1925 work War = Festival, however, that complexity has largely vanished as it seems that the dancing, automaton-like figures, which had their origins in the Plastic Ballets puppets of 1918 and were still constrained to the decorative borders of Serrada in 1920, have now entered the world of the picture properly speaking to visit destruction upon their fellow beings. In War = Festival, the viewer witnesses the culmination of a development in Depero’s work in which the subject is finally overcome by the machine, in which time circles round to bite its own tail, in which the world of art invades that of reality and makes it over in its own image. The flip side of the merger between art and life, which takes place on the basis of exploring the line separating the inanimate and the animate, is the violent destruction not only of the boundaries between living beings and things, between the preordained and the never before imagined, but also between life and death.153

56  The Folk Machine

War = Festival: A Symphony of Propaganda Having explored the relationship of Depero’s work to one of the central themes of futurist theorizing in the years during and directly after World War I—the precise nature of the formal connections between art and the broader social sphere—I draw this chapter to a close by addressing the question of how the explicit theme of a work like War = Festival mediates both the experience of the war itself from 1915 to 1919 and its broader cultural significance in the years that the work was created in the mid1920s. Two readings of this work emerge, one of which focuses on the psychological coping strategies adopted by combatants in the trenches during World War I, and the other which examines the broader propagandistic dimension of Depero’s work from 1925 onward. Although War = Festival can be viewed, as a recent commentator would have it, as a “gleefully gruesome” tribute to a “morally appalling” ideology, it can also be understood within a framework of psychological survival in the face of overwhelming and disturbing experiences that rock the combatant-artist to their very core.154 As Selena Daly has argued in her recent book Italian Futurism and the First World War, during the conflict many futurists discovered that the ideas behind their movement gave its members the capacity to intellectualize and even aestheticize the terrible experiences they were enduring at the front, by constructing a conceptual or artistic framework within which to understand them. Marinetti, for example, “constructed meaning from the chaos” of battle by comparing it to “a Great Futurist Symphony” such as that composed by the futurist musician Pratella.155 This meant that their belongingness to the movement could help the futurists to cope with the otherwise devastating experiences of military combat. Furthermore, as Daly also points out, the sense of collectivity created by the group mentality underpinning futurism helped to sustain many of the writers and artists through an extremely difficult period. One of the chief ways in which this mentality was preserved was through the medium of correspondence, both with friends and family at home and between the futurists themselves. As many scholars have pointed out, this activity was crucial in maintaining combatants’ sense of identity and in staving off the shattering of identity that the experience of war could provoke.156 It is significant, then, that in a publication produced by Depero in 1927 known as the “bolted book” we read the following description of the work: “The gunner in the foreground shoots flags: he has a letter in his pocket and a half-liter of wine beside him, well protected in the trench.”157 Protected by the inebriating glow of alcohol and by the psychologically sustaining character of correspondence, the combatant conceives of himself as shielded from the main danger of the combat and shooting not actual missiles but what appear to be patriotic sheets of multicolored fabric—an artistic battle if ever there was one. Although the futurists have been rightly criticized for aestheticizing politics, for turning the ghastly reality of human destruction during war into an aesthetic spectacle, we can interpret this process of sublimation as neither callous nor conniving but rather as a strategy for coming to terms with the psychological havoc that the experience of World War I combat wrought upon its participants. Nevertheless, when we resituate War = Festival in the precise historical circumstances of its creation, not simply of the aesthetic debates surrounding the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris but also events closer to Depero’s home in Italy we are brought to consider the relationship between this work and a set of contemporary

The Folk Machine  57 political events, which inevitably inflects any reading of the work. As Depero’s cloth picture was being constructed during the winter of 1924, Italy was consumed by the events surrounding the so-called Matteotti crisis, in which a socialist member of parliament who had openly defied Mussolini was murdered by a group of extreme members of the Fascist party.158 In the ensuing controversy that saw the parliament come to a standstill, with dozens of members withdrawing from the government, Mussolini’s power was tested both on the left with the resistance of socialist deputies, but also on the right with members of his own party urging Mussolini to seize total power over the country. This was a turning point for the Fascist government, and in the months that followed, Mussolini publicly took responsibility for the actions of those in his party and initiated, along with the militia in his party, a campaign of brutal oppression that saw the violent abuse and arrest of anti-Fascists and the outlawing of their organizations, the replacement of elected representatives with government appointments, and the birth of the Fascist dictatorship in Italy. War = Festival was therefore closely related to the contemporary political situation due to its celebration of the sacrifice of those men who had defended the country from the Austrians and were, in many cases, those who brought about, through their violent actions, the rise and final consolidation of a brutal totalitarian state. This means that Depero’s works from the 1925 exhibition would inevitably be viewed as explicit forms of political propaganda, commensurate with later works in this medium produced by the artist, including Youth of 1925–1926. This work, titled after the national anthem adopted by the Fascist Party in 1924, was shown alongside both War = Festival and Modernity when they were reexhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1926. It shows a smiling, mechanical figure surrounded by stylized, quasi-heraldic emblems of Fascism, including a pair of truncheons, a symbol of the fasces, a laurel wreath and knife, a hand-­grenade, and skull and crossbones. As such chilling and doctrinaire images suggest, from this point on the vitality of Depero’s art would paradoxically depend upon its extinction in various forms of propaganda and advertising. As the futurist movement abnegated its distinction from the everyday in its attempts to enter the life-world, the art work became increasingly indistinguishable from the utilitarian object, or more precisely, was transformed into a mere device of power, whether of the political or commercial kind.159 Gunter Berghaus, in a trenchant analysis of Depero’s 1945 report seeking exoneration from the postwar ­Italian authorities for his well-documented collaboration with the Fascist regime, argues that the artist’s need to ingratiate himself with whichever political power held sway was the sign of a servility which arose from a “damaged self-image.”160 When Roberto Longhi scoffed in 1919 at “the world of kettle-men, of harrow-men” depicted in D ­ epero’s work and argued that they arose from a fetishization of the tools, equipment, and contraptions of every craft and trade, he was inadvertently foreshadowing the ultimate destiny of Depero’s creative production: as mere instrument of a higher force, whether Fascism on one hand or capitalism on the other, and sometimes both at once.161 This, after all, was the artist who would proffer the following understanding of art’s social role in 1931: “art too needs to march in step with industry, science, politics, the styles of the times, glorifying them—such a glorifying art was begun by futurism and advertising.”162 But within that radically reduced schema Depero reserved one last freedom for the artist: that of self-promotion (Figure 2.14 and Plate 4). In Festival of the Chair of 1927, an elaborate, cloth picture advertisement for his own works of furniture and architecture, and in a series of statements such as the above about the art of publicity

Figure 2.14  F  ortunato Depero, The Festival of the Chair, 1927. Pieced wool, 330 × 257 cm (129.9 × 101.2 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/ Copyright Agency.

The Folk Machine  59 beginning in the 1920s and continuing throughout his life, Depero made the distinction between master and servant finally dissolve: he was, at that point, an automaton who was autonomous, like the gaily animated but essentially robotic figures who continued to populate his painting, advertising, and decorative art until his death in 1959.

Notes 1 Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman (New York: W ­ illiam Morrow and Co, 1993), 317. Many citations listed in this chapter were sourced directly from the press clippings archive of the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART) wherein full publication details, including page numbers, were frequently not available. All such publications cited here are followed by a number in square brackets corresponding to the archive’s referencing system. 2 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1924), n.p. Quoted in Carol S. Eliel, “Purism in Paris, 1918–1925,” in L’Esprit nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918–1925, exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 49. 3 Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero, “Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo,” in Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, ed. Giovanni Lista (Milan: Abscondita, 2012), 30–36. 4 F. T. Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” Le Figaro (Paris), 20 February 1909, in Futurism: An Anthology, eds. Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 49–53. 5 Fortunato Depero, “Le invenzioni di Depero,” in L’Impero 3, no. 53 (March 1925). ­Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 92. 6 For more on Rosetta’s important role in the creation of the works, see Franca Zoccoli, “The Applied Arts and Photography: Rosetta Depero, Gigia Corona, Bruna Somenzi, Luce and Elica Balla, Wanda Wulz,” in The Women Artists of Italian Futurism – Almost Lost to History, eds. Mirella Bentivoglio and Franca Zoccoli (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1997), 140–141. 7 Virginia Gardner Troy, “Stitching Modernity: The Textile Work of Fortunato Depero,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 20, no. 1 (2015), 28. See also Dagmar Neuland-­ Kitzerow, Salwa Joram, and Erika Karasek, eds., Inlaid Patchwork in Europe from 1500 to the Present (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2009). 8 Serge Franki, “Au salone de l’art d’Aujourd’hui,” Les Artistes d’Aujourd’hui (Paris), 1 February 1926 [Dep.8.1.1.332]. 9 E.Z., “Futuristi a Palazzo Madama,” in Il Corriere, 13 January 1925 [Dep. 8.1.1.295]. 10 Margherita Sarfatti, “Fortunato Depero alla Galleria Centrale,” Il Popolo d’Italia (­M ilan), 1 February 1921 [8.1.1.111]. 11 Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). 12 Guglielmo Jannelli, “I futuristi italiani all’Esposizione Internazionale di Parigi,” Il ­popolo d’Italia, July 1925 [Dep. 8.1.1.335]. 13 See Carla Sanguineti Lazagna, “La concezione delle arti figurative nella politica cuturale del fascismo,” Il movimento di liberazione in Italia 4, no. 89 (October–December 1967), 5. 14 See Nancy J. Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier (New Haven: Yale University Press), 227. 15 Rossana Bossaglia, Il “déco” italiano: fisonomia dello stile 1925 in Italia (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1975), 15. 16 Sabatino, Pride in Modesty, 112. 17 Sarah Warren, Mikhail Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late Imperial Russia (­Farnham: Ashley Publishing, 2013), 37. 18 Warren, Mikahil Lariononv, 71–77. 19 See Neuland-Kitzerow, Joram, and Karasek, eds., Inlaid Patchwork in Europe from 1500 to the Present.

60  The Folk Machine 20 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Peter Adam, Art of the Third Reich (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992). 21 Griffin, Modernism and Fascism; and Mark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism. 22 The original Italian title of this work, Guerra = festa, can be—and sometimes is—­ translated as War = Party. I have preferred the English phrase War = Festival to render the meaning of the title as I believe this best embodies the broader significance of Depero’s work. This is also the translation used by Christine Poggi in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 238. 23 Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” 51. 24 Poggi, Inventing Futurism, 238–239. 25 See Sandra Matuella, “CasaPound, prima conferenza blindata,” Il Trentino, 13 November 2013. Accessed 19 February 2019. www.giornaletrentino.it/cronaca/trento/casapoundprima-conferenza-blindata-1.668099. 26 Luigi Russolo, “Arti e Lettere: La Mostra futurista Depero,” La Borsa, 9 March 1926 [Dep.8.1.2.71]. 27 Unknown author, “Arazzi di Depero, Theatre de la Fourmie, Paris, Marinetti esalta Depero a Parigi,” La Liberta (Trento), 23 June 1925 [Dep.8.1.1.328]; Unknown author, “Cronache d’Arte. Depero,” L’Avanti, 12 March 1926 [Dep.8.1.2. 49]. 28 “Guerra-festa,” Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. Accessed 4 May 2014. www. gnam.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/23/gli-artisti-e-le-opere/205/guerra-festa. See also “­Guerra-festa,” Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore Veronese—Marconi. Accessed 3 February 2019. www.giuseppeveronese.it/public/152/2267_Fortunato%20Depero.doc. 29 “Evviva la faccia loro…: Divagazioni sul secondo Rinascimento artistico,” Il Piccolo Martedi, 1925 [Dep. 8.1.1.324]. 30 Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 290. 31 Lucia Re, “‘Barbari civilizzatissimi’: Marinetti and the Futurist Myth of Barbarism,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17, no. 3 (2012), 357. 32 See Ara Merjian, “A Future by Design: Giacomo Balla and the Domestication of ­Transcendence,” Oxford Art Journal 35 no. 2 (2012), 121–146; 137. 33 Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi ­Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 51, 73–74. 34 Juliet Koss, Modernism after Wagner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 213. 35 Among the most significant sources on Depero are Bruno Passamani, Depero (Rovereto: Comune di Rovereto, Musei Civici, Galleria Museo Depero, 1981); Depero, exh. cat., Museo Provinciale d’Arte di Trento (Milano: Electa, 1988); Gabriella Belli, La Casa del Mago: Le Arti applicate nell’opera di Fortunato Depero 1920–1942 (Florence: Charta, 1992); Gabriella Belli, DeperoFuturista (Milan: Skira, 1999); Maurizio Scudiero, Depero: L’uomo e l’artista (Rovereto: Egon, 2009); and Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo. 36 See Poggi, Inventing Futurism, 151. 37 Günter Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre, 1909–1944 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 296. 38 Fortunato Depero, “Il teatro plastico Depero: Principi e applicazioni,” Il mondo 5, no. 17 (27 April 1919), 10. Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 62–63. 39 Fortunato Depero, “Complesso Plastico-Mobile: Conferenza di Fortunato Depero,” ­C ronache d’Attualità 2, no. 13 (5 July 1919). Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 78. 40 Depero, “Il teatro Depero: Principi e applicazioni,” 11. Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 63. Depero’s marionettes bear comparison with the contemporaneous puppets by Sophie Tauber-Arp, which were produced around the same time and reached the stage in September 1918. 41 Fortunato Depero, “Complessità plastica—Gioco libero futurista—L’essere vivente artificiale,” reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 14–28; Balla and Depero,

The Folk Machine  61 “Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo,” in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 30–36. 42 Lawrence Rainey, “Introduction: F. T. Marinetti and the Development of Futurism,” in Futurism: An Anthology, 19–20. 43 Fortunato Depero, “Brindiamo,” 1914–1916 [Dep.4.2.3.1]. 44 Fortunato Depero to Rosetta Amadori Depero, 16 July 1915 [Dep.3.3.1.4.5]. Quoted and translated in Selena Daly, Italian Futurism and the First World War (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2016), 56. 45 Fortunato Depero, A passo romano: lirismo fascista e guerriero programmatico e costruttivo (Trento: Edizioni di credere obbedire combattere, 1943); Belli, La Casa del Mago, 286–287. 46 Fortunato Depero, “Dal torre universitaria al Col di Lana,” in Fortunato Depero: Nelle opere e nella vita (Trento: Legione Trentina, 1940), 65. 47 Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 37. 48 Fortunato Depero, “Mondo e teatro plastico,” Penombra 2, no. 4–5 (1919), 21. Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 68. See also Mario Recchi, “Scenografia italiana a Parigi,” Il popolo d’Italia, May 1917 [Dep.8.1.1.50]. 49 Jacques Fox Laurier, “A Marionette in Rome,” in The Mask: The Marionette Tonight (1918), 124. Quoted in Paola Campanini, “Il ‘mondo meccano’ di Fortunato Depero: Storia e utopia dei Balli plastici,” Ariel 2–3 (1993), 317, n. 82. 50 In my understanding of anachronism in relation to 20th century Italian art I am indebted to the insights of Romy Golan, Muralnomad: The Paradox of Wall Painting, Europe 1927–1957 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 104–119. 51 Gincar, “I balli plastici al Teatro dei Piccoli,” Il Giornale d’Italia (Rome), 16 April 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.32]. 52 Cipriano Efisio Oppo, “I balli plastici al ‘Teatro dei Piccoli’: l’esposizione di pittura,” L’idea nazionale (Roma) 15 April 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.49]. 53 Walter Vaccari, “Balli plastici,” Il Secolo XX (1918) [Dep.8.1.1.108]. 54 See Davide Valentini, “La Casa di Rieducazione Professionale per mutilati ed invalidi di guerra di Bologna,” Museo Civico del Risorgimento di Bologna. Accessed 8 May 2014, http://memoriadibologna.comune.bologna.it/casa-di-rieducazione-professionale-per-­ mutilati-e--1679-luogo; Oh! Uomo, directed by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci ­Lucchi, 2004. 55 Umberto Fracchia, “Note d’arte,” Idea Nazionale (Rome), 1919, quoted in Unknown author, “Un artista roveretano a Roma,” La liberta, 4 March 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.167]. 56 Giuseppe Sprovieri, “Depero… Ricordando,” in Fortunato Depero: 1892–1960, ed. Bruno Passamani (Bassano del Grappa: Museo Civico—Palazzo Sturm, 1970), 120. 57 See Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). 58 See Juliet Bellow, Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 93. 59 Kate Elswit, “The Some of the Parts: Prosthesis and Function in Bertolt Brecht, Oskar Schlemmer, and Kurt Jooss,” Modern Drama 51, no. 3 (2008), 389–410. Quoted in ­B ellow, Modernism on Stage, 93. 60 Fortunato Depero, “W la macchina e lo stile d’acciaio” (1927), in Prose futuriste, ed. Riccardo Maroni (Trento: Voci della Terra Trentina, 1973), 46. 61 Angelo Nataloni, “Padre Agostino Gemelli: Soldato di Dio o ufficiale di Cadorna?” Rome: Società di Cultura e Storia Militare, n.d., 5. Accessed 10 May 2019. http://www. arsmilitaris.org/pubblicazioni/Padre%20Agostino%20Gemelli.pdf 62 Enrico Settimelli, “I balli plastici al teatro dei Piccoli,” publication unknown, 15 April, 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.44]. Published in French in SIC 3, no. 34 (1918), n.p. 63 Unknown author, “La prima dei ‘Balli plastici’ al Teatro dei Piccoli,” Corriere d’Italia, 16 April 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.47]. 64 Oppo, “I balli plastici al ‘Teatro dei Piccoli’”; Alessandro Gasco, “Teatri ed arte: Balli plastici,” La Tribuna, 16 April 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.48]. 65 Mario Tinti, “Arte d’avanguardia,” Il nuovo giornale, August 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.36]; ­Settimelli, “I balli plastici al teatro dei Piccoli,” in SIC 3, no. 34 [Dep.8.1.1.44].

62  The Folk Machine 66 Heinrich von Kleist, Über das Marionettentheater: Zur Poetik (Reinbek bei ­Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1964), 12. Quoted in Harold B. Segel, Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, ­M arionettes, Automatons and Robots in Modernist and Avant-garde Drama (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 17. 67 Paul de Man, “Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist’s Über das Marionettentheatre,” The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 263–290. 68 Ernst Jentsch, “Zur Psychologies des Unheimlichen,” translated in Remo Ceserani, La narrazione fantastica (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1983), Appendix. 69 Sigmund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny” (1919), in Studies in Parapsychology (New York: C ­ ollier Books, 1971), 19–60. 70 Lois R. Kuznets, When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 39. 71 Linda M. Austin, “Elaborations of the Machine: The Automata Ballets,” Modernism/ modernity 23, no. 1 (January 2016), 83; Henri Bidou, “La semaine dramatique: A propos de ballets,” Feuilleton du Journal des débats (21 May 1917), quoted in Bellow, Modernism on Stage, 122, n. 49. 72 For a discussion of Jentsch and Freud in relation to Depero, see Lista, Ricostruire e ­meccanizzare l’universo, 261. 73 Joshua Ramey, “Learning the Uncanny,” in Deleuze and Education, eds. Inna Semetsky and Diana Masny (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 184. 74 Matthew Biro, “Raoul Hausmann’s Revolutionary Media: Dada Performance, Photomontage and the Cyborg,”Art History 30, no. 1 (February 2007), 33. 75 Fortunato Depero, Fortunato Depero: nelle opere e nella vita (Trento: Editrice Mutilati e Invalidi, 1940), 255. 76 Scudiero, Depero, 190–195. 77 Belli, DeperoFuturista, 20. 78 Carlo Belli, “Memoria di Depero,” in Passamani, Fortunato Depero, XLVII–XLVIII. 79 Sarfatti, “Fortunato Depero alla Galleria Centrale.” 80 See also Manlio Belzoni, “Della mostra d’arte di Rovereto, e d’altre cose,” La Gazzetta del Turismo e dello Sport, 21 December 1922 [Dep.8.1.1.120]. 81 Cipriano Efisio Oppo, “Due decoratori,” L’Idea Nazionale, 23 March 1921 [Dep.8.1.1.95]. 82 Renato Mucci, “Un artista d’eccezione,” La Donna. Rivista quindicinale illustrata, 1924 [Dep.8.1.1.282]. 83 See also Valentinelli, “La Mostra d’Arte della Venezia Tridentina,” September 1922 [Dep.8.1.1.194]. ­ ctober 84 See M., “Visitando la Mostra d’Arte—Fortunato Depero,” unknown publication, O 1922 [Dep. 8.1.1.126]. 85 G. Stoffella, “Un principe del colore,”La Liberta (Trento), 19 July 1922 [Dep.8.1.4.34]. 86 Troy, “Stitching Modernity,” 28. 87 Scudiero, Depero, 201. 88 Gabriella Belli, “Fonti del racconto popolare di Depero,” in Depero, exh. cat., Museo Provinciale d’Arte di Trento (Milano: Electa, 1988), 206–209. 89 Michele Biancale, “Problemi d’arte decorativa,” unknown publication, May 1923 [Dep.8.1.2.118]. 90 Eugenio Giovannetti, “Fortunato Depero,” Il Tempo, 21 January 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.68]. 91 My reading of Depero’s work here is indebted to Ara Merjian’s writing on Giacomo Balla. See Merjian, “A Future by Design,” 121–146. 92 Robert Lumley, Entering the Frame: Cinema and History in the Films of Yervant ­Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), 73–74. 93 Belli, DeperoFuturista, 16. 94 “Dosso del Sommo,” Le fortificazioni militari. Accessed 28 October 2014. www.forti ficazioni.net/Trento/dosso_del_sommo.html 95 See Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 96 Piero Jahier, “Arte alpina,” Dedalo, no. 2 (1920), 90. Quoted and translated in Michelangelo Sabatino, “Back to the Drawing Board: Revisiting the Vernacular Tradition in Italian Modern Architecture,”Annali di architettura, no. 16 (2004), 175, 184, n. 47.

The Folk Machine  63 97 Oppo, “Due decoratori”; Carlo Carrà, “Le Arti—Depero,” L’Ambrosiano, May 1923 [Dep.8.1.1.237]. 98 Fortunato Depero, Portatrice caprese, 1917, reproduced in Depero, exh. cat., Museo ­Provinciale d’Arte di Trento (Milano: Electa, 1988), 96. 99 “Costumi,” Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.museosanmichele.it/museo/percorso/terzo-piano/costumi/ 100 Sabatino, Pride in Modesty, 80–83. 101 Sabatino, Pride in Modesty, 112. 102 Neuland-Kitzerow, Joram and Karasek, Inlaid Patchwork in Europe from 1500 to the Present, 23. 103 Rolf Steininger, South Tyrol. A Minority Conflict of the Twentieth Century (New ­Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 4–5. 104 Lumley, Entering the Frame, 74. 105 Oppo, “Due decoratori”; Stoffella, “Un principe del colore.” 106 Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1868). 107 Jeffrey Schnapp, “Forwarding Address,” Stanford Italian Review 8, nos. 1–2 (1990), 62. 108 Claudio Fogu, “Futurist mediterraneità between Emporium and Imperium,” Modernism/ modernity 15, no. 1 (2008), 25–43. 109 Fogu, “Futurist mediterraneità,” 27. 110 Re, “Barbari civilizzatissimi,” 354, 356. 111 Oppo, “I balli plastici al ‘Teatro dei Piccoli’”; Efra, “La mostra di pittura futurista inaugurata oggi a Milano,” La Sera, 22 March 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.73]; Fracchia, “Un artista roveretano a Roma”. 112 Valentinelli, “La Mostra d’Arte della Venezia Tridentina”; E.Z., “Futuristi a Palazzo Madama”. 113 Kakru [Guido Bertoldi], “Fortunato Depero a Monza,” La Liberta, 22 February 1923 [Dep.8.2.8.30]. 114 Ort., “Note d’arte. La mostra di Depero,” Unknown publication, March 1921 [Dep.8.1.1.159]. 115 See Belli, La Casa del Mago, 162. 116 Umberto Boccioni, “Futurist Sculpture” (1912), in Futurism: An Anthology, 118. 117 F. T. Marinetti, “L’arte decorativa futurista alla mostra di Monza,” Le arti decorative, no. 2 (10 June 1923), 30; Kakru [Guido Bertoldi], “Fortunato Depero a Monza”. 118 Vincenzo Costantini, ‘L’arte applicata e le Biennali di Monza,” Arte pura e decorativa, no. 7 (July 1922). Reprinted in Anty Pansera, Storia e cronaca della Triennale (Milan: Longanesi, 1978). 119 Guido Bartorelli, Numeri innamorati: Sintesi e dinamiche del secondo futurismo (Turin: Testo & Immagine, 2001), 83 120 Belli, “Fonti del racconto popolare di Depero,” 1988, 209. 121 Bossaglia, Il “déco” italiano, 15. 122 Roberto Papini, “La mostra delle arti decorative a Monza,” Emporium 57, no. 341 (1923), 282; Sarfatti, “L’arte decorativa a Monza,” unknown publication (May 1923) [Dep.8.1.1.181]. 123 Biancale, “Problemi d’arte decorativa.” 124 Sabatino, Pride in Modesty, 112, 127, 196. 125 Pierpaolo Vetta, “La tecnologia del cartone: Invenzione futurista di ambienti spettacolo,” Rassegna 4, no. 10 (1982), 29. 126 See the caption to the image published in Rovente 7–8 (1923), 49. 127 Paolo Fossati, L’immagine sospesa (Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1971), 179. 128 Filiberto Menna, “Il futurismo e le arti applicate: La ‘Casa d’Arte Italiana’,” in Studio di storia dell’arte in onore di Vittorio Viale, ed. Association internationale des critiques d’art (Turin: Edizioni d’Arte Fratelli Pozzo, 1967), 93. See also Poggi, Inventing Futurism, 30. 129 Recchi, “Scenografia italiana a Parigi”. 130 Georg Fuchs, Revolution in the Theatre: Conclusions Concerning the Munich Artists Theatre (1909), trans. Constance Connor Kuhn (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1959); Edward Craig, “The Actor and the Über=Marionette,” in The Mask 1, no. 2 (April 1908), 3–15. See also the discussion in Koss, Modernism after Wagner, 162.

64  The Folk Machine 131 See Campanini, “Il ‘mondo meccano’ di Fortunato Depero: Storia e utopia dei Balli plastici,” 309. 132 As Vivien Greene has argued, the futurists were engaged with Richard Wagner’s idea of the gesamtkunstwerk in this period. See Vivien Greene, “The Opera d’Arte Totale,” in Italian Futurism: 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2014), 211–213. 133 Gilbert Clavel to Fortunato Depero, letter dated 28 October 1918. Quoted in Nicoletta Boschiero, “Depero e Clavel: marionette che passione!” in Depero e il teatro musicale, eds. Daniela Fonti and Claudia Terenzi (Milan: Skira, 2007), 30. 134 Balla and Depero, “Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo,”in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’universo, 32, 36. 135 David Roberts, The Total Work of Art in European Modernism (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2010), 29. 136 Roberto Papini, “La mostra delle arti decorative a Monza,” 282. 137 Belli, DeperoFuturista, 96–97. 1 38 “Arazzi di Depero, Theatre de la Fourmie, Paris, Marinetti esalta Depero a Parigi,” La Liberta (Trento), 23 June 1925 [Dep.8.1.1.328]. 1 39 Vetta, “La tecnologia del cartone,” 29. 1 40 Jannelli, “I futuristi italiani all’esposizione Internazionale di Parigi.”. 141 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Politics and the Arts, Letter to D’Alembert on the Theater, ed. Allan Bloom (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), 291. Quoted in Roberts, The Total Work of Art, 17. 142 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to D’Alembert and Writings for the Theater, trans. and eds. Allan Bloom, Charles Butterworth, and Christopher Kelly (Lebanon: The University Press of New England, 2004), 351. 143 Koss, Modernism after Wagner, 209. 1 44 See Roberts, The Total Work of Art, 29. 145 Belli, “Memoria di Depero,” in Passamani, Fortunato Depero, 1970, LII. See also “Carnevale e morto,”Il Messaggero, 18 February 1923 [Dep.8.1.1.115]; R., “La Veglia Futurista alla Casa d’Arte Depero,” Il Trentino Meridionale 3, 18 January 1923, reprinted in Fortunato Depero: Scritti e documenti, editi e inediti (Trento: Edizioni d’Arte Il Castello, 1992), 141. 1 46 Aniante, “Pittura futurista depero,” Il piccolo: Giornale d’Italia, 21–22 January 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.69]. 147 F. T. Marinetti, “The Pope’s Monoplane,” in F. T. Marinetti: Selected Poems and Related Prose (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 53; Roger Caillois, Man and the Sacred (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 177. 148 Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 186. See the broader discussion of festival time in Roger Griffin, “I am no longer human. I am a Titan. A god! The Fascist Quest to Regenerate Time,” in A Fascist Century: Essays by Roger Griffin, ed. Matthew Feldman (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 12. 149 Troy, “Stitching Modernity,” 28. 150 See Griffin, “I am no longer human. I am a Titan. A god!” 3–23. 151 Tiffany, Toy Medium, 37. 152 Jean Grondin, “Play, Ritual and Festival in Gadamer: On the Theme of the Immemorial in His Later Works,” in Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, eds. Hans Georg Gadamer and Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001), 51–58. 153 See Russell A. Berman, “Modern Art and Desublimation,” in Modern Culture and Critical Theory: Art, Politics, and the Legacy of the Frankfurt School (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 90–91. 154 Jonathon Keats, “Fortunato Depero’s Italian Futurism,” Forbes, 29 May 2009. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/2009/0608/art-fortunato-­ depero-italian-futurism.html. 155 Daly, Italian Futurism and the First World War, 83. 156 Daly, Italian Futurism and the First World War, 83–84.

The Folk Machine  65 157 Fortunato Depero, “‘Guerra-Festa’ di Depero,” in Depero Futurista (Milan: D ­ inamoAzari, 1927), n.p. 158 See R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915–1945 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), 210–214. 159 See Germano Celant, “Futurism as Mass Avant-Garde,” in Futurism and the International Avant-Garde, ed. Anne d’Harnancourt (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1980), 35–42. 160 Gunter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996), 301. 161 Roberto Longhi, “Al Dio ortopedico,” Il Tempo, 22 February 1919. Reprinted in ­Barocchi, ed., Testimonianze e polemiche figurative in Italia, 408. 162 Fortunato Depero, Futurism and Advertising (La Jolla: Parentheses, 1990), n.p. See also Karen Pinkus, Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 107.

3 The Men Who Turn Around Scipione and Religion in 1930

Paintings by the Italian artist Scipione (Gino Bonichi) exude an air of red-hot feeling and strangled constraint. The still life The Octopus shows a framed photograph of a woman’s face—a potential love interest—entangled in the looping tentacles of an octopus (Figure 3.1). In Piazza Navona a view of Rome, which plunges dramatically into the background, is obstructed by a wall of thickly applied paint depicting an elaborate sculptural monument (Figure 3.16). In Apocalypse three men attempting to flee a biblical catastrophe are impeded by children who grasp at their ankles ­(Figure 3.2). On the basis of the religiously inspired letters that Scipione wrote as he was dying of tuberculosis, many critics and scholars have read such works in terms of a dialectic of desire and guilt underpinned by Catholic religious belief.1 Although the

Figure 3.1  S cipione, The Octopus (The Molluscs, Pierina Has Arrived in a Big City), 1929. Oil on panel, 60 × 71 cm (23.6 × 28 inches), Macerata, Fondazione Carima—Museo di Palazzo Ricci.

The Men Who Turn Around  67

Figure 3.2  S cipione, The Apocalypse. The Sixth Seal, 1930. Oil on panel, 65 × 78 cm (26  × 30.7 inches), inv. P/1105, Torino, GAM—Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Photo: Rampazzi 1988. Su concessione della Fondazione ­Torino Musei. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited.

artist’s work is strongly informed by faith, his paintings probe deeper than Christian doctrine to engage with fundamental concepts of time and history. The work with which I opened this book, Scipione’s The Men Who Turn Around of 1930, shows figures involved in a double movement—walking forward while glancing backward. They face a viewer who, within the logic of the painting, is behind them and therefore situated in a past from which the figures have just emerged. In another sense, however, as the terminally unwell Scipione would have been well aware, the viewer is forever positioned in the future with regard both to the period of this work’s making and, ultimately, to the artist himself. It was through this split sense of time that the artist responded critically to a period of history in which artists, writers, and politicians were arguing that by returning to an earlier age of history Italy could realize the glories of their future destiny. 2 Born in Macerata in the Marche region of central Italy in 1904, Scipione died of lung disease in 1933 at the age of 29. Although he worked primarily as a painter, Scipione was a poet as well as a prolific draughtsman who was regularly commissioned to produce satirical illustrations and caricatures for Italian periodicals. In the span of a brief artistic career during which Scipione found favor with certain sections of the ­Roman cultural establishment, he also faced extremely hostile reactions from critics and viewers. His work aroused controversy because he relied upon recent European surrealist and expressionist precedents to undermine commonly accepted

68  The Men Who Turn Around understandings of how Italian contemporary art and culture should relate to the past. As I argue in this chapter, this can be seen in his unorthodox, hybrid depictions of the human figure—such as his Hermaphrodite of 1931—which drew upon both classical and surrealist mythology while departing from accepted gender norms; his representations of Roman urban spaces including The Roman Courtesan of 1930 populated by phantoms redolent with fraught historical associations; and his series of fantastical paintings based on religious themes, which, like The Men Who Turn Around, were loosely drawn from episodes in the Bible. My analysis of the artist’s work begins at the end of the 1920s, a period which saw the artist’s first participation in significant contemporary Italian art exhibitions.

Art in Rome during the 1920s: From Neoclassicism to Expressionism When Scipione’s painting Contemplation (Sunset) of 1928 was hung in Rome’s ­Palazzo delle Esposizioni alongside works by dozens of other artists at the Fascist Art Union Exhibition of Lazio in April of 1929, the exhibition was reviewed by Roberto Longhi in the literary newspaper L’Italia letteraria (Figure 3.3). The Italian art historian divided the display of mostly Roman art into a group he called the “neoclassicists” exemplified by Carlo Socrate; the “irrealists” including Gisberto Ceracchini; and the “expressionists”—as he nominated the work of several painters including ­A ntonietta Raphael.3 To properly grasp the position that the artist occupied within this broad span of artistic tendencies, in what follows I discuss the relationships between the work of these painters and that of Scipione.

Figure 3.3  S cipione, Contemplation (Sunset), 1928. Oil on canvas, 48 × 59 cm (18.9 × 23.2 inches), Private collection, Milan.

The Men Who Turn Around  69 As we have seen, the distinguishing feature of the work of the Italian “return to order” painters—including the erstwhile metaphysical and futurist artists Giorgio de Chirico and Gino Severini—was their rejection of the impressionist, secessionist, and avant-garde experiments which had come into being prior to the war; a return to historically established craft tradition; and an evocation of earlier, more traditional styles of art. This tendency took many forms in Rome, several of which were visible in the 1929 exhibition. The work of the neoclassicist Carlo Socrate, with its carefully delineated contours, subtly modulated shading creating an illusion of three dimensions, and impeccably refined references to the past, demonstrated that the artist was greatly invested in a mastery of traditional artistic technique.4 In such works as Sleeping Venus of 1921, which evoked the classicizing Odalisques of Ingres, Socrate had also made reference to more realist approaches to painting of both Caravaggio and ­Courbet. Socrate’s thinking, however, was far removed from any realist theory of painting: as he would later argue, “before applying myself to the pictorial act, aprioristically, I already have the image within me; and in nature I seek only that which corresponds and harmonizes with that internal image.”5 The “irrealist” Gisberto Ceracchini, in works like Meeting of 1925, used an awkwardly composed, rudimentary draughtsmanship to depict rural scenes of archaic simplicity.6 His paintings had a precedent in the work of Carlo Carrà of 1919, which, with their strong outlines and unmodulated hues, emphasized three-dimensional, sculptural tangibility in a manner redolent of the work of 14th-century Italian artists including Giotto. As Carrà had argued, such techniques could be used to refer to “a state which, superior to and behind existence, constitutes the secret splendor of art” and Ceracchini’s works, with their strong sense of three-dimensional solidity achieved through a careful management of light and shade, similarly conveyed a wistful, otherworldly tenor redolent of timeless, eternal truths.7 For all the differences between Socrate and Ceracchini, both subscribed to an idealist approach to painting, which aimed at the re-emergence or continuity of the past in the present. In this sense both artists conformed to a broader artistic tendency in Italy during the 1920s, which was typified by the work of the Milan-based novecento group of artists organized by Margherita Sarfatti.8 In a speech delivered by ­Mussolini at the opening of the first exhibition of the movement in 1926 the Fascist leader praised the works for the “decisiveness and precision of line, clarity and richness of colors, the solid plasticity of objects and human figures.”9 In subsequent years, official government pronouncements began to encourage the production of artworks which were “more solid, stronger and more ample, in the line of the great indigenous tradition of Italian art,” and Socrate and Ceracchini were among the Roman artists chosen to exhibit with the novecento group in its first showing in the Italian capital in 1927.10 Scipione’s earliest known works, such as Self-portrait of 1928, which strongly recall the work of 15th-century Italian artists such as Masaccio with their crisp contours, simplified modeling, and air of suspended animation were certainly closer to the simplified archaism of Ceracchini than to the more refined neoclassical vision of Socrate (Figure 3.4). As he wrote in a 1929 letter to his friend Renato Marino ­Mazzacurati, Scipione saw Socrate’s work as “characterized by a mere display of technical skill” and typical of the absence of innovation endemic to the contemporary Roman art scene.11 Nevertheless, in such works Scipione was responding to the idealizing, classicist influences affecting the broader contemporary Italian art scene between the wars.

70  The Men Who Turn Around

Figure 3.4  S cipione, Self-Portrait, 1928.  Oil on panel, 46 × 37 cm (18.1 × 14.6 inches), Collezione Gori, Fattoria di Celle, Pistoia.

As he noted of Self-Portrait in letters of 1927 and 1928 written to his colleague ­Domenico Maria Lazzaro, this work depicted the artist as if he had “emerged from ancient times,” was “very classic roman,” and seemed have been “sculpted in terracotta” with “fixed, contemplative eyes.”12 Contemplation (Sunset), which depicts a young man gazing into the distance while resting his elbow on a bull—selected for an exhibition early in 1929 in Rome organized by Ceracchini—shows the artist’s interest in the archaizing, primitivist approach to painting favored by Carrà (Figure 3.3). The critic Corrado Pavolini, one of the most perceptive viewers of Scipione’s work in this period, argued in his review when the work was shown at the Fascist Art Union exhibition that there was an air of “Etruscan elegy” in the work, thus referring to a common reference to that ancient indigenous Italian culture in the art of this time.13 As the artist wrote to Mazzacurati, it also gained the admiration of Mussolini on the day of the inauguration, a fact we may attribute to its evocation of the sense of sculptural solidity which had come to be favorably associated with the novecento movement.14 This was the conception of art which Scipione would begin to define himself against from late 1929 onward. In his aforementioned review, Pavolini referred to what he called “mysterious tonal blendings” to describe the soft, variegated handling of pigment displayed in Contemplation (Sunset), which aimed to convey the light at the end of the day and contrasted with the more traditional attitude to color found in the work of many figurative painters associated with the novecento.15 Of particular

The Men Who Turn Around  71 importance in this regard for Scipione were the work of several artists working in Rome during the 1920s, including Virgilio Guidi and Francesco di Cocco, who introduced a more atmospheric treatment of light to the solid forms which typified mainstream Italian art of that time.16 Of greatest significance, however, to this period in the formation of the artist’s work were the contemporary paintings of Antonietta Raphael and Mario Mafai, which were described by Longhi in his review of the 1929 exhibition as “expressionist,” and which demonstrated far less reliance on indigenous and traditional artistic sources.17 Antonietta Raphael, born in Lithuania and the daughter of a Rabbi, arrived in Italy in 1924 after having spent time in London and Paris.18 Soon after settling in Rome she met Mario Mafai and introduced both him and his friend Scipione to the work of the School of Paris painters she had encountered during her travels, including Chaim Soutine and Marc Chagall. Her warmly colored, vigorously painted canvases were described by reviewers as “international” and possessing a “chromatic freshness” and “primitive simplicity” when they were exhibited in Rome in 1929.19 Her independence from a local obsession with the art of the Italian past was accentuated by her inclusion of elements of eastern European folk culture, and the non-naturalistic cast of her approach to color, which she variegated to model forms in three dimensions rather than relying more exclusively on light and shade as was the case among most of her Italian contemporaries. These works had an enormous influence on Mafai. His landscapes, which as Scipione noted in a letter from the time, “were widely talked about” at the 1929 exhibition, were characterized by ardently colored planes flecked with highlights, warped perspectives, and a naïf quality drawn from European modernism, including the work of Maurice de Vlaminck.20 Mafai’s figure paintings, such as those titled Praying Men of 1929, demonstrate a more fantastic cast, engaging directly with the example of Chagall. From 1930, these innovative qualities in the work of Mafai and Raphael were increasingly to be observed in the paintings of Scipione. In his 1929 review of the Fascist Art Union exhibition, Longhi had passed an ambivalent judgment on Mafai and Raphael. He argued that while their works were “the most powerful” in the exhibition, they were also “wild eyed” and “eccentric, almost anarchic; the kind of art that will not find fertile ground in Italy.”21 From such statements we might assume, in line with a now well-worn interpretation of these works, that these artists openly contested the mainstream of contemporary Italian art, and in particular the type of art approved by the Fascist government in the late 1920s. 22 The difficulty with this argument, as some scholars have recently argued, is that there were many overlaps between that group of painters who, along with Mafai and ­Raphael, have subsequently come to be called the “Roman School,” and the work of more officially recognized artists including those in the novecento movement. 23 Furthermore, as Fabio Benzi has pointed out, Mario Mafai would later produce commissions for the Fascist government in the 1930s making his anti-Fascist credentials doubtful at best.24 Another factor to consider in making sharp distinctions between the novecento movement and other, more expressionist currents such as that represented by Raphael and Mafai, is that expressionism as a style was not inherently opposed to Fascism on either a political or aesthetic level. As Emily Braun has argued for the expressionist painter Mario Sironi, in the 1920s and 1930s, the work of this central figure within the novecento movement was openly praised for being “dramatic, passionate, audacious and virile” by his defenders and consistent therefore with the Fascists’ desire to valorize the creativity of leaders who were involved in the process of

72  The Men Who Turn Around “wrestling from chaos.”25 The unfinished, fragmented, and apparently disintegrating surfaces of the forms in his paintings were frequently associated with a peculiarly Fascist understanding of Italian civilization: an ancient and enduring culture, which persists throughout eons of time to remain vital in the present day. As Braun concludes, “Sironi combined a rough spontaneous brushwork (symbolic of a primitive, vitalistic urge) with monumental form (symbolic of the eternal and enduring) to effect a pictorial metaphor of ‘destiny’.”26 This mythical sense of an eternal national culture in the artist’s work meant that his work was considered an appropriate propaganda tool in public art during the Fascist period, in spite of many critics arguing that the artist’s work was culpably foreign, unfinished, and degenerate. 27 The work of Scipione demonstrates certain similarities with the work of Sironi. His painting exhibits, for example, a lack of painterly finish and evident brushwork, and deals with themes concerning a deep range of time. However, his work addresses the question of temporality in a completely different way than the novecento painter, an artist he would scathingly dismiss in 1931 as an “illogical expressionist.”28 ­Scipione’s work from 1930 would evoke a more recent period in the history of art than Sironi and most of his contemporaries, largely avoiding the typical references to classicism, Etruscan art, or the early Renaissance and draw upon the art of the late 1500s and 1600s and, in particular, the more painterly, coloristic experiments of Titian, ­Tintoretto, and El Greco.29 Although the work of such artists, and that of the mannerist and baroque periods more generally, was going through a period of revaluation in the 1920s and 1930s at the hands of contemporary scholars, many artists and critics resisted this trend, including Sarfatti who described the entire period as “vacuous” and “agitated.”30 Similarly, the writer Curzio Malaparte—in an essay that discussed both late Michelangelo and the work of El Greco—argued that the art of the 1600s is nothing if not product of a decomposition of the traditional classical forms, of the deformation, I would almost say a pollution, of the very antique and distinctive plastic sense proper to the Mediterranean race.31 Scipione’s exploration of the art of the late 1500s and 1600s both undermined the more idealist and classicizing tendencies of the work of his contemporaries with their emphasis on drawing and unmodulated color and conveyed his sense that the present moment was neither a period of synthesis between past and present nor a triumphant rebirth of enduring, eternal values but a period of precipitous decline. At the same time, it enabled him to point to a future beyond secular temporality in which the historical process itself would come to an end in a moment of revelation. Scipione thereby signaled his departure from the dominant artistic tendencies of his day including many of those on display at the Fascist Art Union exhibition of 1929.

Surrealism in Italy? At the end of 1929 and in the early months of 1930 Scipione created a minor sensation in the Roman art world. His paintings featured such unusual figures as a melancholic orangutan, as in Dreamers (1929); and a half-woman, half fish, the main protagonist of The Awakening of the Blond Siren (1929) (Figure 3.5). Such works puzzled contemporary viewers. Of the latter work one reviewer—on the occasion of the artist’s posthumous retrospective in Rome of 1935—wrote that it was a “a concoction of

The Men Who Turn Around  73

Figure 3.5  S cipione, The Awakening of the Blond Siren, 1929. Oil on panel, 80.5 × 100.2 cm (31.7 × 39.4 inches), Torino, Castello di Rivoli, Collezione Cerruti.

Böcklin, of Piero di Cosimo, of Rousseau’s customs officer, something hybrid in every sense… made with a hotly morbid sensuality.”32 A different critic saw in it echoes of Goya, yet another of amusement park billboards.33 Such works were also considered to be without precedent at least in Italy, in the climate of the time, they have no points of contact with the phenomenon of the novecento, they are very far from, or at least are the antithesis of today’s cultural and archaic neoclassicism.34 In these paintings, Scipione departed from both the idealist classicism and primitivist archaism of many of his contemporaries, emphasizing the materiality of the picture surface, and using a narrow range of high keyed colors, largely red, green and black, referred to the bravura passages of painting found in the work of late Titian, as well as the expressionist canvases of Raphael and Mafai. In addition, in various parts of his paintings he applied the handle of the paintbrush to the picture surface while the paint was still wet to reinforce contours. In this way he departed from inherited conventions regarding the use of the traditional tools of the trade that had been stridently promoted by the “return to order” movement while creating works that evoked the Surrealists’ rebus-like juxtapositions of incongruous objects. During the 1920s in Italy avant-garde art forms, in particular those—like ­surrealism—which had originated in Paris or been celebrated in the French capital, came under severe attack at official levels. In the Italian journal Critica fascista in

74  The Men Who Turn Around 1926 for example, surrealism was discussed unfavorably in the same terms as “pederasty” and “satanism.”35 Although such comments might be thought to have rung the death-knell for advanced art in Italy under the conditions of totalitarianism, during the Fascist era there was an extraordinary diversity of artistic practice, including representatives of avant-garde movements such as futurism, expressionism, and abstract art, and several writers and artists in Italy were aware of the activities of the French surrealists and drew upon some of their ideas.36 Scipione has often been described as a surrealist in the literature on the artist, both during his lifetime and in more recent times.37 Scipione was part of a circle of writers in Italy, including Leonardo Sinisgalli and Giuseppe Ungaretti who had read the writings of Comte de Lautréamont, André Breton, and Jean Cocteau, as well as the work of others who either belonged to the surrealist movement, had inspired it, were fellow travelers, or simply receptive to surrealist ideas.38 This did not mean, however, that the surrealist movement was exempt from the artist’s satirical bent. In The ­M anikin Painter (1930) for example he shows an artist depicting a dressmaker’s dummy, that central protagonist of surrealist painting and literature, thereby stripping it of mystery (Figure 3.6). In To the True Surrealism (1930), he produced a light-hearted catalog of figures from surrealist art, including the work of Savinio, de Chirico, Joan Miro, and Salvador Dalí (Figure 3.7).39 In another drawing titled The Opening of the Season / The Models Arrive from Paris (1930), Scipione compared a range of French writers and artists, including several closely associated with the surrealists, to the contemporary fashion cycle for women’s clothing (Figure 3.8). Notwithstanding the artist’s irreverent

Figure 3.6  S cipione, The Manikin Painter, 1930. Ink on paper, 21.5 × 32 cm (8.5 × 12.6 inches), Fondazione R. Longhi, Firenze. © Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Firenze.

Figure 3.7  S cipione, To the True Surrealism/Et Voilà!, 1930. Ink on paper, 21 × 43 cm (8.3 × 16.9 inches), Antonello Falqui collection, Rome.

Figure 3.8  S cipione, The Opening of the “Season.” The Models Arrive from Paris, 1930. Ink on paper, 24.5 × 42 cm (9.6 × 16.5 inches), Antonello Falqui collection, Rome.

76  The Men Who Turn Around attitude toward surrealism, and the significant distinctions to be drawn between ­S cipione and the French avant-garde movement, their concerns frequently overlapped. Among the ideas that Scipione drew from the writings of L ­ autréamont, Breton, and ­Savinio—and artworks by de Chirico and Jacques-André Boiffard—hybrid ­figures, including the hermaphrodite, and urban space as a site for marvelous encounters, would be the most prominent ones with the closest relation to surrealist thinking. As Giuseppe Appella noted in his important 1984 study of the artist’s drawings, several works in Scipione’s oeuvre show hybrid or double figures.40 Achilles Ends His Days (1930) shows a figure with two heads that share a single ear in common, and in Adam and Eve (1925) the biblical couple are both depicted as women, one with male genital organs (Figure 3.9). In The Awakening of the Blond Siren (1929), the figure is depicted with a two-sided face (Figure 3.5). However, without doubt the most striking image of the double or hybrid figure in Scipione’s work is his drawing Hermaphrodite of 1931, in which the viewer comes face to face with a pronounced sexual ambiguity (Figure 3.10). There are several sources for the concept of the hermaphrodite in ancient art, philosophy, and mythology, including the ancient sculpture Sleeping Hermaphroditus, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and the writings of Plato, from which an artist could have drawn for this image.41 However, by surrounding this figure with the trappings of modern life, including women’s clothing, a vanity table with an ostrich feather and a photograph, ­Scipione denuded the figure of its nobler philosophical or mythologizing veils. ­Moreover, the hermaphrodite adopts a pose seen frequently in representations of naked women in both high and low art, with the arms raised in a gesture seemingly justified by the act of adjusting hair or removing a garment, but which is largely intended to expose the

Figure 3.9  S cipione, Adam and Eve, 1925. Ink on paper, 37 × 29.5 cm (14.6 × 11.6 inches), private collection, Rome.

The Men Who Turn Around  77

Figure 3.10  S cipione, Hermaphrodite, 1931. Ink on paper, 31 × 21 cm (12.2 × 8.3 inches), private collection.

body to a full and complete display. Unlike more conventional female nudes, however, the figure sports a penis and testicles, has abundant, dark-colored pubic and underarm hair, and the hands are arranged so as to involve a strong grip of one arm on the other, as if the figure were involved in an athletic, muscle stretching movement. Among other possible sources for Scipione’s hermaphrodite are the writings of authors who had inspired the surrealist movement, such as the Comte de Lautréamont, which Scipione had access to in this period. Lautréamont’s hermaphrodite, described in Les Chants de Maldoror, incorporates aspects of both masculinity and femininity, and experiences a strong sense of self division. At one point in the narrative “he feels his body split in twain from head to foot.”42 Amy Lyford has argued for the importance of the hermaphrodite figure in the Chants de Maldoror for surrealist art. As she maintains: The hermaphrodite’s ambiguous sexual identity foregrounds both physical and psychological fragmentation in ways that parallel the themes that the surrealists were exploring in the 1920s and 1930s, including the heterogeneous bodily forms resulting from the game of “exquisite corpse.”43 In Alberto Savinio’s writings, also familiar to Scipione, including his early Hermaphrodito of 1917 and other works such as La casa ispirata published as a book in 1925, the writer was obsessed with the double-sexed figure, and it played various roles in his writing. In 1925, the doubling of sex could be a source of horror to the author, similar to the threat of castration.44 Elsewhere in his writing the hermaphrodite figure comes

78  The Men Who Turn Around to stand for a challenge to “rigid gender binaries,” what Keala Jewell has described as an attempt to favor “difference and multiplicity over illusory, repressive ideas handed down from the past.”45 Such depictions of mixed gendering were in pointed opposition to traditional gender roles and to strongly held views in Italy during the first decades of the 20th century that saw condemnation of emancipated women who rejected the role of wife and mother, refused marriage, and took on active work. As an indication of contemporary attitudes, this type of woman was once described in Italy in 1910 as “the amphibian of the human world,” and Savinio’s often grotesque and even abject depictions of hermaphroditism, involving giving birth through the anus, walk a fine line between promoting difference and reinforcing its negation.46 Scipione’s drawing, however, has to be distinguished from the more abject kind of fragmentation and reorganization witnessed in the “exquisite corpse”—that surrealist parlor game turned art genre with its devastating reorganization of the human form—and in Savinio’s writings. The emphasis in Scipione’s drawing is not on monstrosity but rather on the surprising appearance of male sexual organs in a context otherwise strongly marked both biologically and culturally as female—the breasts, the pinup pose, the button-up boots, corset, and frilly undergarments that have fallen to the floor. In other words, the gender mixing here takes place not to emphasize the monstrous but rather its inherently harmonious attractiveness, with the contours of the pubic region bearing comparison morphologically and stylistically to the outlines of the feminine apparel nearby. Scipione wanted to produce a modern analogue for the kind of ideal beauty associated with androgyny and even hermaphroditism such as that encountered in the neoclassical aesthetics of Johann Winckelmann. He achieves this by producing a hybrid figure who, far from being abject and lying completely ­outside existing codes of representation, nestles within the idealizing, classicizing canon while remaining foreign to it. We could therefore describe this work as a form of “queer beauty”: an aesthetic which Whitney Davis traces in the writings of a range of authors including ­Winckelmann, Freud, and Foucault, and which acknowledges the “diversity and depth…. of human erotic instincts and motivations, including nonstandard and nonnormative motivations.”47 In spite of the apparent parallels between this queer aesthetic and the surrealists’ ambition to “demolish traditional psychic and behavioral patterns,” Scipione’s image parts ways with the concept of “convulsive beauty” promulgated by the leader of the surrealists André Breton, which was predicated upon a more complete disruption of classical aesthetics as well as the heterosexist objectification of bodies clearly gendered as female.48 In this sense Scipione’s image more closely parallels the work of Jean Cocteau, the French artist and writer actively spurned by Breton. Scipione—who owned a copy of Cocteau’s illustrated novel Le Potomak and had incorporated transvestite caricatures of Cocteau and his young male lover ­Raymond Radiguet in his aforementioned 1930 drawing The Opening of the Season / The Models Arrive from Paris (1930)—would have been familiar with the French writer’s o ­ ften-reproduced, elegant line drawings of this period, which combine neoclassicism and eroticism in their depictions of same-sex desire.49 Moreover, given that he read Nouvelle Revue Française it is likely that Scipione knew Cocteau’s essay “Le Numéro Barbette” about a female impersonator, which was published in a 1926 issue of that journal.50 Like Cocteau’s concept of an ideal, surnaturel beauty, which exceeds the common gendering of the human body as either male or female, Scipione’s hermaphrodite image resists the surrealist emphasis on heterosexual love and identity in a way that marks it out as particularly radical for its time.51

The Men Who Turn Around  79 Scipione’s drawing was created during a period when divisions of gender were a source of vigorous debate in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. In France after World War I there was an emphasis on a newly strengthened, masculine ideal for men as well anxieties around the rise of the so-called new woman who worked in similar jobs to men and had adopted masculine attire and hairstyles.52 In Italy a similar climate existed— particularly after Mussolini’s rise to power—which saw a reinforcement of the gendered roles of a militant male and a fecund mother producing large families for the good of the state. By 1932 the increased policing of gender roles in Italy in this period would become apparent in a caricature titled Cocktail published in the magazine Il selvaggio, which featured a mannish, modern woman wearing fashions of the 1920s strongly marked as decadent and contrasted with a more fulsome, womanly figure of the traditional Italian mother.53 Scipione, who was well aware of these developing attitudes, would later request that a publisher not reproduce the drawings he described as “more sensual or pornographic… for example the hermaphrodite” from a planned volume for fear of running into trouble with the Italian censors.54 Aside from its potential to be perceived as having pornographic content, what was dangerous about the image was that it drew upon a hybrid, unstable figure from classical mythology and modernized it so as to question deeply held, contemporary Italian mores about sexuality and identity. Another aspect of Scipione’s work that can be connected to ideas common to the surrealists is the artist’s depictions of urban space in Rome. In a series of drawings and paintings representing public spaces in the historical center of the Italian capital, the artist created what appear at first glance to be fairly conventional depictions of famous tourist sites of the city, including St. Peter’s and the Vatican, Piazza Navona, the Colosseum, The Arch of Constantine, Trajan’s Forum, Via Appia, and the Ponte Sant’Angelo. However, on closer inspection the images are far from straightforward. Many of the images show uninhabited spaces, strangely bereft of human activity, while some include unremarkable views featuring building demolitions in progress (Figure 3.11). Other images show marble statues appearing to come to life and yet

Figure 3.11  S cipione, Trajan’s Forum, 1930. Ink on paper, 16 × 22 cm (6.3 × 8.7 inches), private collection, Rome.

80  The Men Who Turn Around others are the setting for peculiar, even grotesque living figures. This series of works can be understood both in relation to the French surrealist tradition and to a particular experience of urban space in contemporary Rome. An aspect of Scipione’s depictions of Rome with one of the strongest connections to surrealism is his representations of public sculptures. In The Bridge of Angels, which depicts the bridge which crosses the Tiber and leads to the Castello Sant’Angelo, ­Scipione shows a Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpture literally taking flight. Although it is unclear whether or not the dissident surrealist publication Documents ever reached Italy in this period, it is possible that Scipione was aware of Robert Desnos’ article “Pygmalion and the Sphinx,” published in that journal in early 1930, where a bronze sculpture is described as taking off into the air.55 Piazza Navona, which shows an area of the baroque Roman city very familiar to tourists, depicts the Moor Fountain with its sculpture by Bernini surrounded by Tritons made by Giacomo della Porta (Figure 3.16). In his representation of the famous square Scipione has added flaming red touches of paint to emphasize the serpentine movement of the baroque sculptures, making them seem unnaturally animated. Furthermore, the manner in which the curvaceous forms of the sculptures are set against the zooming perspective of the Piazza is reminiscent of the distorted perspectives of urban environments encountered in the early metaphysical paintings of de Chirico—which both the surrealists and Scipione strongly admired—and links them to a broader surrealist tendency to find the spectacle of public sculpture in the city a source both of “fascination” and of “unbearable discomfort,” to quote a passage from Breton’s novel Nadja of 1928.56 Like many artists and writers both before and after him, Scipione loved to roam the streets of the capital during the day and night, and as friends and critics of the artist have pointed out, his views of Rome were sometimes painted the day after a particular midnight jaunt through the city.57 In this Scipione was similar to the surrealists, for whom aimless wandering through the streets in search of marvelous encounters was central to their representations of the metropolis. This aspect of surrealist practice was recorded in Nadja, a copy of which Scipione had received from the poet and critic Leonardo Sinisgalli in 1930. 58 The novel records Breton’s encounter with a woman he meets more or less by chance and takes the narrator through various locations in the city like a flâneur along the lines of Baudelaire. 59 Of particular interest for Scipione, both in the text and in the accompanying photographic images taken by Jacques-­A ndré Boiffard, would have been the book’s depiction of public squares in the French metropolis such as the Place de Pantheon, the Place Maubert, the Porte Saint Denis, and the Tuileries.60 Whereas Breton’s urban arena was the city of Paris, Scipione’s was Rome. Although the places in Rome Scipione chose to paint were largely populated with ancient, Renaissance as well as more modern buildings, there were also some major demolition and reconstruction works taking place which would significantly change the face of the capital, making it the site of astonishing and marvelous occurrences such as those Breton celebrated in his surrealist novel. In a speech of 1925 authorizing the mayor of Rome to undertake a new urban planning scheme, Mussolini painted a picture of what the new Fascist Rome was to look like: “in five years… Rome must appear marvelous to all the peoples of the world: vast, orderly, powerful, as it was in the time of the first empire of Augustus.” Further to this he added: You will open up space around the Theater of Marcellus, the Capitoline, and the Pantheon. Everything that has grown around them during the centuries of

The Men Who Turn Around  81 decadence must disappear. Within five years, a great passage from Piazza ­Colonna must make the monument of the Pantheon visible. You will also free the majestic temples of Christian Rome from the parasitic and profane constructions. The millennial monuments of our history must loom in the required isolation.61 Mussolini’s ambition was to emphasize the grandeur of Rome by removing the memory of the most recent past; that is to say the entire 19th-century liberal era. Moreover, the emphasis on classical history in these urban transformations was accompanied by a social hygiene imperative, which dovetailed with new social controls seeking to regulate the behavior of the populace. As David Atkinson argues, In 1923, prostitutes had been subjected to a programme of regulation which sought to control sexualities which lay beyond the familial units advocated by fascism. Three years later, under the nascent dictatorship, the new Public Security laws legislated for the eviction of all prostitutes from the streets… […] planners and sociologists… talked of treating the city and “correcting” its maladies… they wanted to excise the “dangerous” elements from the metropolis to leave a “healthy” ordered, disciplined and fertile fascist city.62 The destruction and rebuilding of extensive areas of Rome’s urban landscape was a slow process, which mostly took place during the 1930s. Among the most wellknown artistic renderings of this period of the city’s transformation are the series of paintings by Mario Mafai known as the Demolitions of 1936–1937 that record significant alterations to Rome’s architecture that took place several years after Scipione’s death. However, proposals for urban reorganization along the lines set out by Mussolini were made public beginning in the 1920s, and actual demolitions had begun in various parts of Rome from 1926, a year which saw the beginning of the construction of the Via del Mare near the Campidoglio, and later around Trajan’s Forum to reveal Trajan’s markets.63 As historians of Roman urbanism in this period have shown, the effect of these massive urban transformations on the local inhabitants was substantial. Aristotle Kallis argues that when “demolitions at the very heart of Rome started in earnest at the end of the 1920s, they produced new, empty spaces that invited new, sometime wild creative ideas.”64 Citing many commentators who reflected on the disorientation produced by the demolitions, Paul Baxa similarly notes that the effect of the demolitions was to “disrupt the memory of Romans, make what was once familiar strange, and thus challenge long held beliefs about the city.”65 This was the broader context in which Scipione’s various studies of the Roman urban landscape from 1930 were produced.66 One of Scipione’s most frequently depicted sites was Trajan’s Forum, and there is evidence in drawings of that location that he, along with other artists, personally witnessed the demolitions which were taking place at that particular spot ­(Figure 3.11). His interest in this site shows us that Cipriano Efisio Oppo was correct to argue that Scipione “painted a Rome that was on the verge of disappearing.”67 In his drawings showing scaffolding and workers removing debris Scipione records various stages of the demolition of the building next to the Forum, images which accord with other representations of the site from late in 1929.68 Contemporaneous with these works is ­Scipione’s major painting titled The Roman Courtesan of 1930 (Figure 3.12 and Plate 5). The painting shows a woman standing near Trajan’s Forum, in close proximity to

82  The Men Who Turn Around

Figure 3.12  S cipione, The Roman Courtesan, 1930. Oil on canvas, 49.6 × 40.9 cm (19.5 × 16.1 inches), Milan, private collection. © 2018. Photo Scala, Florence.

where the demolitions were taking place.69 The artist and the figure are, as it were, standing in the midst not only of ancient ruins but of modern ones. The woman stands in front of the tall cylinder of Trajan’s column completed in AD 113, behind which one sees the two cupolas of the churches S. Maria di Loreto and SS. Nome di Maria completed in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively. In front of the column stand the broken remnants of the Forum. The prostitute, who is dressed in a 19th-century costume notably outmoded for the 1930s, with her abundantly flowing auburn hair, neck

The Men Who Turn Around  83 choker, frilly petticoats, and elaborate jewelry strides onto a vast, empty space that signifies the missing, modern buildings that once surrounded the Forum. The figure of the prostitute has a complex meaning in European culture historically. In French literature the prostitute had for several decades signified modernity—the commodification of sexuality but also of culture more broadly, the independence of women from sexual and social mores, and the reign of appearances in the modern city.70 However, in this case, the location strongly connects the image to the Fascists’ demolitions of relatively modern buildings intended to return Rome to a former grandeur, and to their related attempt to clear the streets of human “rubble” such as prostitutes and others they considered undesirable, processes through which Rome was made strange to its contemporary inhabitants. This figure, with her outdated style of dress, brings back into view the recently disappeared prostitute whose former habitat included the demolished buildings which once surrounded the ancient monuments of Rome. If, as Hal Foster has argued, the troubling reemergence of what has been pushed aside or underground was central to the surrealists’ concern with “events in which repressed material returns in ways that disrupt unitary identity, aesthetic norms, and social order,” Scipione’s picture can be viewed as both aesthetically and socially disruptive in a manner that bears comparison to the French avant-garde movement.71 To some extent the figure in The Roman Courtesan can be compared to the hybrid identity of Scipione’s Hermaphrodite. The position of the courtesan’s lace handkerchief draws attention to the erect form of Trajan’s column and its adjacency to the bulging twin domes of the churches which flank the Forum. In this way, Scipione may be thought to have engaged in a light-hearted, “hermaphroditic” interpretation of the urban landscape of Rome. In support of this reading it may be observed that some of the artist’s still-lifes indulge in a rather explicit sexual symbolism, as for example Still Life with Feathers (1929). Other elements of the image, however, including the woman’s clothing and accessories suggest a different reading. By giving the courtesan mismatched shoes, differently from the 1931 hermaphrodite drawing, Scipione in this case drew upon a feature of the surrealist “exquisite corpse” genre—which commonly showed figures with differing feet or shoes—and thereby introduced the idea that the woman in this painting is a riven or double figure. Notably, one shoe is an older, button-up boot, while the other is a more modern style court shoe, suggesting that the woman literally has one foot in the past and another in the present.72 Moreover, the handkerchief, by far the brightest area of the canvas, draws attention not only to the entire length of Trajan’s Column directly behind it but also to the neighboring, truncated columns in the Forum, the latter of which function as emblems of the ruin of identity. In this way, Scipione proposed a more spectral figure of hybridity than that found in his Hermaphrodite and, further, one which is not confined to the boudoir but rather gets about in the public spaces of Rome. The sense of unease this figure presented to Italian viewers, with its strong suggestions of doubling and anachronism, was registered in the many comments on Scipione’s paintings from this period that stress wildly distasteful comparisons: contemporary critics described his work as “anti-plastic, unhygienic and antidigestive” and as a form of “pictorial dysentery.”73 Such remarks can be explained by many aspects of his paintings, including their muddy reds and browns which flow beyond the outlines of the figures and seem redolent of wounds and disease. They also demonstrate that S­ cipione’s paintings of a “disappearing” Rome were opposed not only to hygienic efforts to clean up the city and impose a new rational order on the landscape and the populace, but also to other, more official efforts to memorialize the buildings, traditions, and

84  The Men Who Turn Around customs that were being swept away by Fascism. As Antonio Muñoz argued about the Museo di Roma, which from 1930 displayed artifacts of local Roman culture that were being destroyed by Mussolini’s demolitions, the museum’s displays could be “an urn for our sweet nostalgia, a refuge for our dreaming souls, the oasis where we Romans can go to renew our spirits, among the dear little things of the life that once was.”74 By way of contrast to that melancholic vision of heritage, Scipione’s prostitute is neither a touching portrait of days gone by nor a simple admonition against outmoded practices: she is an apparition born from a city undergoing convulsive, even stomach-churning changes, a disturbing ghost who has returned to haunt the present and belongs to the panoply of mysterious and unpredictable women and objects which stalked the contemporary surrealist imagination, here transplanted to Italy’s capital. In a related image The Road that Leads to St. Peter’s (1930) Scipione depicted a series of buildings, known as the Borghi, which blocked the view to St. Peter’s from the center of Rome during the artist’s lifetime but were subsequently demolished by ­Mussolini to create the modern-day Via della Conciliazione (Figure 3.13). Although Scipione would not live to see the demolition activity in the area, plans to clear the urban space between the basilica and the rest of Rome had been proposed a number of time over previous centuries and as recently as 1916 by Armando Brasini.75 Given the historic agreement reached in this period between the Pope and Mussolini—the so-called ­Lateran pacts of 1929—which gave the go-ahead for significant urban planning around the church, Scipione likely anticipated that the buildings which feature in the foreground of his painting would soon be no more. By almost completely hiding the massive dome of St. Peter’s behind the buildings still existing at the time the work was created, ­Scipione insisted upon an alternative vision of the urban landscape to that proposed by the

Figure 3.13  S cipione, The Road that Leads to St. Peter’s (I Borghi), 1930. Oil on panel, 40 × 47.8 cm (15.7 × 18.8 inches), Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, Rome.

The Men Who Turn Around  85 76

Fascist dictator. The visual absence of the church in the picture has its corollary in the figure of Saint Peter on his throne who flies in like a phantom over the top of the buildings, a spirit invading the soon-to-be destroyed spaces surrounding the Vatican. Although Scipione was not an official member of the French surrealist movement, certain surrealist concepts—in particular the notion of hybridity and the urban environment as a sexualized space—were filtered through various channels in the 1920s and 1930s to emerge in Scipione’s work during this period. One of the important differences, however, between the work of this artist and those of the Parisian avant-garde movement is that Scipione’s image deals with sexual identity and its relationship to the urban environment in a far more literal and conscious way than is generally characteristic of French surrealist art. If his hermaphrodite image sublimated nonheterosexual desire in a manner unorthodox to surrealism, The Roman Courtesan functions at an unconscious level—like many surrealists works of art and literature—but also at an allegorical one. This painting can be connected to a series of artworks by Scipione that deal with the apocalyptic visions of St John in the Book of Revelations, with the prostitute representing the “great whore,” which is often interpreted as a metaphor for Rome itself, and has its source in biblical themes that were complete anathema to the surrealists’ strongly anticlerical views. The important question of the religious aspect of the artist’s work can be teased out through a discussion of works such as The Dean Cardinal of 1930.

The Dean Cardinal: A Fallen History As he was producing the series of profane images dealing with pagan or erotic subjects discussed above—as is evident from a drawing published in July 1929 on the theme of the flagellation of Christ in L’Italia letteraria—Scipione also turned his attention to religious subjects including illustrations of biblical events, depictions of church architecture, and portraits of the ecclesiastical hierarchy (Figure 3.14). The artist’s writings demonstrate that like many Italian artists of this period, Scipione was a religious

Figure 3.14  S cipione, The Flagellation, 1929. Ink on paper, 20.6 × 26.1 cm (8.1 × 10.3 inches), Giuseppe Iannaccone collection, Milan.

86  The Men Who Turn Around believer who made constant references to divine figures and Christian concepts in his work. His poems, composed largely between 1928 and 1930 and which touch frequently on themes relating to the natural world, describe experiences in which an immersion in nature is paired with a profound experience of divinity, whether pantheistic or Christian.77 Among the earliest examples of his painting on religious themes was The Dean Cardinal, completed in April 1930, which portrays Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, a 93-year-old, extremely eminent figure in the ­Catholic Church (Figure 3.15 and Plate 6).78

Figure 3.15  S cipione, The Dean Cardinal, 1930. Oil on panel, 133.7 × 117.3 cm (52.6 × 46.2 inches), Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, Rome.

The Men Who Turn Around  87 Although many of the earliest reviewers to write about this painting during and immediately after its first exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1930 found it to be of merit, others described it as a “scandal.”79 Concerning for the latter critics would have been, as Pietro Maria Bardi highlighted in his review of the work when it was subsequently exhibited in Rome later in 1930, the work’s many references to the ­baroque period. As the critic argued, in this work Scipione revealed himself to be a sensual discoverer of hidden and unimagined preciosities of his Baroque Rome, with the Popes masters and governors of the city and of the earth, the warm and enervating atmosphere, the satanic invitation to idleness, and all of the pale, eternal concert of Bernini’s travertine volutes. Scipione has deliberately lost himself in the 1600s and he has brought back an ecstatic impression.80 Given the significant disdain for the baroque period and the art of the 1600s among many contemporary artists and writers, including Benedetto Croce, Giorgio de ­Chirico, and Margherita Sarfatti, the references to the complex compositions and bravura paint handling—such as the broad swathes of intense orange and red pigment denoting the generous folds of the Cardinal’s gown—drawn from works from the 1500s and 1600s were not calculated to please the contemporary Italian cultural establishment. Rather, they tended to confirm the views of those such as de Chirico who in the early 1920s had argued that the art of those periods “anticipates the decadence of modern painting.”81 Even more disconcerting would have been unnaturalistic details such as the barely marked-out facial features, which in their summary quality verge on caricature; the sparse scribbles of the brush portraying the figure’s arthritis-­crippled hands resting upon a lace apron described in frenetic touches of cream red and white colored paint; and the floating ecclesiastical emblems of the huge key and dice as well as the imp-like figure whose head pops out inexplicably from behind the Cardinal’s chair. In their report nominating this work for a prize at the Venice Biennale the judges commented that while they appreciated the work’s “singularity of vision and the novelty of the experiment” Scipione was “someone that should not indicate to the young a path to follow before a maturation takes place within an artistic climate that is more Italic.”82 In this way the jury pointed to what they saw as the excessively foreign derivation of Scipione’s style, a judgment that had been aired before in a critic’s admonition that the artist should jettison 19th-century French influences, and which would become a common refrain in the criticism of the artist’s work.83 These include Oppo’s anti-Semitic comment of 1930 associating the artist’s work with the kind of “surrealism which reminds us of Berlin and Paris also via Israel” and the sardonic remark by a reviewer—on the occasion of Scipione’s showing in the Quadriennale exhibition in 1931—that “all roads lead to Rome except the ones which Scipione is travelling on.”84 As the Italian art historian Lionello Venturi judged, the work “could not be a more dangerous leap into the void, given that right in Rome there are some traditional examples within arm’s reach,” a comment reinforced by another critic’s description of the work as “very anti-traditional.”85 When the work was exhibited again later in 1930 Alberto Neppi argued that “along the path of The Dean Cardinal, which inspired a certain uproar at Venice, one arrives at an irreverent foolishness disguised as expressionist symbolism.”86 A pair of writers in Quadrivio, who adopted the pseudonym Candido and Eliseo, summing up the effect of The Dean Cardinal on contemporary

88  The Men Who Turn Around viewers, argued in 1935 that “it is a painting that is disconcerting, that takes your breath away and moves one to open a window.”87 Far from being a somber reiteration of classical or historical styles which dignified the aged religious figure it portrayed, Scipione’s painting distanced itself from the most venerated aspects of I­ taly’s national patrimony in favor of strongly disdained historical periods and cultures. Such judgments would seem to prevent the work from being read as expressing any kind of respect for religion. In Italy during the 1920s and 1930s, however, a range of attitudes to modern art coexisted among the faithful. Monsignor Bornewaser, for example, wrote in 1929 in L’Osservatore Romana—the official newspaper of the Vatican—that while the Church could not tolerate “arbitrariness and the excess of subjectivism” and “cannot favor an art that rejects the entire past” it also “cannot repudiate new forms if a religious spirit is revealed in them,” thus opening the possibility of a legitimate modern art touching on religious themes.88 Later, in 1932, when the Pope issued an encyclical which explicitly condemned modern religious artworks for deforming and profaning holy figures, Scipione would write a letter to the editor of L’Italia letteraria suggesting that the newspaper publish reproductions of ­M ichelangelo’s late Pietà sculptures as “there are serious deformations and they are not beautiful as the Pope requires art to be.”89 Although Scipione’s painting certainly takes its distance from the art of the past, and appears to be redolent of an approach to painting condemned by many in the Catholic Church, in it we find an attitude to spirituality similar to that found in the artist’s prose and letters, where his views about religion were more directly expressed. The most significant prose work by Scipione is his appreciation of the work of El Greco, the Crete-born, mannerist painter who worked in Italy and Spain in the late 1500s and early 1600s. As with so many of Scipione’s writings, none of which were published in his lifetime, it has proven difficult to give this text a precise date.90 ­Scipione would have been familiar with the Cretan master’s work from his frequent visits to Roman galleries and libraries, where he viewed paintings first hand and in reproduction, as well as from the important Rome exhibition mounted by Roberto Longhi of Spanish art in 1930, the year in which the artist’s text was most likely composed.91 The connection between the artist’s work and that of El Greco was evident to critics by the mid-1930s, although by no means always in a favorable sense. As one critic wrote in 1935, “that bloody portrait of Cardinal Vannutelli is, like other works by him, a poor derivation from El Greco.”92 Like other contemporary artists and writers who took inspiration from the work of El Greco, Scipione viewed the Cretan painter as an uncompromisingly modern artist who manifested a deeply spiritual attitude in rejection of materialism. In his essay, Scipione argues that the artist’s great interest for modern painters is that he “cast off that sense of accord meant to flatter the spectator’s taste through the skillful harmony and—we could say—decorative disposition of the figures and objects” and that he allows them “to rediscover a strong, true spirituality.” In making these remarks Scipione places El Greco in his time, arguing that he “worked at the time of the Counter-Reformation and the Inquisition… With his painting he throws minds into confusion, sends religious nightmares to haunt the churches.” The thinking behind the artist’s text on El Greco had its pedigree in views toward El Greco held by the right-wing French author Maurice Barrès and by Scipione’s friend and colleague Mario Mafai. In a book first published in 1910 and reprinted many times subsequently Barrès viewed the work of El Greco as a “singular mélange of harmony

The Men Who Turn Around  89 and disequilibrium” through which he expressed not a love of beauty in and of itself but rather “a certain morality” in a visionary fashion, “which lead us to a place where we may be delivered from the pleasure of the senses.”93 For Barrès, El Greco was a product of his place and time, both the product of a deeply spiritual country, Spain, and of a deeply spiritual time—the period of the Counter-Reformation. Many of these views were shared by Mafai: after a visit to Rome’s Galleria Corsini to view paintings by El Greco, he wrote in his diary: “that flood of light, that exasperation of both color and drawing perfectly represents the spirit of Counter-Reformation which was characterized by the exaltation and infallibility of the Catholic dogma,” adding that in “the period of the Spanish Inquisition, the people’s religious spirit was manifested in the form of nightmares, as happens in El Greco’s paintings.”94 The similarity of these comments to the views expressed in Scipione’s text shows that the two artists shared many things in their appreciation of El Greco. Despite the similarities between Scipione’s account of the Cretan painter’s work and those of Barrès and Mafai, a different reading of history emerges in Scipione’s text when he argues that, when examining the work of this artist who “upset the classical canons of composition,” It is impossible to consider the painting in itself, to exclude the great tragedies of the time and the religious corruption which accompanied the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Inquisition, not to mention the spiritual decay caused by the sensual and pagan Renaissance aesthetic.95 Focusing on a series of works on the theme of the Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, which date between 1570 and 1600, Scipione argues that El Greco not only condemned the period of the Counter-Reformation as corrupt, but that he was also reacting against the rise of paganism during the Renaissance. Most significantly for Scipione—and this is why he argues so many modern artists are influenced by him—El Greco embodies a spirituality that “was really absent at the beginning of the century. The reason for that absence is quite clear: the destruction brought about by positivism, materialism and rationalism.”96 In these passages Scipione critiques not only an excessive worship of the classical or Renaissance masters, such as that evident in the works of the Italian “return to order” movement, but also attacks modern society at large. Scipione saw the work of El Greco as far more than simply a reflection of the religious intensity of Counter-Reformation culture; he argues that in the modern taste for his work we can identify a response to a long-standing series of historical problems, including an excessively sensual aesthetic inherited from the ­Renaissance, religious corruption at the time of the Inquisition, and a recent intellectual trend toward emphasizing the material and intellectual world of science.97 Therefore, when Scipione concludes that in El Greco’s work “the intangible beauty of the divine figures is distorted, corrupted, as a warning to tell them that their immorality murders divine beauty and that human suffering disfigures their faces with sadness,” it is an admonition applied to a very broad swathe of history as well as to the present. This wide-ranging critique of history is similar in its scope to the artist’s attacks on contemporary art in his caricatures and private letters, in which almost the entire panoply of artistic trends was savagely undermined.98 The condemnation of both history and the present found in Scipione’s text can be connected to views held toward modernity by the Catholic Church on the one hand,

90  The Men Who Turn Around and by Fascism on the other. The Vatican at this time was increasingly of the view that, as an article published in the L’Osservatore Romana argued in April 1930, “Christianity confronts the gravest crisis… it is not a matter of defending the integrity of the faith from inside heresy… but of pushing back an invasion of a new p ­ aganism from the outside that… worships science and rejects faith, that glorifies h ­ uman power.”99 In this sense, the artist’s writing can be understood as an outgrowth of a more broadly shared religious perspective on art and society. Another extremely important source for the artist’s ideas, however, was the comprehensive ideological shift which had taken place within secular thinkers belonging to the generation of 1890, including Georges Sorel in France and Enzo Corradini in Italy. As Zeev Sternhell maintains, these thinkers, drawing upon a mixture of ideas from Darwin, Nietzsche, and Bergson, railed against “the rationalistic individualism of liberal society” and the “materialism of modern society” and had engaged in a “revolt against positivism.”100 These were the ideas that had “shaped a new intellectual climate” after WWI and “allowed fascism to burgeon and grow into a powerful mass movement.”101 Thus we can see that Scipione subscribed to an anti-rationalist line of thinking which underpinned the views not only of many contemporary writers and artists, but also of influential political figures including the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. It is at this juncture, therefore, that we need to address in detail the artist’s precise attitude toward the politics of the Fascist government. In a recently discovered sketchbook from 1921 when Scipione was still a teenager he drew caricatures of prominent Italian and international political and cultural figures of the time including Mussolini, Lenin, D’Annunzio, Modigliani, and Bombacci (the latter two founders of the Socialist and Communist Parties in Italy, respectively) as well as the leader of the Catholic-leaning Italian Popular Party Don Luigi Sturzo.102 Such caricatures, however, do not betray any particular political preferences and show the artist simply using the well-known faces as an opportunity to develop his sketching skills. Later, at the end of the 1920s, as we have seen, Scipione exhibited in Fascist Art Union exhibitions, for which “good moral and political conduct” was an expectation, and, throughout his brief career he demonstrated his support of the Fascist government in letters to friends and colleagues.103 These include a letter of 1929 to Mazzacurati reporting Mussolini’s appreciation of his work, a postcard from 1930 which he signed “Fascist and Catholic greetings,” and a letter from 1933 which argued that “good causes have always triumphed under fascism.”104 Such statements have to be understood alongside the fact that for most artists living in this period participation in the Fascist Art Union exhibitions was an essential precondition of career advancement; surveillance of correspondence was a known aspect of government intrusion on everyday life; and Scipione’s private correspondence includes ambiguous remarks which leave them open to a range of varying interpretations. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: there is no basis for arguing that Scipione had strong anti-Fascist convictions. On the contrary, given the closeness of his critique of modernity to that carried out within the Catholic Church and by Fascist ideologues, he is more likely to be considered a “clerico-fascist”—one who brought, through his writings and art, the religious and political ideas of the two institutions into alignment. Weighing all the evidence, however, including the ongoing conflict between the Church and the state in Italy during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the hostile critical reception of The Dean Cardinal, and the details of the painting itself, leads to yet another reading of Scipione’s position, at least insofar as his work is concerned.

The Men Who Turn Around  91 In the period during which this work was created and exhibited the Catholic Church and the Fascist state were at loggerheads about their relative power and influence in Italian society.105 This conflict had only partly been resolved by the Lateran Pacts of 1929, the historic agreement which divided the secular power of the Church from that of the nation of Italy and established a partition of responsibilities relating to education and religious practice. Indeed, the pacts had inflamed what was a deepseated and long-standing historical conflict. One of many difficulties for the Church was that Fascism was in the process of establishing itself as an alternative belief system to Catholicism—or what Emilio Gentile has described as a political religion— in response to which the Pope, from 1931, would begin to explicitly denounce the Fascist regime as pagan.106 To the degree that Scipione’s work deals with questions relating to both Fascism and Catholicism, one should therefore understand it as engaging with what was a difficult and fraught relationship between the Church and the state. The sitter for Scipione’s portrait of 1930 embodied many of these tensions. The figure of Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli had a complex relationship to the Italian state. He fought in the conflict over Italian unification in the 1860s against Garibaldi’s soldiers, and in that sense represented the Church’s resistance to the modern nation.107 However, by 1923—at a time when the Fascists had conceded several things to the Church, including the introduction of religious instruction into schools, the display of the crucifix in state buildings and a prohibition on freemasonry—Vannutelli was quoted as saying that Mussolini was “already acclaimed by all Italy as the reconstructor of the fate of the nation according to its religious and civil traditions.”108 Although such statements should be seen against the background of the significant tensions between the Church and the state that arose throughout the 1920s and 1930s, they were part of a gradual rapprochement that resulted in the Lateran Pacts of 1929. By establishing the Vatican as a sovereign state and giving up Italian land to the Church in exchange for the final relinquishment of territorial claims to other parts of Italy, the pacts sought to resolve the “Roman question,” which had been created when the Republicans stormed the walls of Rome in 1870 and alienated the Pope’s secular powers. Vannutelli had been gradually working toward precisely this goal.109 It seems significant, then, that in his portrait Scipione places the Cardinal not only in front of the cupola of Saint Peter’s basilica, where the latter forms a thematically appropriate background to the ecclesiastical figure, but also in one of the few locations from where it would be possible to see the dome of the church, the obelisk, the fountain, and Bernini’s colonnade in anything like the manner shown here. Although to some degree the setting is imagined—there is nowhere to sit suspended at such a height in that location—Vannutelli is poised directly above that part of the perimeter of St. Peter’s which formed the borderline between the newly sovereign ­Vatican state and the rest of Italy. From that point Scipione’s rather inscrutable Cardinal looks out into the territory of that part of the nation from which the Vatican state had just been excised. After the signing of the pacts, and the celebratory announcements of approval by organs of both the church and the state, including the comment in the L’Osservatore Romano that “Italy has been given back to God and God to Italy” and the description of Mussolini as the “man whom Providence has sent us,” a new era of tension emerged.110 Although many within the Fascist elite felt that Mussolini had “made far too many concessions to the Church,” others speculated that the pact might lead to censorship of artists and intellectuals.111 Particularly contentious were clauses in the

92  The Men Who Turn Around pacts which barred excommunicated priests from public office, changes to marriage which necessitated significant changes to Italian law, and limitations on C ­ atholic youth organizations.112 When the pacts were put forward for approval by the I­ talian parliament in May 1929, Mussolini put the Catholic Church in its place: had it not established itself in Rome, he argued, this religion “born in Palestine” would have “vanished without trace.” Furthermore, he argued, contrary to the Church’s understanding of the agreement, “Inside the State the Church is not only not sovereign, it is not even free.”113 Such statements would seem to justify Aby Warburg’s comment, made during a 1929 visit to Rome which coincided with the signing of the Lateran pacts, that in the mass celebrations which accompanied that event in the Italian capital he had witnessed “the repaganization of Rome.”114 The Pope for his part responded bitterly to Mussolini, calling his remarks “heretical and worse than heretical” and insisted upon the Church’s autonomy.115 Underpinning his view of the matter was an assumption about the absolute preeminence of the Church, and by late 1930 it was clear to one observer that for the Vatican “all the governments of this world are transitory and fallacious, while the sole eternal and infallible government is that of the church.”116 The Church and the state had entered into a new period of strife, leading to the closure of several Catholic newspapers and to police investigations into Catholic youth organizations.117 This was the context against which Scipione’s painting needs to be viewed. Judging from both his art and writing, the position which the artist adopted in relation to this conflict is not immediately apparent. Giulio Carlo Argan argued during the 1960s that Scipione experienced “a shock to his conscience in the face of the pact of solidarity between official religion and Fascism.”118 It would be going too far to suggest that this shock was the sign of an explicit form of political opposition to Mussolini’s government. Nevertheless, I argue that in this work the artist developed a broad-ranging critique of modern Italian society, similar to that found in his writing on El Greco, that would be directed at specific contemporary social and cultural developments taking place during the Fascist period. Although this critique, which would gradually become more explicit in his artwork throughout 1930, shared some features in common with those made by Fascist ideologues, including the perceived decadence of a modern society run on the principles of rationalism and materialism, the response in his writing and work to this condition was significantly different to that of Mussolini’s political movement. Returning to the critical responses provoked by The Dean Cardinal, Goffredo ­B ellonci in a 1933 description of the painting wrote that One could believe… that the Dean Cardinal was seated in the open-air, in that square, at a magic hour. And there was a resonance between the form of his nude cranium, elevated like a dome upon his person, and the form of the cupola of St Peter’s in the background; and all the things around appeared so suitable to the spirit of the Cardinal, that the square seemed to have been created just for him.119 On the strength of such remarks The Dean Cardinal might be interpreted as an image of endurance, not only of the individual depicted therein but also of the spiritual power of the Church, the long-standing persistence of that institution, and its perfect integration with the architectural environment that had been specifically built to protect and celebrate it. By extension the work could be thought to present an image of

The Men Who Turn Around  93 the Catholic Church capable of defying the threats from a Fascist state which was seeking to usurp it. As Francesco Callari argued on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective in 1935, Scipione knew how to render “a vast sense of Catholic belief, of this Rome that bears the sign of the Popes along with that of the Caesars.”120 However, other aspects of the work and the critical responses to it suggest that it is not simply a straightforward assertion of the preeminence of the Church. Cipriano Efisio Oppo hinted at this when he argued in 1930 that while the work suggested the idea of the “antiquity of the church,” it did so in a rather too “literary” manner.121 The critic was no doubt referring to such elements as the emblems of the key and the dice, justified by the religious subject in that they represent Saint Peter’s key to the kingdom of heaven, and the game of chance played by the soldiers who crucified Jesus, which are powerful reminders of mortality. Furthermore, the vignette of a small bird about to devour a bug, and the fiery sunset strangely appearing at mid-­afternoon—at least according to the clock on the façade of the basilica—strongly suggest ephemerality, against which the decrepit figure of the Cardinal is able to connote persistence against all odds. As the reviewers would argue in 1935 in Quadrivio, the venerable Cardinal sits impassive under the weight of his hundred winters, on his heavy and solid walnut Renaissance style throne, in the middle of a world of disorder of theological symbols and religious allegories… Behind him the sunset… spreads out its enormous banner of flame in a steel hard sky. But the venerable Cardinal is too sure of his place in paradise, no doubt or fear torments him in front of this blaze that envelops him on all sides, licking his little mummified head modelled in wax.122 In spite of the suggestion of endurance and security in the passage, described therein is a Cardinal who is presented as an enthroned corpse and set in a quasi-volcanic dusk, which threatens to liquefy him at any moment. The result presages the withering away of the holy figure, a death, an individual ascension to heaven, certainly, but also something further. Although Giuseppe Marchiori argued that this work conveys “a sense of imposingness, of respect for death, which stiffens even the great figures of the church into a majestic attitude” nevertheless, as he argues “there is a sense of fatality and unexpressed omens.”123 The angel-like figure who leans out from behind the Cardinal’s chair with an outstretched arm, worried expression, and lips forming the shape of someone calling out or startled—and who bears a strong resemblance to the artist’s self-portrait of 1928—heralds the imminent arrival of some unwelcome event. Something is going to take place, not only to the Cardinal as a mortal individual but also to something larger and in the not-too-distant future. As Ercole Maselli wrote in 1935, noting the prevalence of the “stormy skies of darkness and fire” in the artist’s work, in The Dean Cardinal Scipione “recalled and transfigured the decompositions of the Counter-Reformation in a haunting echo of funeral pyres.”124 The fantastical vision of the Vatican that the artist presents, and which the critics for Quadrivio described as “a kind of glowing allegory of the church,” speaks as much to the persistence of the Church over time as to its potential decline and fall.125 Scipione’s work itself was perceived by some critics as having contributed to this sense of collapse. As Orazio Amato commented, “The Dean Cardinal… is not entrusted to history with all the stigmata of his venerated greatness.” Rather, its treatment of him was marked by an “irreverent” and “lighthearted familiarity.”126

94  The Men Who Turn Around As Neppi complained rather more censoriously in his review of the artist’s 1935 posthumous retrospective, Scipione’s work was “adulterated at times by a hollow display of culture, a desire to simply shock or amuse, and sometimes by perversity. Such is evident in the all-too-celebrated, famous Portrait of Cardinal Vannutelli.”127 This perverse sensibility was connected to the fact that, as Sinisgalli related in 1935, Scipione “was so at home in the Roman aristocracy, made up of princes and cardinals loyal to the Pontiff, whose hidden illnesses, diabetes or hemorrhoids he told us about.”128 In this respect the concluding remarks by the reviewers for Quadrivio about this picture, “conceived and described with the techniques of a folk painter of horse carriages,” is especially pertinent: If the Cardinal Vannutelli had lived at the golden age of the church and of the spirit, when the apostolic princes went on horseback, led the troops, or led important diplomatic missions, there is no doubt that now the portrait, realistic or not, would be in the scholastic anthologies and school textbooks. And now… we perhaps might have in the gallery of celebrities that go on commercial labels, a Cardinal Vannutelli on the brand of some brewery (Whoever drinks beer will live for 100 years).129 In this passage, the critic points not only to the irreverent quality of the image but also to its reception as an art cult-object, on its way to becoming a commercial brand. Stripped of its aura, the work is fallen and reduced, like its subject, to a consumer icon to be traded in a modern world of pacts and agreements exchanging sovereignty for material power and influence. In this sense, like the qualities Scipione perceived in the work of El Greco, including The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, this painting admonishes viewers that “immorality murders divine beauty,” a beauty possessed by eminent religious figures as well by art itself.130

Time, Faith, and Politics: “what they have lost” In his portrait of a member of the Catholic Church hierarchy, which blended aspects of baroque and mannerist painting with expressionism in a manner which evoked a beer advertisement, Scipione responded to a broad sense of historical decline, which was being exacerbated by what many perceived as the contemporary Italian state’s threat to organized religion. In his subsequent paintings including Piazza Navona and The Men Who Turn Around of 1930 Scipione turned to a theme which came to dominate his work—and was the topic of a proposed catalogue essay about his painting by Leonardo Sinisgalli—“art as revelation.”131 Before analyzing these works in more detail, however, I turn to the relationship between modernism, fascism, and Catholicism to understand their respective conceptions of time and history. Although for decades the type of innovative 20th-century art that Scipione’s painting represents was thought to be inimical to fascism, in Roger Griffin’s view, modernism has a great deal in common with the right-wing political movement. Prominent modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti were fascists, and, as Griffin argues, members of both movements subscribed to the idea that the present is a time of decadence that needs to be repaired through a process of cultural ­rebirth—or what he calls palingenesis, a process through which a return to the historical past revitalizes the modern nation.132 This explains why, the historian contends,

The Men Who Turn Around  95 many modernist artists and writers found themselves attracted to the right-wing political movement: For believers in national regeneration, fascism was a genuine bid to use the unprecedented resources of the modern state to recreate the “auratic”, the “magic”, and the “numinous”, which they sensed was not just draining away from works of art, but from the texture of historical time itself.133 Such a view of the relationship between fascism and modernism has recently found favor with historians of this period.134 However, Griffin fails to acknowledge the degree to which this idea of regeneration could take root not only within fascist ideology but also within Christianity. As Erik Tonning argues in Modernism and C ­ hristianity, within Griffin’s model the impact upon modernism of Christianity is not fully accounted for because the latter is understood therein largely as “an inert thing of the past, simply that which can no longer provide a ‘sacred canopy.’ But this obscures the continuing influence of Christianity as a cultural and political force throughout the Modernist period.”135 What Tonning elsewhere describes as ­“Christian modernists” were those thinkers and writers who argued that “a more radical, challenging Christianity—perhaps even a new Christendom—was the tonic needed to revitalize modernity” rather than a re-energized sense of nation.136 An important question remains, however, about whether such Christian modernists could subscribe to the theory of cultural rebirth in the precise sense in which Griffin’s theory suggests. John Pollard’s argument that both the Fascist state and the Catholic Church had a palingenetic view of history suggests that we might answer this question in the affirmative. He maintains that both sought to restore an earlier state of affairs—ancient Rome in the case of the Fascists and early Christianity in the case of the Church.137 For example, in 1922 the Pope promulgated the idea of the “Christian restoration of society,” which was in part realized by the recuperation of the Church’s temporal power in the Lateran Pacts.138 As a result, it would seem reasonable to argue that Christian modernists, like fascist modernists, could see their mission as facilitating the rebirth of a past historical era. The difficulty with this argument, as Griffin himself has recently insisted, is that “It is impossible to reconcile the soteriology of Christianity, the doctrine of redemption and the prospect of personal immortality in a supra historical realm, with the myth of national redemption and rebirth within historical time.” In particular, he argues, the fascists completely rejected “the pessimistic scheme of Christian history (the Doctrine of Original Sin, the need for contrition, the Apocalypse at the end of human time).”139 Given this evident lack of reconciliation between the two paradigms, other historians of this period have proposed an antagonism between the attitudes to history and time held by the Church and the state in this period. In his study of Mussolini’s Roman building projects Paul Baxa argues that whereas for Fascism “salvation lay not in waiting for the end of time, but in the active resurrection of the long buried primitivism,” the Pope viewed Rome as “a Christian city tracing itself in a continuous line to the transformative work of the apostles,” and saw history as progressive, “as one epoch building atop another as it moved towards a definite end.”140 On this basis Baxa sees the Church and the state in Italy during this period as possessing completely opposed views of temporality. He points to the Fascists’ desire to reveal earlier pagan structures by destroying historical Christian buildings,

96  The Men Who Turn Around a project that ran contrary to the Pope’s vision of Rome’s built environment, which “offered a chain of monuments leading back to Christ through the apostles who had made Rome a ‘sacred soil’ of catacombs on whose foundations were built the great ­basilicas.”141 This latter vision was explicitly articulated late in 1929 when the Pope described the history of Christianity and its institutions as “nothing else but the history of true civilization and progress up to the present day.”142 Significantly, Baxa grounds this argument on what he describes as the “eschatological vision” of Catholicism evident in the 1925 Encyclical Quas Primas, which stresses that “Christ… must reign until at the end of the world he hath put all his enemies under the feet of God and the Father.”143 The Church sees its mission, the historian’s argument runs, as promoting gradual progress toward the triumph of Christ at the end of time. The doctrine of eschatology had been a major current in early 20th-century ­Catholicism. Around 1907 at the time of Pope Pius X’s response to religious modernism, there was a feeling that the Church was facing a very real threat of extinction due to a series of historical developments including the French Revolution and the annexation of the Papal states by the Italian government in 1870. As Joseph Flipper argues, “The Catholic apocalyptic response… envisioned the present moment as a decline of the current temporal order, often the emergence of a new era, and an ultimate battle between good and evil to come.”144 Although eschatology had waned somewhat in the official Church discourse by 1930, statements by the Pope and other Church leaders during this time often relied on cataclysmic language, particularly at the time of those tensions which arose between the church and the state due to the Lateran Pacts. I argue that this apocalyptic understanding of history, which remained a vital if submerged part of Catholic religious thinking during the 1920s and 1930s, was fundamental to the work of Scipione. His explicit recourse to this theme in works from 1930 such as Apocalypse: The Sixth Seal, and Apocalyptic Scene (Eve, The Temptation of Eve), demonstrated that his understanding of both time and history was radically different both to the notion of palingenesis and to the idea of linear progress. In the apocalyptic worldview the process of historical change will come to its conclusion and the “the ultimate end of creation will redeem the existence of evil.”145 Although the Pope from time to time expressed either a progressive or a palingenetic conception of history, at a deeper level the Church saw all temporal history as something bracketed off and relativized against a divine or sacred conception of time, one in which the idea of the eternal supersedes or overrides the quotidian.146 This understanding of time made all ideas of either forward movement, as in the liberal or progressivist model of time, or restoration, as in the Fascist model, redundant. Outside of and beyond these secular ideas of history lay the divine or eschatological paradigm in which time does not change but endures. Earthbound, human temporality may mask or suppress this fundamental truth but it lives on beneath the surface of the everyday. Such ideas were present in the contemporary writings of Pope Pius XI such as his encyclical “Mens Nostra” of 1929 on the subject of spiritual exercises.147 Recommending that believers retire to designated retreats to undertake spiritual contemplation, a practice that ­Scipione engaged in during the late 1920s, the Pope argues that the age is characterized by “the insatiable thirst for riches and pleasures” which so entangles men “in outward and fleeting things that it forbids them to think of eternal truths, and of the Divine laws, and of God himself, the one beginning and end of all created things.” By retreating to contemplate the higher truths, the Pope argues, individuals may have “the opportunity of examining those most grave and penetrating questions concerning the origin and

The Men Who Turn Around  97 the destiny of man: ‘whence he comes; and whither he is going’.”148 Although the Pope principally directs these statements toward individuals who are urged to ponder their own destiny, such exercises permit a contemplation not only of the fate of individual men but also of human society and history as a whole. Within Catholic theology, while the latter are subject to temporal development and change, the doctrines of creation, redemption, and eschatology represent an unchanging truth. This idea of the eternal, of unchanging time, is encountered frequently in Scipione’s writings and works. In his paean to El Greco, he argues that what modern artists seek in the old master’s canvases “is a strong spirituality, truly in the absolute sense and for all time.” In a letter to Mafai of 1932, the artist argued that there was an exact conjunction of all ages: because the essence of man is immutable. Adam’s spirit and ours are one in the same. It is the very breath God blew into man as he created him. And that breath is the part of us that is alive and that will remain eternally.149 Furthermore, in the same letter he argues that the eternal part of humanity that God has breathed into each individual is completely different to that which “falls and ceases with our body, our senses, our days”; that is to say, not only our material self but also our temporal one. Although such ideas may appear similar to the arguments of a neoclassicist who would seek to restore an age-old state of affairs and revitalize a modern world fallen into decadence, Scipione’s texts do not coincide with the idea of bringing back something which existed before in history: rather they assert the significance of something altogether outside the historical. As we have seen from his writing on El Greco, Scipione’s condemnation of history was extremely wide ranging, encompassing neoclassicism, the paganism of the ­Renaissance, the Counter-Reformation, and the period at the beginning of the 20th ­century. He was also bitterly disappointed with the state of the world that he saw around him. His letters were scathing about the art of his time, including those conservative Roman painters who relied on preexisting historical skills and formulas as well as those who reduced their paintings to a focus on superficial elements of the picture plane.150 Against both of these tendencies, in the opinion of Mafai at the time of their first exhibitions in 1929, for both he and Scipione it was important that “painting had to say something, to speak, to express ideas.”151 In this sense, Fernando Tempesti is correct to argue that it was not only the “formal freedom” of Scipione’s work that “opened a crack in the structure of a normality—in formal terms—which was agreeable to the regime,” but also “certain intrusions of an emphasis on content rather than form.”152 Scipione’s critique of the present led him to engage through his art with problems that, in his view, ran deep in contemporary society. As the artist complained in a letter to Enrico Falqui, “nowadays men no longer have confidence in friendship, not because they doubt it, but because friendship requires a moral climate higher and of course different from that suspicious, arid and therefore sterile climate of today.”153 The artist concluded in the same letter that the period he was living through was one in which the most beautiful human feelings had disappeared. Against this dire assessment Scipione writes that the only way out is “another war in the world” or, failing that, “men are condemned to fall lower and lower in abandonment and frigidity until they are frozen in a concrete mold.”154 Such statements show the artist’s rejection of contemporary society as a whole, the very

98  The Men Who Turn Around same society that Fascism had been busily transforming for almost ten years, and his anticipation of a world-historical calamity in the future. In subsequent letters he satirized the pseudo-religiosity of official public spectacles like the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution held in Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni—the same venue that had hosted some of the artist’s most significant public exhibitions—the purpose of which was to demonstrate that society had been completely changed for the better by Mussolini and his policies. As Scipione wrote to Oppo in that year, after a period of convalescence at a sanitorium far from Rome in the town of Arco—located in the far northern Italian province of Trentino—“when I have been healed by painting, you will read in the newspapers that ‘a young painter is coming from Arco to Rome on foot to see the Exhibition of the [Fascist] Revolution.’”155 In this statement written during one of his increasingly frequent periods of ill-health the artist was commenting sardonically on the public response to the regime’s propaganda exhibition in Rome, including visitors’ long walks of pilgrimage from far-flung parts of the country, which were enthusiastically reported in the government-controlled press.156 Differently from the design of the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution—a spectacular display of documents, photographs, and artworks showing the triumphant rebirth of Italian society out of the ashes of the failed liberal era and the defeat of ­bolshevism— Scipione’s art did not give visual form to the successful transformation of society. Unlike contemporary neoclassical or novecento art, it did not show the synthesis of the modern world and the ancient one in a miraculous fusion. Nor did it, as in the case of Mario Sironi’s painting, visualize a long-standing, indigenous culture, which, in spite of its great and sometimes fragmented antiquity, continued to provide the unbridled energy and monumental forms for a modern return to order.157 In ­Scipione’s art, past and present are radically disunited, as in his view the historical process has not led to an overcoming of humanity’s problems. Rather, Scipione’s paintings refer to a process, which in his view remains radically incomplete—the consummation of human history as a whole— and to a goal outside of time or at least outside of what is known of time in the present. Such themes, as I argue below, would emerge in works he painted in 1930 such as Piazza Navona and The Men Who Turn Around. In Piazza Navona a zooming perspective drags the viewer’s eye away from the vigorously painted forms depicting the figurative sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Giacomo della Porta in the foreground, beyond Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in the middle distance, to the far side of the square just above and to the right of the picture’s center (Figure 3.16). As we have seen Scipione took great interest in the art of the baroque period, and he was notorious for his late-night excursions to the foot of Rome’s baroque monuments and architecture such as that encountered in Piazza Navona.158 I argued above that this painting was one of a series of works depicting the nation’s capital in which the artist addressed the disturbing psychological effects produced by contemporary urban modernization in Rome. Here I wish to focus on a different aspect of the work, and in particular upon the way in which the artist has created an image starkly divided between the material surface of the canvas and a point understood to be at a great distance from the viewer, a division which is not only spatial but also temporal. The significance of the relationship between these two extremes turns on the subject matter of the picture, the famous square near the center of Rome, which has its own story to tell within the history of the city and the church. As Alfredo Mezio commented in an article written in 1935 on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective at that year’s Roman Quadrennial exhibition,

The Men Who Turn Around  99

Figure 3.16  Scipione, Piazza Navona, 1930. Oil on canvas, 80 × 82 cm (31.4 × 32.2 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

the colors of piazza Navona, those very soft pinks and blues… were dissolved in the painting by Scipione into a kind of solid and earthy, chocolate-colored lava, which gave the Piazza the appearance of an enormous, honey-flavored sweet corrupted by time and rotten. However, perhaps the painter was not mistaken. In fact, it must be noted that Piazza Navona coincides with the Rome of the Popes and the square is connected with those streets built by Julius II, with the money of Tuscan bankers, at the boundaries of the Papal city, of which some ruins remain in the form of an… old Tuscan Tower turned into a private apartment.159 For Mezio the work is redolent of a period which saw the height of the Pope’s temporal power, which in turn raises the issue of the relationship between the Church and the Italian banking system, whose joint building efforts now stand only as symbols of private luxury. The critic might have added, and Scipione would have more than likely been aware, that the square had once been the site of Pope Innocent X’s mansion in the 1600s, to which, after his elevation, he added many decorative elements, including Bernini’s Fountain. In his interpretation Mezio associates the stark, historical juxtapositions of secular and sacred with the sense of rotting and corruption which pervades the picture. This aspect of the artist’s work can be elucidated through a comparison with the writings of the Egyptian-born, Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, who was a close associate of the artist as well as the subject of a portrait he painted in 1931. Significant parallels between the work of the painter and the poet, including

100  The Men Who Turn Around their reading of urban space and its intersection with time and history, provide a key to the meaning of Scipione’s depictions of Rome. After the close of World War I, Ungaretti was part of an interbellum generation of artists and writers who turned away from the historical avant-garde and toward an interest in the value of cultural traditions. A fervent supporter of Mussolini and the broader “return to order” movement in arts and letters, he worked to link modern poetry with the Italian literary patrimony.160 His poems of the 1920s, for example, frequently connected the sensual world of the landscape to classical deities.161 The poems that Ungaretti wrote after his religious conversion during the 1920s— later published as The Feeling of Time—were increasingly punctuated with direct appeals to God.162 However, these same appeals were not underpinned by a secure or settled idea of belief but rather by spiritual yearnings and anxiety and were marked by concerns about biological age, loss, and fear of the future.163 By his own account Ungaretti was brought to this position by the experience of living in Rome, and in particular his perception of the city’s architecture and the vision of history it represented. For Ungaretti, Rome was “a city where the feeling of eternity was still to be had”; it was replete with the experience of duration but also with a sense of “precariousness.” These themes could be experienced before certain ancient ruins—“When one is in the presence of the Colosseum, an enormous cylinder with empty eye sockets, one has the sense of emptiness.”164 However, they could also be a response to the “a-tectonic composition of Baroque art,” which speaks to a “process of erasure, of eradication, of loss.”165 Eternity for the poet did not therefore mean unchanging adherence to classical form, a successful retrieval of a lost past, or even a successful synthesis of past and future as in the Fascist idea of cultural rebirth. Rather, the term connoted the inaccessibility of what has passed and the ever-present possibility of annihilation.166 As he argued, The baroque was born of the conviction that the experience of antiquity was over as was the experience of historical or temporal Christianity, the hour now striking being the hour of apocalypse. And isn’t the feeling of catastrophe implicit in the feeling of nothingness and the horror of the void? These are all phantoms that tormented Michelangelo, while he only wished to affirm the Eternal.167 As the work of Michelangelo demonstrates, the poet argues, the idea of the eternal went hand-in-hand with an awareness of the void and of catastrophe. In her discussion of the relationship between Scipione and Ungaretti, Gaia Bindi points to the many similarities between the two individuals’ work, quoting Antonietta Raphael’s comment that the artist and the poet were “two temperaments that understood each other” who shared an interest in a “red baroque Rome.”168 Bindi argues, however, that the sense of eternity that both men derived from the city of Rome led their work in opposite directions. Whereas for Ungaretti an awareness of the void, prompted by the presence of ruins and the radical formal experiments of the baroque, signified the absence of God, the deep perspectives in Scipione’s pictures such as Piazza Navona create an emptiness that, by figuring absence visually, reminds the viewer of divine presence. The basis upon which Bindi makes this argument is a letter that the artist sent to Mafai in 1933.169 In this letter, Scipione writes: Don’t you feel that there are real depths, that is to say of space, in man and instead everything has collapsed, and only one level has remained, one single surface. And the surface in itself is the end—is motionless—doesn’t generate anything in

The Men Who Turn Around  101 fact it swallows like quicksand. Even physical movements are generated by internal things—before being bodies we are spirits—spirits of God. This is why you won’t find spatial depths in modern painting.170 Bindi argues that because in the artist’s thinking, spatial depth represents spiritual profundity, “spatial depth also becomes a representation of the divine spirit on the earth.”171 However, given the connections between the two men’s work and thought, if for Ungaretti the perception of the void in the Rome’s urban spaces connoted the absence of God on the earth, then zooming perspectives and empty spaces in ­Scipione’s paintings could just as well signify a world without God as one replete with divine presence. I argue furthermore that Scipione’s saw the absence and presence of God not as oppositions but as closely interrelated. Within the theology of revelation, as R ­ ichard Bauckham argues, only God can “renew his creation, taking it beyond the threat of evil and nothingness into the eternity of his own presence.”172 Bearing this in mind, the apocalyptic character of Scipione’s work speaks both to the threat or possibility of the void and to the hope of plenitude. His work depicts a godless, sensuous historical world fated to decline and decay while pointing to a new covenant manifesting an eternal and immutable truth. In both visions of reality, human society, and history as they are currently understood are destined to disappear. I argue that his work creates a situation in which the viewer is suspended between two positions; both caught on the “surface” in the here and now, but also unsatisfied and faintly or only partly aware of a distant truth which exists utterly outside of human history. As evidence of this multiple, widely divergent historical periods are referred to in the painting. Like the Piazza itself and many other locations in Rome, it is laden with symbols of pagan and pre-Christian cultures, including classical mythology in the figure of the Tritons that adorn the fountain in the foreground, and ancient Egyptian culture in the case of the obelisk which rises in the background. In regard to the latter, it is worth noting that during the Roman Empire such obelisks had the capacity to suggest a longevity “at odds with the mortality of the humans that interacted with it.”173 Grant Parker argues that in ancient Rome obelisks were used as a kind of sundial, while also having the capacity to evoke the concept of what he calls “strange time,” a distant and irretrievable antiquity. As a result such objects were able to invoke alternative time frames, “the long-range, linear, strange time of Egyptian antiquity, and on the other a scheme of time reckoning that articulates the cycle of the year.”174 Although Parker is arguing specifically about the significance of the monument for the population of ancient Rome, and maintains that in the placement of the obelisk a fundamentally mystical time was accommodated to a more recent and familiar timeframe, in S­ cipione’s painting there is a vision of Rome which involves a disjunctive mismatch between an impossibly distant, irretrievable past and a more modern regularized calendar time. The idea of there being two separate, irreconcilable times present in the work is reinforced by the fact that the central figure facing away from us appears in the center of the canvas, where the vanishing point is normally situated in a traditional painting, whereas the obelisk sits at the summit of a different, skewed point of recession into the picture. Over time the artist enhanced the distinction between these two points in the picture—as becomes clear when a comparison is drawn with the oil sketch for this work—by reducing the relative size of the obelisk and placing it at a seemingly greater distance from the viewer. In so doing Scipione allowed the converging lines of the square’s boundaries to be pulled even further back in space and thereby significantly augmented the perspectival recession. A similar sense of temporal disjunction occurs in the sonnets of the 19th-century

102  The Men Who Turn Around Roman poet Giuseppe Belli, elements of which—as several of S­ cipione’s contemporaries have noted—are strongly evoked by Scipione’s art.175 Belli’s use of the Roman vernacular strongly resonates in the radically local and popular dimensions of Scipione’s work, which—as Paolo Baldacci has pointed out—focuses upon those “neglected traditions” belonging to the Italian capital that were in the process of being swept away by Mussolini’s modernizing demolitions and his regime’s hostility toward dialect.176 Belli’s sonnet “Piazza Navona” (1833), for example, recalls the various profane uses to which the square had been put in the relatively recent past, including festivals, food vending, and public floggings, while the ancient obelisk in the center of the space is described as being like “a judgement.”177 Similarly, the central figure in ­Scipione’s painting who occupies the position of the viewer in the here and now, also looks into an incredibly distant past or perhaps future, depending on whether we see the Piazza as a space to be traversed or a path along which something unexpectedly arrives. Like the 1824 painting Death of Sardanapalus by Eugene Delacroix, the French romantic painter to whom Scipione’s work was compared in the 1930s, the picture’s composition is organized in such a way that it appears to ooze or collapse into the foreground rather than recede backward into space.178 The heated tempestuous atmosphere of the work, which like so many of the artist’s paintings, suggests a sunset, a conflagration or even, as one viewer suggested regarding the artist’s work of this period, a “slaughterhouse,” has turned the sun’s normally clear light a deep shade of red.179 The writhing, restless figures of the tritons with trumpets held to their lips in the foreground may announce the arrival of some calamity, lending the scene that “atmosphere of apocalypses,” which the critic Goffredo Bellonci observed in the artist’s depictions of Rome, thereby threatening the spatial and temporal stability of the scene before us. The space upon which the central figure and the viewer gaze is not therefore one of plenitude: it renders that sense of time germane to an irrevocably corrupted world, one from which the God of revelation withholds his glory, but which may yet be relativized by some new, completely unpredictable event.180 Such works, like many of Ungaretti’s poems, are expressions of internal and spiritual turmoil.181 As ­L eonardo Sinisgalli argued in 1945, the artist felt modernity “not as progress or technique but as a more painful awareness of original Sin.”182 Created by an artist who believed that “one should not paint what is left to men, but what they have lost,” these works neither provide a comforting vision of a restored past to reassure the viewer, nor do they suggest divine presence through spatial depth.183 Rather, they speak to a sense of deep religious and existential uncertainty. The time that these pictures inhabit may be productively compared to that described by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in The Church and the Kingdom as “messianic time.” Quoting Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Agamben points out that in messianic time the day of salvation is not coming but rather is here in the now— happening at every moment—and potentially there in every second of our lives.184 However, as Agamben goes on to argue, in the modern church this radical sense of time has disappeared, leading the writer to argue that “the Roman Church has closed its eschatological window.”185 As a result we have reached a situation where The complete juridification and commodification of human relations—the confusions between what we might believe, hope and love and that which we are obliged to do or not do, say or not say—are signs not only of crises of law and state but also, and above all, of crises of the Church.186

The Men Who Turn Around  103 It is against this vision of the present that Scipione’s work struggles, and in works like Piazza Navona but also The Roman Courtesan with its thinly veiled references to Rome as the “whore of Babylon,” it is apparent that Scipione was targeting not only the contemporary, secular society of Fascist Italy but also the Church, which stands accused, in the age of the Lateran pacts, of participating in precisely the same corruption of values that plagues the world at large. This brings us, finally, to Scipione’s painting The Men Who Turn Around ­(Figure 1.1 and Plate 1). There are many sources for this image, including Masaccio’s ­E xpulsion, and the artist’s own work—as has been suggested by Valerio Rivosecchi and ­A ntonello Trombadori—given that the figures in this painting are reminiscent of the sculpture whose back is turned to the viewer in the foreground of Piazza Navona.187 Another source can be found in a painting of the previous year titled Hunters which shows two figures carrying firearms striding off into the distance. The theme here, however, is rather less benign as is the treatment of the figures. The figure on the right inclines his head sideways and back to the viewer in an awkward manner and wraps his arms around himself to protect from the cold or to provide emotional reassurance. The figure on the left side of the painting extends his arm beyond the upper limit of the picture plane so that we cannot understand what gesture his hand is making. As our attention moves down to the face of the same figure we are confronted with a ghastly, completely unreadable visage, which seems to either grimace in pain or laugh stupidly at the figure’s own plight. His face is all the more astonishing when we compare it to a related drawing, Study for The Men Who Turn Around (1930), where the facial expression more closely matches that of his dismal companion (Figure 3.17).

Figure 3.17  S cipione, Study for The Men Who Turn Around, 1930. Ink and water color on paper, 23 × 18.7 cm (9.1 × 7.4 inches), Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone, Milan.

104  The Men Who Turn Around Between the two bodies, at waist height, a dark cavernous opening looms on the road they are travelling along and into which they are heading. Contemporary reviewers mostly overlooked this work when it was first exhibited in late 1930 or passed brief, severe judgments, such as Oppo’s comment in his review for the newspaper La tribuna that it was characterized by “the worst symbolist-caricatural forms.”188 In a sense this image was simply not able to be grasped in its contemporary context. Over subsequent years a very small number of writers gradually came to terms with the image. In 1941 Pietro Feroldi wrote that The Men Who Turn Around seem fixed in an attitude that could last months and years, as if the satanic grin that erupts on that disproportionately open mouth uselessly seeks an echo among the shivering inert or abandoned things, and finally must recommence their desert voyage towards the disconsolate hill.189 This image, which refers to events in Genesis such as the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and the fate of Lot’s wife, is redolent of the apocalyptic themes discussed in this chapter. Contrary to a great deal of Fascist art which looked back to earlier eras and sought to triumphantly fuse ancient times with more modern ones, Scipione focused on that which is missing or in a process of decline. This explains his interest in the 15th- and 16th-century mannerist and baroque artists considered to be culpably decadent by many of his contemporaries. As we have seen in works like The Roman Courtesan and The Dean Cardinal, rather than showing the rebirth of a society in which the legacy of the hallowed Italian past is flawlessly merged with a modern revolutionary present, Scipione shows a historical loss, which inevitably provokes thought on what has changed and what still needs to change. The evidence of his pictures is that, like many of his compatriots, he saw problems in the contemporary historical moment that both the Church and the state had failed to address and were in no position to overcome. The artist also believed that solutions to the world’s difficulties were not to be found either in the ideal of forward movement, a historical restoration of a past golden age, nor even in a synthesis of the two in an ideal palingenetic union. Rather, works like Piazza Navona and The Men Who Turn Around admonish the viewer that human history, up to and including the era of Mussolini, as it progressed mindlessly through a desolate landscape, may have as its ultimate destiny the worst kind of catastrophe, one which cannot readily, if ever, be redeemed. I would like to conclude by making a slightly different argument about the work with which this book opened, and this chapter has ended, through a comparison to the work of a contemporary Italian poet: not Ungaretti, but rather Eugenio ­Montale.190 One of the latter’s poems “Forse un mattino andando”—first published in 1925 in a collection titled Cuttlefish Bones and reissued several years later with a cover designed by Scipione—describes an experience in which the poet, during a morning walk, turns to look behind him. What he sees fills him with horror: it is a vision of nothingness, the void. Although the familiar landscape of “Hills houses trees” quickly repopulates his point of view, the poet—who cannot forget what he has seen—tells no-one about it and joins the ranks of the “men who don’t look back.”191 On the presupposition that Scipione’s work may be in part inspired by this poem, I argue that The Men Who Turn Around describes an experience of emptiness and the void that is as phenomenological as it is religious. This image, like the sentiment

The Men Who Turn Around  105 referred to in the poem, is a reference to the condition whereby— as Italo Calvino argues in his discussion of Montale—no matter how often or how quickly we turn around we are never able to see what is directly behind us, this being a ineluctable fact of both our physiognomy and our mortality.192 The specter on the left with an unnaturally twisted neck who turns to face us in Scipione’s picture seems to have somehow contravened that cardinal, existential given, but at the cost of becoming a mask—a hollow, empty face. When Scipione wrote that the distortions and the lack of harmony in El Greco’s painting represent a consciousness of what the figures in the paintings “are about to lose,” the intensely religious subject matter of the Cretan painter’s works may lead us to assume that he is speaking exclusively about mortality or a separation from divine grace.193 What Scipione also saw in these works—and addressed in his own—is a disaster that constitutes a fundamental component of our identity. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty has argued, the embodied nature of perception prevents individuals from seeing totality as this would require them to simultaneously see their own seeing itself. Furthermore, as self-reflection involves a kind of “re-turn, re-conquest, or re-covery, it cannot flatter itself that it would simply coincide with a constitutive principle already at work in the spectacle of the world.”194 Not only are human beings restricted to perceiving what Montale describes as the “usual illusion”—thus falling short of total knowledge— self-consciousness, which always arrives on the scene too late, is fatally divided from itself. In this sense, the artist’s apocalyptic images should not only be viewed within a religious context, nor even as simply a critique of contemporary Italian society, but also within a tradition of thought about the nature of the human condition. The nothingness of a hellish world without identity, Scipione warns, follows us everywhere and is at our back, threatening to emerge at every moment of our waking and dreaming life.

Notes 1 See the letters collected in Scipione: Carte segrete (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1982), 99–112; Cesare G. Marchesini, “Il pittore Scipone,” Corriere Padano, 23 November, 1933; Gaia Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” Bollettino dell’arte 81, no. 96–97 (1996), 135–170. Several publications cited in this chapter, particularly newspaper reviews of the artist’s work, were sourced directly from the press clippings collections of a number of archives in Rome, including the Archivio dell Scuola Romana, the Archivio bio-iconografico at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, The Falqui Archive at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, and the Archivio Biblioteca della Quadriennale. In such cases full publication details, such as authors, titles, and page numbers were often not available. 2 See for example Ardengo Soffici, “Opinioni sull’arte fascista,” Critica fascista 4, no. 20 (1926), 384–385, and Giuseppe Bottai, “Risultanze dell’inchiesta sull’arte fascista,” Critica fascista 5, no. 4 (1927), 61. 3 Roberto Longhi, “La mostra romana degli artisti sindacati,” L’Italia letteraria, 7 April 1929, 4; “Clima e opere degli irrealisti,” L’Italia letteraria, 14 April 1929, 4. 4 Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, “Premessa,” in Scuola romana: Artisti tra le due guerre, eds. Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco and Valerio Rivosecchi, exh. cat. Palazzo reale, Milan (Milan: Mazzotta, 1988), 12–13. 5 Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, “I pittori della ‘terza saletta’,” in Fagiolo dell’Arco and ­R ivosecchi, Scuola romana: Artisti tra le due guerre, 39–40. 6 Fagiolo dell’Arco, “I pittori della ‘terza saletta’,” 41. 7 Carlo Carrà, Pittura metafisica (Florence: Vallecchi, 1919), 235. Quoted in Maria G ­ razia Messina, “Valori plastici, il confronto con la Francia e la questione dell’arcaismo nel primo dopoguerra,” in Il futuro alle spalle, exh. cat., Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome: De Luca, 1998), 27.

106  The Men Who Turn Around 8 For more on the novecento movement, see Rossana Bossaglia, Il Novecento Italiano (1979) (Milan: Charta, 1995). 9 Benito Mussolini, “Il Novecento,” Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini, 5 (Milan: Hoepli, 1934), 279–282. Reprinted in Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia: Manifesti, polemiche, documenti. Dal Novecento ai dibattiti sulla figura e sul monumentale 1925–1945, vol. 3, bk. 1, ed. Paola Barocchi (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1990), 11. 10 Bottai, “Risultanze dell’inchiesta sull’arte fascista,” 61. 11 Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February 1929, in Scipione: Carte segrete ­(Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1982), 44. 12 Scipione to Domenico Maria Lazzaro, 13 August 1927 and 11 February 1928, in L ­ azzaro: Opere 1927–1964, exh. cat., ex Convento del Carmine, Marsala (Palermo: Sellerio, 2000), 38, 40. 13 Corrado Pavolini, “Artisti giovani al ‘Convegno di Roma’,” Il Tevere, 23 January 1929. Quoted in Lorenzo Giusti, Corrado Pavolini: Critico d’arte (Naples: Ligouri editore, 2008), 114. 14 Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February 1929, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 44. 15 Pavolini, “Artisti giovani al ‘Convegno di Roma’.” 16 Enrico Crispolti, “Topografia, itinerari e tempi della ‘Scuola romana’,” in Scipione e la Scuola romana, ed. Anna Caterina Toni (Rome: Multigrafica editore, 1989), 104–105. 17 Longhi, “Clima e opere degli irrealisti,” 4. 18 See Antonietta Raphaël: sculture –dipinti–disegni, exh. cat., Galleria Ceribelli, Bergamo (Bergamo: Lubrina, 2003); Emily Braun, “Antonietta Raphael: Woman, Foreigner, Jew, Wife, Mother, Muse, and Anti-Fascist,” in Mothers of Invention: Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture, ed. Robin Pickering-Iazzi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 166–174. 19 The three quotations are drawn from newspaper reviews published in June 1929 by ­A lberto Francini, Corrado Pavolini, and Gerardo Dottori, respectively. Quoted in ­Maurizio ­Fagiolo dell’Arco and Valerio Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere (Turin: ­Umberto­ Allemandi & C., 1988), 87–88. 20 See the review by Cipriano Efisio Oppo, “La mostra al ‘Convegno’: Giovani pittori ­romani,” La Tribuna, 27 January 1929, quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere, 79. 21 Longhi, “Clima e opere degli irrealisti,” 4. 22 See Fabio Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013), 257. 23 Emily Braun, “Sul Novecento e sulla Scuola Romana,” in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scuola romana: Artisti tra le due guerre, 209–214. 24 Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre, 256–257. 25 Emily Braun, “Expressionism as Fascist Aesthetic,” Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 2 (April 1996), 283. 26 Braun, “Expressionism as Fascist Aesthetic,” 286. 27 See for example Roberto Farinacci, “Ma che basta!” Il Regime Fascista, 1 June 1935, quoted in Emily Braun, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 177. 28 Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February–March 1931, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 60. 29 See Alessandra Borgogelli, ‘Scipione e la riscoperta del seicento,’ Scipione e la Scuola romana, 142. For the differences between Sironi’s expressionism and that of the contemporary “Corrente” movement, see Adrian R. Duran, Painting, Politics and the New Front of Cold War Italy (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014), 16–20. 30 Margherita Sarfatti, “Il Sei e Settecento a Firenze,” Il Primato Artistico Italiano 7, no. 7 (July 1922), 2, 6–7. Quoted in Bethke, “From Futurism to Neoclassicism,” 230, 234. 31 Curzio Malaparte, “Commemorazione del Seicento,” Valori plastici 3, no. 4 (1921), 84. 32 Lamberto Vitali, “Scipione Bonichi,” Domus 8, no. 90 (June 1935), 62. 33 Emilio Zanzi, “Pitture e disegni di Scipione Bonichi,” La gazzetta del’popolo, 16 ­February 1935; Emilio Cecchi, “La seconda Quadriennale d’arte nazionale,” Circoli 5, no. 1 (March 1935), 274. 34 Vitali, “Scipione Bonichi,” 62.

The Men Who Turn Around  107 35 Mario Puccini, Critica fascista 4, no. 23 (1926), 435– 436. Reprinted in Jeffrey Schnapp, ed., A Primer of Italian Fascism (Lincoln: University of Nebraksa Press, 2000), 229. 36 Marla Susan Stone, The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 43–54. 37 See Corrado Pavolini, ‘La prima Mostra nazionale dell’Animale nell’Arte,’ Rassegna dell’istruzione artistica 1, no. 3 (May–June 1930), 174. 38 See Leonardo Sinisgalli, “Ricordo di Scipione,” L’Italia letteraria, 16 February 1935, 5; and Leonardo Sinisgalli, “Scipione,” Il Frontespizio 8, no. 5 (May 1936), 6. 39 Giorgio de Chirico, L’Italia letteraria, 28 December 1930. Quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere, 109. 40 See Giuseppe Appella, Scipione: 306 disegni (Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1984), XIV, and XXXIV, n. 34. 41 See Grace Tiffany, Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Jonson, and Comic Androgyny (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 30–31. 42 Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1965), 71. 43 Amy Lyford, Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 24. 44 See in this regard Ferdinando Amigoni, “Putting Ghosts to Good Use: Savinio, ­Bontempelli, Landolfi,” Italica 77, no. 1 (2000): 73. 45 Keala Jewell, The Art of Enigma: The de Chirico Brothers and the Politics of Modernism (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2004) 115, 21. 46 Scipio Sighele, Eva moderna (Milan: Treves, 1910), 45. Quoted in Jewell, The Art of Enigma, 24, and 205, n. 58. 47 Whitney Davis, Queer Beauty: Sexuality and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Freud and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 6–7. 48 Silvia Loreti, “Modern Narcissus: The Lingering Reflections of Ancient Myth in Modern Art,” Papers of Surrealism, no. 9 (2011), 18. 49 Sinisgalli, “Ricordo di Scipione,” 5. 50 Jean Cocteau, “Le Numéro Barbette,” La Nouvelle Revue Française 13, no. 154 (1926), 257–263. On Scipione and La Nouvelle Revue Francaise see Scipione: Lettere a Falqui 1930–1933, ed. Giuseppe Appella (Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1988), 51, n. 21. See also Raymond Spiteri, “The Blood of a Poet: Cocteau, Surrealism and the Politics of the Vulgar,” in Regarding the Popular: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture, ed. Sascha Bru et al. (Berlin: De Gruyer, 2012), 227–239. 51 See Lydia Crowson, “Cocteau and ‘Le Numéro Barbette,’” Modern Drama 19, no. 1 (1976): 83. 52 See Amy Lyford, “‘Le numéro Barbette’, Photography and the Politics of Embodiment in Interwar Paris,” in The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 225. 53 See the discussion of this image in Lara Pucci, “Remapping the Rural: The Ideological Geographies of Strapaese,” in Film, Art, New Media: Museum Without Walls?: Museum Without Walls?, ed. Angela Dalle Vacche (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2012), 180. 54 Scipione, letter to Enrico Falqui, 24 November 1931, in Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui, 39. 55 See Giuseppe Lupo, Poesia come pittura: De Libero e la cultura romana 1930–1940 (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002), 15, n. 20. 56 See Sinisgalli, “Scipione,” Aretusa 2, no. 13 (1945), 8. 57 See Alfredo Mezio, “Il pittore dagli occhi cerulei,” Quadrivio, 30 June 1935. 58 See Sinisgalli, “Ricordo di Scipione,” 5. 59 See Briony Fer “Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis,” in Briony Fer, David Batchelor, and Paul Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 183. 60 André Breton, Nadja (London: Penguin, 1999), 23, 24, 32 and 86. 61 Benito Mussolini, “Mandate to the office of the governatore of Rome,” 31 December 1925, in Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 5, Dal 1925 al 1926 (Milan: Hoepli,

108  The Men Who Turn Around 1934), 243–45. Quoted in Terry Kirk, “Framing St. Peter’s: Urban Planning in Fascist Rome,” Art Bulletin 88, no. 4 (2006), 756–776; 763. 62 See David Atkinson, “Totalitarianism and the Street in Fascist Rome,” in Images of the Street: Planning, Identity and Control in Public Spaces, ed. Nicholas Fyfe (London: ­Routledge, 1998), 13–30; see esp. 18–20. 63 See Paul Baxa, Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 56–57. See also Aristotle Kallis, “‘In miglior tempo…’: What Fascism did not Build in Rome,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 16, no. 1 (2011), 64–71. 64 Kallis, “‘In miglior tempo…’,” 63. 65 Baxa, Roads and Ruins, 64. 66 See Scipione 1904–1933 (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2007), catalogue no. 14, 72. 67 Cipriano Efisio Oppo, “Sala XVI: Mostra Postuma di Gino Bonichi (Scipione),” Seconda Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale (Rome: Tumminelli & C. Editori Stampatori, 1935), 75. 68 See Mario Barosso, Demolitions on the West Side of the Trajan’s Forum Square, 1929, pencil and watercolour, 39 × 28 cm, Rome, Museo di Roma. Reproduced in Paolo Liverani “La scoperta dei Fori Imperiali,” Il Sole 24 ORE, 19 July 2008, http://foto. ilsole24ore.com/SoleOnLine4/Tempo%20libero%20e%20Cultura/2008/fori-imperiali/ fori-­imperiali.php?id=10. 69 A drawing reproduced in Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui, 180, shows workmen demolishing a building close to where the figure in The Roman Courtesan (1930) is shown to be standing, as does a photograph from October 1930 published in Italo Insolera and Alessandra Maria Sette, Roma tra le due guerre: Cronache da una città che cambia (Rome: Palombi Editore, 2003), 79. 70 Charles Baudelaire, “Women and Prostitutes,” in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essay by Charles Baudelaire, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1964), 34–40. 71 Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), xvii. 72 For example Andre Breton, Man Ray, Max Morise, Yves Tanguy, Exquisite Corpse (1926). I owe a debt of thanks to Romy Golan for this comparison. 73 See Alberto Neppi, Il Lavoro Fascista, 15 November 1930. Quoted in Scipione ­1904–1933, exh. cat., Palazzo Ricci, Macerata (Rome: De Luca Editore, 1985), 69; Mario Tinti, Giornale di Genova, 16 April 1935. 74 Antonio Muñoz, Il Museo di Roma (Rome: Governatorato di Roma, 1930), 8, quoted in Joshua Arthurs, “Roma Sparita: Local Identity and Fascist Modernity at the Museo di Roma,” Città e Storia 3, no. 1–2 (2008), 198. 75 Terry Kirk, “Framing St. Peter’s: Urban Planning in Fascist Rome,” Art Bulletin 88, no. 4 (2006), 756–776; Kallis, “‘In miglior tempo…’”, 69. 76 Valerio Rivosecchi and Antonello Trombadori, Roma appena ieri nei dipinti degli artisti italiani del Novecento (Rome: Newton Compton, 2006), 72. 77 See Brunella Antomarini and Susan Stewart, “Introduzione,” in Scipione: Poesie e prose, eds. Brunella Antomarini and Susan Stewart (Milan: Charta, 2001), 10. 78 See Gaia Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” Bollettino dell’arte 81, nos. 96–97 (1996), 163–4. 79 Orazio Amato, “Gli artisti romani alla Biennale di Venezia,” Capitolium 6, no. 12 ­(December 1930). Quoted in Scipione: Vita e Opere, 108. 80 Pietro Maria Bardi, “Mostre romane: L’arte sacra, Scipione e Mafai,” L’Ambrosiano 8, no. 269 (1930), 3. 81 Giorgio de Chirico, “La mania del Seicento,” Valori plastici 3, no. 3 (1921), 60–62. Quoted in Borgogelli, “Scipione e la riscoperta del seicento,” 137. 82 Adolfo Wildt et al., “Relazione della Giuria per l’assegnazione del Premio della Gioventù,” unpublished manuscript, April 1930. Quoted in Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 164. 83 Ruggero Orlando, Roma fascista, 28 April 1929. Quoted in Scipione 1904–1933, 2007, 99. 84 Cipriano Efisio Oppo, La Tribuna (Rome), 13 November 1930; Unknown author, “Correzioni ed aggiunte al Catalogo della Prima Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale,” Travaso delle idee, 18 January 1931.

The Men Who Turn Around  109 85 Lionello Venturi, “Venezia XVII,” Belvedere, nos. 5–6 (May–June) 1930. Quoted in Scipione 1904–1933, 159; Unknown author, “Il vernissage della XVII Esposizione Biennale di Venezia,” La Tribuna 3 May 1930, 3. 86 Neppi, “Scipione e Mafai alla Galleria di Roma,” Il Lavoro Fascista, 15 November 1930. Quoted in Scipione 1904–1933, 1985, 169. 87 Candido e Eliseo, [title unknown] Quadrivio 14 April 1935. 88 Monsignor Bornewasser, [title unknown], L’Osservatore Romano, 6 November 1929, 104–105. Quoted in L’almanacco degli artisti, ed. Carlo D’Aloiso da Vasto (Rome: Fratelli Palombari Editori, 1930), 104–105. See also Fernando Tempesti, Arte dell’Italia fascista (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore, 1976) 140. 89 Pio XI, “‘Abbiamo poco’ Allocuzione di Sua Santità Pio XI in occasione dell’inaugurazione della nuova Pinacoteca Vaticana,” 27 October 1932. https://w2.vatican.va/content/ pius-xi/it/speeches/documents/hf_p-xi_spe_19321027_abbiamo-poco.html; Scipione, letter to Enrico Falqui, November 9, 1932, in Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui, 79. 90 The undated text was first published, posthumously, as “Scipione e Il Greco,” Primato 2, no. 23 (December 1941), 19. 91 See Mario Mafai, “Autobiografia,” in Mafai (Rome: Ente Premi Roma- Palazzo ­Barberini, 1969), 18; Gli antichi pittori spagnoli della Collezione Contini Bonacossi, exh. cat., ­Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, eds. Roberto Longhi and Augusto L. Mayer (Milan: Casa editrice d’arte Bestetti e Tumminelli, 1930). 92 R. Pacini, “La pittura contemporanea alla seconda Quadriennale,” La Stirpe, May 1935. 93 Maurice Barrès, Greco ou Le secret de Tolède, 18th edition (Paris: Emile-Paul, Editeurs, 1912), 137–138, 141, 162. See also Eric Storm, The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalisation of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860–1914) (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2016), 95–105. 94 Mario Mafai, Diario 1926–1965 (Rome: Edizione della Cometa, 1984), 31, 46. 95 Scipione, “Scipione e Il Greco,” 19. 96 Scipione, “Scipione e Il Greco,” 19. 97 See Giovanna Bonasegale, “Verso un’arte ‘nuova e moderna’: le generazioni del dubbio,” in Roma 900: De Chirico, Guttuso, Capogrossi, Balla, Casorati, Sironi, Carrà, Mafai, Scipione e gli altri, exh. cat., Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Parma (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015), 137. 98 See letter from Scipione to Renato Mazzacurati, February–March 1931, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 60. 99 Fulton Sheen, “Il nuovo paganesimo,” L’Osservatore romano, 14–15 April 1930. 100 Zeev Sternhell, “The Crisis of Fin De Siècle Thought,” in International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus, ed. Roger Griffin (London: Arnold, 1998), 170–171. 101 Sternhell, “The Crisis of Fin De Siècle Thought,” 170–171. 102 See I segni nascosti: Taccuini e album di Melli, Scipione-Mafai-Raphael, Fazzini, ­1905–1963, exh. cat. (Udine: Casa Cavazzini, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 2014), 31. 103 Philip V. Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso: fascismo e mass-media (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1975), 31–38. 104 Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February 1929, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 44; Scipione, et al., to Alfonso Silipo, undated postcard (c. Easter 1930), and Scipione to Enrico Falqui, 3 April 1933, both published in Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui, 161 and 106, respectively. See also the discussion in Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre, 257. 105 See Francesco Malgeri, “Chiesa cattolica e regime fascista,” Italia contemporanea, no. 194 (March 1994), 53–63. 106 See Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, trans. Keith Botsford (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Baxa, Roads and Ruins, 123 ff. 107 See Vincenzo Vannutelli, La prigionia del P. Vincenzo Vannutelli: episodio della invasione garibaldina del 1867. Appunti storici estratti dal suo giornale (Rome: Coi tipi del Salviucci, 1869). 108 Vannutelli’s remarks, made at a wedding attended by Mussolini, were cited in Avanti, 23 February 1923. Quoted in John N. Molony, The Emergence of Political Catholicism in Italy (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 152.

110  The Men Who Turn Around 109 Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis. Denis J. O’Connell, ­American Agent in Rome (1885–1903) (Rome: Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1974), 228. 110 [author and title unknown] Osservatore Romano, 12 February 1929, 1. Quoted in ­Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 50. 111 Giuseppe Bottai, reported in Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 62; and the discussion of Ugo Ojetti in Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 306–309. 112 Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 44. 113 Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 72. 114 Arnaldo Momigliano, “How Roman Emperors Became Gods,” American Scholar, no. 55 (Spring 1986), 181. Quoted in Aby M. Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, trans. Michael P. Steinberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 109. 115 Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 73. 116 Anonymous note, November 1930 (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione generale di Pubblica, sicurezza, Atti speciali, busta 4), quoted in Emilio G ­ entile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism,” Journal of Modern ­Italian Studies 11, no. 2 (2006), 154. 117 Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 74. 118 Giulio Carlo Argan, untitled essay, in Mafai: Opere recente, exh. cat. (Rome: L’Attico, 1964), n.p. 1 19 Goffredo Bellonci, “In morte di Scipione,” L’Italia letteraria, 19 November 1933, 5. 1935. 1 20 Francesco Callari, “L’arte di Gino Bonichi (Scipione),” Corriere Padano, 15 August 1935. 1 21 Cipriano Efisio Oppo, “Mafai e Scipione alla Galleria di Roma,” La Tribuna, 13 ­November 1930. 1 22 Candido e Eliseo, Quadrivio, 14 April 1935. 1 23 Giuseppe Marchiori, “Alla II Quadriennale: La mostra personale di Scipione,” Corriere padano, 15 February 1935. 1 24 Ercole Maselli, [title unknown], L’Italia letteraria, 30 March 1935. 1 25 Candido e Eliseo, Quadrivio, 14 April 1935. See also Giovanna Bonesegale, “Verso un’arte ‘nuova e moderna’: le generazioni del dubbio,” in Roma 900: De Chirico, Guttuso, Capogrossi, Balla, Casorati, Sironi, Carrà, Mafai, Scipione e gli altri nelle Collezioni della Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, exh. cat., Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Parma (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015), 137–138. 1 26 Amato, “Gli artisti romani alla Biennale di Venezia.” Quoted in Scipione: Vita e opere, 1988, 108. 1 27 Neppi, “La seconda Quadriennale d’arte,” Rassegna italiana 39, no. 202 (March 1935), 208–209. 128 Sinisgalli, “Ricordo di Scipione,” 5. 129 Candido e Eliseo, Quadrivio, 14 April 1935. 130 Scipione, “Scipione e Il Greco,” 19. 131 Sinisgalli, “Ricordo di Scipione,” 5. 132 Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, 54, 215. 133 Griffin, “I am no longer human. I am a Titan. A god!” 22. 134 See Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism, and, more recently, Fernando Esposito, Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 135 Erik Tonning, Modernism and Christianity (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 4. 136 Erik Tonning, “Introduction,” in Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse, eds. Erik Tonning, Matthew Feldman, and David Addyman, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 3. 137 John Pollard, Catholicism in Modern Italy: Religion, Society and Politics Since 1861 (London: Routledge, 2008), 94. 1 38 Pollard, Catholicism in Modern Italy, 81–82. 1 39 Roger Griffin, “An Unholy Alliance? The Convergence between Revealed Religion and Sacralized Politics in Inter-war Europe,” in Catholicism and Fascism in Europe ­1918–1945, eds. Jan Nelis, Anne Morelli, and Danny Praet (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2015), 50. 1 40 Baxa, Roads and Ruins, 133.

The Men Who Turn Around  111 141 Baxa, Roads and Ruins, 131. 142 Pius XI, “Divini illius magistri,” 31 December 1929, paragraph 99. Accessed 20 ­February 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/it/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_ divini-illius-magistri.html. 143 Pius XI, “Quas primas,” 11 December 1925, paragraph 11. Accessed 20 February 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/it/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_ quas-primas.html. 144 Joseph S. Flipper, Between Apocalypse and Eschaton: History and Eternity in Henri de Lubac (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2015), 33–35. 145 Tonning, “Introduction,” 11. 146 In making this argument I have benefited from reading Anna Parlane “Michael ­Stevenson” (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2018), 192. Accessed 19 February 2019. https:// minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/216038. 147 Pius XI, “Mens nostra,” 20 December 1929. Accessed 20 February 2019. http://w2.vatican. va/content/pius-xi/it/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19291220_mens-nostra.html. 148 Pius XI, “Mens nostra,” paragraph 4. 149 Scipione, to Mario Mafai, 21 December 1932, published in Scipione: Carte Segrete, 95. 150 See Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February 1929, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 44; Scipione to Mario Mafai, August 1933, quoted in Vitali, “Scipione Bonichi,” 23. See also Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 167. 151 Mario Mafai, “La pittura del 1929,” Il Contemporaneo 1, May 1954. Republished in Mafai (Rome: Ente Premi Roma- Palazzo Barberini, 1969), 42. 152 Tempesti, Arte dell’Italia fascista, 150. 153 Scipione to Enrico Falqui, 28 December 1931, in Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui, 41. 154 Scipione to Enrico Falqui, 28 December 1931, in Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui, 41. 155 Cipriano Efisio Oppo, “Il pittore Scipione,” in Forme e colori nel mondo (Lanciano: ­Carabba Editore, 1938), 323. 156 See Marla Stone, “Staging Fascism: The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution,” Journal of Contemporary History, no. 28 (1993), 215–243. 157 Braun, “Expressionism as Fascist Aesthetic,” 286. 158 Mezio, Quadrivio, 30 June 1935. 159 Mezio, Quadrivio. 160 For Ungaretti’s relationship to fascism, see Carlo Ossola, Giuseppe Ungaretti (Milano: Mursia, 1975), 441–445. 161 Andrew Frisardi, Giuseppe Ungaretti: Selected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), xvii–xviii. 162 Frisardi, “Introduction,” xx. 163 Joseph Cary, Three Modern Italian Poets: Saba, Ungaretti, Montale (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 166. 164 Giuseppe Ungaretti, “Sentimento del tempo,” in Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo: Tutte le poesie, ed. Leone Piccioni, 7th edition (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974), 532–533. Translated as “A Sense of Time,” in Frisardi, Giuseppe Ungaretti: Selected Poems, 271. 165 Margaret Brose, “Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Sentimento del Tempo: Baroque Rome and the Experience of Time,” Pacific Coast Philology 21, nos. 1/2 (1986), 70–71. 166 Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 149. 167 Ungaretti, “Intervista con F. Camon,” in Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo: Saggi e interventi, eds. Mario Diacono and Luciano Rebay (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974), 841. Quoted in Cary, Three Modern Italian Poets, 204. 168 See F. Simongini, “Scipione pittore di Roma” (inteview with Antonietta Raphael), Vita, 20 November 1971, 20. Quoted in Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 148. See also Leone Piccioni, “Prefazione,” in Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo: Tutte le poesie, xxxiii. Quoted in Bindi, “Scipione: Poeta e pittore,” 147. 169 Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 152–153. 170 Scipione to Mario Mafai, August 1933. Quoted in Vitali, “Scipione Bonichi,” 23. See also Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 167. 171 Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 152–153.

112  The Men Who Turn Around 172 Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 163. Quoted in Tonning, “Introduction,” 9. 173 Grant Parker, “Narrating Monumentality: The Piazza Navona Obelisk,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16, no. 2 (2003), 210. 174 Parker “Narrating Monumentality,” 208. 175 See Amato, “Gli artisti romani alla Biennale di Venezia.” 176 Paolo Baldacci, “Scipione spartiacque tra due mondi”, in Scipione, 1904–1933, ed. Netta Vespignani, Claudia Terenzi, exh. cat., Musei di Villa Torlonia-Casino dei Principi, Rome, 7 September–6 January 2007 (Rome: Palombi & Partner, 2007), 20. 177 See Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, “Piazza Navona,” in Giuseppe Gioachino Belli: Sonetti, ed. Pietro Gibellini (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1984), 222. 178 P. B., “La seconda Quadriennale romana,” Il Frontespizio (July 1935), 12. 179 Luigi Bartolini, “Quinta lettera dalla Quadriennale,” Corriere Adratico, 17 February 1931. 180 Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 163. Quoted in Tonning, “Introduction,” 9. 181 Bindi, “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 151. 182 Sinisgalli, “Scipione,” 9. 183 Scipione to Mario Mafai, August 1933, quoted in Vitali, “Scipione Bonichi,” 23. 1 84 Giorgio Agamben, The Church and the Kingdom (London: Seagull Books, 2012), 8, 12. 1 85 Agamben, The Church and the Kingdom, 27. 1 86 Agamben, The Church and the Kingdom, 40–41. 1 87 Rivosecchi and Trombadori, Roma appena ieri nei dipinti degli artisti italiani del Novecento, 70. 1 88 Oppo, “Mafai e Scipione alla Galleria di Roma.” 1 89 Pietro Feroldi, “Scipione: Mostra postuma a Brera,” Il popolo di Brescia, 27 March 1941. 190 Antonino Santangelo, “Scipione 1904–1933,” in Scipione: cinque tricomie raccolte dal centro di azione per le arti in occaisone della mostra postuma nelle sale della Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941), quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere, 59. 191 See Eugenio Montale, Cuttlefish Bones (1920–1927), ed. and trans. William Arrowsmith (New York: William Arrowsmith, 1992), 66–67. 192 Italo Calvino, “Eugenio Montale, Forse un mattino andando,” in Letture montaliane in occasione dell’80° compleanno del poeta (Genoa: Bozzi, 1977), 42. Republished and translated in Calvino, Why Read the Classics? (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), 214. 1 93 Scipione, “Scipione e Il Greco,” 19. 1 94 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes ­(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 45.

Plate 1  Scipione, The Men Who Turn Around, 1930. Oil on panel, 99.8 × 79.5 cm (39.3 × 31.3 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Plate 2  Fortunato Depero, Serrada, 1920.  Pieced wool, 330 × 245 cm (129.9 × 96.5 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

Plate 3  Fortunato Depero, War = Festival, 1925.  Pieced wool, 330 × 243 cm (129.9 × 95.7 inches), Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency 2019.

Plate 4  Fortunato Depero, The Festival of the Chair, 1927. Pieced wool, 330 × 257 cm (129.9 × 101.2 inches), The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. © Fortunato Depero/Copyright Agency.

Plate 5  S cipione, The Roman Courtesan, 1930. Oil on canvas, 49.6 × 40.9 cm (19.5 × 16.1 inches), Milan, private collection. © 2018. Photo Scala, Florence.

Plate 6  S cipione, The Dean Cardinal, 1930. Oil on panel, 133.7 × 117.3 cm (52.6  ×  46.2 inches), Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, Rome.

Plate 7  M ario Radice, Composition A.3, 1934. Oil on canvas, 61 × 68 cm (24 × 26.8 inches), Gian Enzo Sperone collection. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern and ­C ontemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto/Barbara Radice.

Plate 8  Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, Colonial Exhibition Celebrating the Imperial Victory, 1937 (Reconstruction by Studio Beretta, ­Pinacoteca Civica, Como, 2005). Photograph © Sergio Beretta. Courtesy of B ­ arbara Radice.

4 Mario Radice Abstraction and Architecture, 1934–2014

Introduction “Fascism, Mussolini said, is a revolution. Why then should Fascist art be conservative, traditional, and anti-revolutionary?”1 This was how the Italian painter Osvaldo Licini defended his abstract compositions in 1937 against what he saw as a retrograde trend in the contemporary art of his country. Licini was one of a significant number of geometric abstract artists—including the Como-based painter Mario Radice whose work is the subject of this chapter—actively working and exhibiting in the 1930s and 1940s in Italy (Figure 4.1 and Plate 7). In his book Art of the 1930s Edward ­Lucie-Smith once noted of this group of artists that “no art movement of the period has been more systematically neglected.”2 One of the many reasons for this oversight, especially prevalent in the literature published outside of Italy, is that the compositions produced by the Italian abstract artists during the period of Mussolini’s reign do not fit neatly within existing narratives about the history of 20th-century art, particularly those emanating from anglophone countries in the Northern Hemisphere.3 One of the art historical presuppositions undermined by the works of Italian geometric abstract art that artists such as Licini, Radice, and others produced in the 1930s is that of an “imperial” art gradually overtaking the avant-garde during the Italian dictatorship. Clement Greenberg argued in his 1939 article “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” that For years [Mussolini] bent a benevolent eye on the Futurists and built modernistic railroad stations and government-owned apartment houses… Mussolini seems to have realized lately that it would be more useful to him to please the cultural tastes of the Italian masses than those of their masters. The masses must be provided with objects of admiration and wonder… And so we find Mussolini announcing a “new Imperial style.” Marinetti, Chirico, et al., are sent into the outer darkness.4 In one sense, Greenberg was correct: in the later 1930s, there were increasing pressures on artists and architects in Italy to conform to the precepts of a neoclassical art, grounded in ancient Italian traditions, that would celebrate the imperial ambitions of Italy and reinforce the doctrine that Mussolini’s government was a rebirth of the Roman Empire. This was the period of Fascism’s great imperial ambitions, most successfully if only briefly realized in its invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. In another sense, however, Greenberg was mistaken: despite their travails at the hands of a hostile press and the more conservative elements of the Fascist cultural hierarchy, Marinetti and de Chirico were never sent into the “outer darkness.” Rather, both men exhibited

114  Abstraction and Architecture

Figure 4.1  M ario Radice, Composition A.3, 1934. Oil on canvas, 61 × 68 cm (24 × 26.8 inches), Gian Enzo Sperone collection. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern and ­Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto/Barbara Radice.

and published frequently in Italy throughout the later 1930s. Furthermore, although many artists did move toward a more conservative or traditional approach to art as the decade unfolded, the geometric abstract art movement based in northern Italy didn’t get off the ground until the mid-1930s, more than ten years after Mussolini came to power. Although these works provoked significant controversy in Italy during the later 1930s, particularly among right-wing commentators who vociferously condemned the artists for being “foreign, Bolshevik and Jewish,” they continued to be exhibited in private galleries and official public venues in Italy through the mid-to-late 1930s and into the early 1940s.5 Exhibitions of abstract art were held for example at the Milione Gallery in Milan in 1938; in the Venice Biennales of 1940 and 1942; and as part of the Rome Quadriennale of National Art in 1939 and 1943.6 This emergence and persistence of geometric abstraction during the darkest days of the Fascist era—including the period of Mussolini’s military pact with Adolf Hitler—requires us to rethink our understanding of the history of modern art in Italy during the late 1930s and early 1940s. It also prompts us to revisit a further art historical narrative,

Abstraction and Architecture  115 which the work of these artists unravels: the idea, consistently promoted after World War II, that abstract forms of modernist art were a means of defending humanist ideals of freedom against the powers of political oppression.7 I investigate the history of geometric abstraction in Italy in what follows by focusing primarily on several site-specific works created by Mario Radice in and around Como in the mid- to late 1930s. These include: a series of decorative works for the Casa del Fascio, a building designed by the architect Giuseppe Terragni; the ­C amerlata Fountain co-designed with the architect Cesare Cattaneo in 1936; and The Room of the Gold Medals, a collaboration in 1937 with the abstract painter Manlio Rho. As I demonstrate in the first part of this chapter, by evoking a classical age of order and harmony through the use of machine-like, rectilinear forms and modern materials, Radice’s abstract work was in many respects perfectly suited to embodying Fascism’s ideology of cultural rebirth in the sense that Roger Griffin and others have recently given to that term.8 I argue in addition that it was not only its capacity to yoke together different periods of history, but also its ability to suggest connections between various art forms and the built environment, that meant Radice’s work of this period could resonate with ideological concepts put forward by Mussolini’s government. In a subsequent analysis—one which brushes the above interpretation against the grain by surveying the multiple transformations that the physical form and critical reception of Radice’s work underwent before, during and after World War II—I also show that his work was open to a surprisingly broad range of interpretations. Some of these readings were at cross-purposes with officially endorsed accounts of art promulgated during the Fascist era, and they cut across theorizations of the commonalities between modernism and Fascism, including the palingenetic explanation of Fascist culture put forward by recent historians of this period. The approach adopted in this chapter draws upon D. N. Rodowick’s assertion that “meaning is accounted for not only according to the formal dynamics of the aesthetic text, but also in the intertextual relations between the text and critical practices, theory, pedagogy and other discourses of production or reception,” and upon the idea that one may productively interpret works of art in the light of concepts in circulation either before or after the period in which they were created—even when such concepts appear to be in stark contrast to the apparent zeitgeist to which the works themselves belong.9 Many interpretations of 20th-century Italian culture have tended to assume that culture simply reflects the politics of the time. However, as David Forgacs has argued, this approach neglects two important considerations: the “many intermediaries that stand between cultural production and political interests,” and “the diachronic axis”—the fact that culture involves a relationship to tradition as well to the contemporary political context.10 To this latter comment I would add that any cultural product may be understood not only in relation to what came before it but also what came after. The riven and contradictory understandings of time encountered in many works produced during the Fascist era—including in those by Depero and Scipione examined in the previous two chapters—can be applied to the task of interpreting Radice’s geometric abstraction. In the process, the synthesis of past and present that has been viewed as a fundamental character of modernist art under Fascism is shattered as the legacy of Radice’s abstract art unfolds through its many avatars in the years subsequent to World War II. Before commencing that analysis however, it is important to first understand the context of debates about abstract art and its relation to architecture in the 1930s from which Radice’s work emerged.

116  Abstraction and Architecture

Radice’s Early Work, Il Milione Gallery, and Italian Rationalist Architecture Mario Radice was born in 1898 in Como, the city in which he spent the greater part of his life, except for his military service during World War I, several months spent in Argentina during the late 1920s and a period during the mid-1930s when he lived in Milan. After working principally as a paper manufacturer in his twenties, after 1930 he dedicated himself solely to art and, after World War II, occasionally published criticism in Italian newspapers. Although he began his career as a figurative painter, he shifted to abstraction in the mid-1930s.11 Radice’s early paintings have their origins in several sources. The artist’s first significant works were indebted to the Renaissance tradition of Lombard painting with its soft coloration as is evident in his landscapes of 1931 and 1932.12 Subsequently he responded to the contemporary European “return to order” movement and, in particular, the revival of interest in the work of quattrocento painters such as Piero della Francesca in a 1933 painting Female Nude, which depicts a woman disrobing and reiterates—in its subject, its simplified modeling, and crisp contours—a scene from the Italian master’s Baptism of Christ.13 By this time Radice was aware of the purist painting of Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Jeanneret (later known as Le Corbusier), having been given a copy of their recent book Modern Painting and was increasingly inspired by their emphasis on the values of purity, rationality, and mechanization.14 Of particular note in their theories for the Como-born artist—particularly considering the geometric compositions he began to produce in 1934—were statements such as the following: Through the development of mechanization, geometry is everywhere: our senses have become adapted to the sight of new and predominantly geometrical forms, while our spirit, the creator of this geometry, rejoices to see it everywhere and has become intolerant of the often un-geometrical and inconsistent aspects of painting… What we see today is essentially geometric. From Ingres to Cubism new certainties have been acquired.15 As Guido Ballo points out, the importance of this publication for Radice went well beyond its theoretical claims, as it offered the artist a series of visual examples to follow.16 Richly illustrated with artworks from the ancient past and the Renaissance, it also included several reproductions of works by cubist and purist painters. Although up to this point Radice had relatively limited opportunities to see actual examples of such art, in 1934 he visited—during trips to Milan and to Switzerland—­exhibitions of works of European abstraction. Another important influence on the artist in this period were the writings linking art and mathematics by the Romanian author Matila Ghyka who in 1927 published Aesthetics of Proportions in Nature and in the Arts and, in 1931, The Golden Number, Pythagorean Rites and Rhythms in the Development of Western Civilization, both of which remained in the artist’s book collection until his death. Ghyka argued that the golden ratio, that mathematical proportion defined by Euclid describing a particular geometric division, which occurs frequently in mathematics and nature, was to be encountered frequently in such arts as ancient architecture and modern painting.17 Although many of Ghyka’s theories were not borne out by a deeper analysis, in that

Abstraction and Architecture  117 many of the artifacts he cited were not literally informed by Euclid’s mathematical formula, his writings had an immense influence on architects and artists in this period, many of whom justified their stripped-back, geometric compositions in terms drawn from the idea of the golden ratio, and Radice often discussed such theories with his wife Rosetta, who taught mathematics at the local school.18 These, the ideas that stayed with him over the following decades, would lead him to argue in 1942 that it was important for abstract artists to “paint pictures that are founded on proper structures, and learn the art of composition according to an order that consists of proportion, harmony and rhythm—those essential foundations of the art of painting.”19 Perhaps the most important influence on Radice’s work however, and instrumental to his decision to move toward an abstract mode in the mid-1930s, was the work of contemporary European and Italian artists that he was able to view at the Il Milione gallery in Milan, particularly between 1935 and 1937 when he set up a studio in that city and participated in that gallery’s exhibitions. The Il Milione gallery, run by Gino Ghiringelli from 1931, exhibited the work of abstract artists who drew upon several different sources in creating their work. In 1933 and 1934, the Italian abstractionists exhibiting at the Milione had been inspired by the early work of Giorgio de Chirico and Gino Severini. In Atanasio Soldati’s ­M arine Landscape of 1933 for example, the artist demonstrated an interest in the way the older Italian painters belonging to the metaphysical and futurist movements had reduced the illusion of depth in their works by arranging relatively flat-colored planes across the picture surface (Figure 4.2). A similar shift toward flattening the picture

Figure 4.2  Atanasio Soldati, Marine Landscape, 1933. Oil on canvas, 65 × 50 cm (25.6  ×  19.7 inches), Museo del Novecento, Milano. Courtesy Archivio ­Atanasio Soldati.

118  Abstraction and Architecture surface is evident in works by Radice from this period such as Composition A.3 of 1934 (Figure 4.1 and Plate 7). In this work interlocking rectangular shapes, with very little indications of depth created by variations in tone, are arranged across the picture plane. Although spatial recession is almost eliminated in this work, the references to architectural elements such as balconies and awnings ensures that the work remains rooted, if only vestigially, within the world of figurative representation. At the end of 1934 and into 1935 the Milione artists’ work began to change. As the Italian architectural critic and designer Edoardo Persico observed in a lecture given at the time, their work was becoming closely aligned with modern artistic currents beyond the borders of Italy: “cubism in France and expressionism in Germany, suprematism in Russia, and the abstractionism defended by the friends of the ‘Milione,’ are the evidence of an aspiration to put the problem of art on an absolutely international level.”20 They were particularly drawn to the work of European painters Fernand Léger and Josef Albers, both of whom had exhibited geometric abstract painting at the Milione Gallery in the early 1930s, as well as to the work of the Dutch De Stijl painter Piet ­Mondrian.21 In 1935, there was a shift in the Italian artists’ works away from the irregular planes of metaphysical painting, to a more strictly geometric abstraction inspired by such ­European artists in which the suggestion of depth and movement is minimized. Mauro Reggiani’s Abstract Composition of 1935 exemplifies this tendency, as does Radice’s Composition C. F. O. completed in 1935 (Figures 4.3 and 4.4). In the latter work, the artist almost entirely abandoned the organic profiles that had appeared in his earlier compositions and resorted to a more restricted language of rectangular forms. Importantly, whereas his paintings of 1934 still suggest the existence of

Figure 4.3  Mario Radice, Composition C.F.O., 1934–1935. Tempera on canvas-covered board, 44.5 × 54.8 cm (17.5 × 21.6 inches), private collection. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto Barbara Radice.

Abstraction and Architecture  119

Figure 4.4  Mauro Reggiani, Abstract Composition, 1935. Oil on canvas on board, 33 × 41 cm (13 × 16.1 inches), Cardelli & Fontana Arte Contemporanea C ­ ol­lection. Courtesy Cardelli & Fontana artecontemporanea / Archivio Reggiani.

a foreground plane floating over a coherent background, in the 1935 composition the background is divided into two different colored planes. This division challenges the capacity of the central rectangular forms to set themselves off against a coherent background. This effect is enhanced by a straight, continuous contour dividing both that which purports to be in the background and the forms which occupy the center of the picture and are ostensibly in the foreground, thus uniting both planes. The resulting denial of any illusion of depth demonstrates that Radice, like the other ­M ilione artists, was engaged in a dialogue with the work of several protagonists of the European artistic avant-gardes. In the hands of Léger and Albers, geometric abstraction had the potential to stress that artworks are akin to other, everyday objects. Beyond eliminating the distinction between figure and ground, and the resulting assertion that the canvas was simply a material surface, one agent of this desublimation of the artwork was the suppression of expressiveness; by removing evidence of the author’s traces, the individuality of the hand-made was replaced by a rigorous geometry closer to the products of the ­machine. An example from the work of the Italian abstract artists, Fausto Melotti’s work Sculpture No. 17 (1935) can be seen in this light (Figure 4.5). Melotti’s precise, mechanical handling which rejected inherited ideals of inspired artistic creation, his use of modern materials such as iron, and the sculpture’s absence of a base, was disconcerting for Italian critics. Pietro Maria Bardi, who struggled to appreciate ­Melotti’s works within the normal definition of sculpture, saw them as heralding the death of art and compared them to technical apparatuses such as radio transmitting devices. The work of many of the Milione artists was informed by similar critiques of the individual inspiration and idiosyncratic techniques of earlier art.22

120  Abstraction and Architecture

Figure 4.5  Fausto Melotti, Sculpture No. 17, 1968 (Reconstruction of 1935 original). Stainless steel, 196.8 × 59.3 × 24 cm (77.5 × 23.3 × 9.4 inches), Museo del Novecento, Milano. Copyright Comune di Milano—tutti i diritti di legge riservati. © Fondazione Fausto Melotti.

However, the work of the Italian artists needs to be carefully distinguished from that of more radical contemporary practitioners of geometric abstraction in Europe. As we read in the joint 1934 declaration by Oreste Bogliardi, Virginio Ghiringelli, and Mauro Reggiani, the Italian abstractionists connected their work with that of their classical and Renaissance predecessors: It is the metro which is necessary. That metro which varies only with great cycles; that gave the pyramids and the Parthenon; the ovulo accounts for all classical statuary; which has never been in representation because we know how to admire at Arezzo and at Urbino the greatness of Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello without knowing the legend of S. Croce or the Miracle of Ostia. […] today we believe in a certain Mediterranean climate that is a fact of order and equilibrium, of clear intelligence and serene passion. We are favorably disposed to sympathize with the classical cycle. But it’s evident we are not talking about arches or columns. Antique civilization has always exercised a notably attractive force and influence on every epoch. 23 Other individual artists in the Milione group held similar views. Soldati argued that “Abstract painting… loves analysis, order, the harmonious relations of geometry, clarity, as is true of every work of art from any time, from the Parthenon to Piero

Abstraction and Architecture  121 della Francesca,” and Melotti connected this form with the tradition of classical culture going back to ancient Greece: the architecture of the Greeks, the painting of Piero della Francesca, the music of Bach, and rational architecture are all “exact” arts […] We believe in the order of Greece. When the last Greek chisel stopped ringing, night fell on the Mediterranean… Now we feel the wind freshened on the Mediterranean. And we dare to hope that this is dawn. 24 With such statements, although eschewing a superficial classicism based on the mere external imitation of antique models, the Milione artists demonstrated that they sought a new classicism to be embodied in works of modernist painting and sculpture. Radice was exposed to many of these artists’ views from his regular visits to the Milione Gallery in the mid-1930s, where he encountered original works by, and attended meetings with, modernist Italian artists, writers, and architects, some of whom he would collaborate with on the journal Quadrante. 25 That he shared many of his colleagues’ views in the abstract art movement is evident from his enthusiasm for the writings of Ozenfant and Jeanneret, and those of Ghyka, who had consistently argued for the connections between modern and ancient traditions of art. In this sense the architect Alberto Sartoris was correct to argue in 1940 that Radice was “a creator of plastic forms that has felt, through the most audacious innovative action, the glorious significance of our tradition.”26 In interviews several decades later Radice would state that the declarations of his colleagues remained “valid still today after almost half a century” and argued fervently for the ongoing relevance of the work of painters from the Italian Renaissance: “How can one say that Piero della Francesca and Masaccio have been superseded? Superseded by whom?”27 For Radice, abstraction had strong continuities with traditional indigenous Italian visual cultures. In this sense he and the Milione artists shared something significant with the more traditional approach of their figurative artist colleagues in Italy during the 1930s. For many of the Milione artists, furthermore, the use of geometry and machine-like techniques of handling artistic material did not—unlike the more thoroughgoing critiques of traditional aesthetics encountered in the work of Léger and Albers—aim to assert the everyday, material contingency of the artwork as a physical object, but pointed to an a priori world of ideal form. In 1935, Carlo Belli, the Italian critic who most vigorously defended abstraction during this period, described the art of sculpture in the following terms: In an absolute sense, sculpture is in fact nothing other than a plastic complex in itself which lives for its own aesthetic of volumes… we think of sculpture as a product of plastic ideas that occupy a position in space which is theirs alone. It does not want to represent anything: it finally wants to be itself.28 The abstract artists’ concept of abstraction hailed geometry as the manifestation of a transcendent and unchanging order. In rejecting representation, the artists argued that they sought “a poetic and elevating factor in the liberation from everyday reality into a corresponding transcendence.”29 This idealist conception,

122  Abstraction and Architecture cognate with neoclassical understandings of art, is evident in many examples of the artists’ work. For example, to return to Melotti’s Sculpture No. 17, repeated but varying arrangements of materially similar artistic elements created an isotropic space, which suppresses materiality to highlight the formal interrelationships between parts. 30 Using modern materials such as stainless steel, and precise, quasi-­mechanical ­handling, he hoped to give access to a metaphysical realm of transcendent, eternal truth. This meant that such works could be readily identified, if the occasion demanded, with artistic, social, and ethical values put forward by Mussolini’s regime. They fulfilled a definition of modern art published in the government’s official cultural journal Critica fascista in 1932, to “idealize and amplify the plastic, pictorial, moral and psychological values in a spiritual harmony by means of which reality is superseded”— that is to say, by advocating what amounted to a highly idealizing form of art.31 Similarly, Belli, who in 1935 promoted Fascism as “this establishment of morality, this firm discipline, this classicism of the spirit,” argued that geometric abstraction expressed the discipline, order, and hierarchy corresponding to the “new order” of Mussolini’s political ideology.32 The rhetorical expunging of individualistic, human elements, although irksome to many viewers, could be linked with the new totalitarian civilization promulgated by Mussolini. This nexus between abstract art, tradition, idealism, and Fascist politics is relevant to understanding Mario Radice’s easel paintings of 1934 and 1935 and the most significant works of his career, the abstract, decorative panels he produced for the Fascist headquarters in Como in 1936. To more fully appreciate the significance of these works, which were specifically designed to conform to a preexisting architectural program designed by the rationalist architect Giuseppe Terragni, it is important to understand debates regarding the integration of art and architecture which took place in the late 1920s and early 1930s in Italy. As will become apparent, Belli’s vision of a completely autonomous, self-enclosed art with a largely metaphorical connection to its political context contrasts markedly with discussions about a socially useful art based on physical connections between art and context to which Radice contributed both theoretically and in practice. The question of the ideal relationship between art and architecture was a live issue in Europe during the period between the wars. 33 In a period which saw unfettered artistic individuality subject to the criticism that it was a form of indulgent decadence, architects and critics concerned themselves with the social destiny of art and sought to integrate it with a broader physical context. However, major ideological divides emerged. Some defended an art inspired by the classical traditions of southern ­Europe, involving monumental, archeologically inspired figurative painting; others supported a geometric, abstract art akin to the work of modernist, northern ­European painters including those in the Dutch De Stijl movement. The Italian art critic Mario Tinti, as is evident from his 1931 article “Sculpture and Painting in Modern Architecture,” published in the architectural journal Casabella, belonged to the former school of thought. While arguing forcefully for the incorporation of fine art into the modern architectural environment, this was on the basis that painting and sculpture remain figurative: “modern architecture, on account of its severely structural character, will draw sculpture and painting… towards forms in which the concrete plasticity of the human figure, in itself, will prevail.”34 Concepts

Abstraction and Architecture  123 of “plasticity” and “solidity,” drawn from the vocabulary of novecento criticism, were the components of a style that could reach the broadest possible audience. They were also justified insofar as they were as the qualities that lent themselves to assimilation with the neoclassical style of contemporary Italian architects such as Giovanni Muzio, whose buildings of the late 1920s were praised for their “simple austerity.”35 This quest to make art seem more architectural was, however, largely metaphorical in nature. Rather than promoting a deep interaction between architecture and art at a material level, this preference for a robust and physically solid style—which connected such painting and sculpture to both Italian trecento art and to the forms of ancient buildings—simply ennobled such art through its association with the cultural glories of a national history. At the same time, a number of painters and theorists were seeking compelling connections between art and architecture through a recourse to mural painting. As Laura Malvano has argued, in this period large-scale painting applied directly to architectural walls was actively promoted as an ideal. 36 Mario Sironi proposed in his “Manifesto of Mural Painting” of 1933 that “A moral question arises for every artist. The artist must renounce this egocentricity which from now on can only sterilize his spirit, and become a ‘militant’ artist who serves a moral ideal, subordinating his own individuality to collective work.”37 The display of wall paintings organized by Sironi at the fifth Milan Triennale of Architecture and Decorative Arts of 1933, which featured the work of Gino Severini and Giorgio de Chirico along with a range of other, less well-known Italian figurative artists, had a broad and lasting impact on discussions about the development of public art in Italy (Figure 4.6). One of the

Figure 4.6  V Triennale di Milano 1933, Ceremonial Hall. Photograph. © La Triennale di Milano—Archivio Fotografico.

124  Abstraction and Architecture goals set for artists by the organizers of the Triennale appears in an essay published in the catalogue: the separation of the arts can only lead to the decadence of those arts… in the Latin world it is necessary that the most complete harmony between the arts dominates and flourishes, as between creations dominated by an identical concept, regulated by the same laws.38 The form that this new art would take—similar in many respects to the earlier mural work of Puvis de Chavannes—was a planar depiction of the human figure that would stylistically integrate with the stripped-back solidity of the kind of buildings favored by the regime.39 The divisive debates following Sironi’s exhibition at the 1933 Milan Triennale showed, however, that such murals did not successfully resolve the question of the relationship between architecture and painting. While some commentators in Italy savagely attacked what they described as the deformations in the art of Sironi, others argued that the muralists had failed in their goal of creating an art form integrated with architecture. Roberto Papini noted in Emporium, for example, that the “detestable lack of harmony” in the rooms of the Triennale that had been decorated with the murals led to “disorder, restlessness, confusion, the destruction of the architectural environment as dominating unity,” a fact he connected to the painters following their personal and idiosyncratic inspiration too closely.40 Some of the first artists to capitalize on this perceived difficulty with figurative mural painting in 1933 were the futurists. Gino Severini, an artist formerly belonging to the avant-garde movement, had been responsible for one of the earliest instances of the promotion of mural painting in 20th-century Italy, stressing in a 1927 essay that the mural painter should preserve the “homogeneity of the plane.”41 At the time of the futurists’ alternative mural painting exhibition held in Genoa in November 1934, which included the work of ­Fortunato Depero among others, the futurist artist Fillia attacked “the conceptual and plastic regression of the mural paintings at the last Triennale that dismally clashed with the indubitable architectural victory of the Triennale itself.” Fillia suggested that the futurist idea of plastica murale—or “mural sculpture”—was far more effective than Sironi’s murals in creating correspondence with modern architecture: “Plastica ­murale… is the supersession of mural decoration… in order to arrive at expressive means that are strictly tied to the new aesthetic and constructive spirit, in direct harmony with modern architecture.”42 Such comments echoed those made at the time of the 1933 Triennale by the manager of the Milione Gallery, Gino Ghiringelli: “one is dealing with walls put at the disposition of artists… nothing remains to us but to approach the wall and observe it separately as a pictorial fact in itself.”43 The problem with the murals, as Ghiringelli pointed out, was they remained autonomous of the architectural surface. For Radice, who was familiar with the abstract art already being exhibited at the Milione gallery and closely associated with several rationalist architects both in Milan and Como, such comments were highly significant. They emerged from a milieu, that of the Milione gallery, in which the Italian rationalist architects had a significant impact. An architectural movement founded in 1927 and indebted to the work of Le ­Corbusier and Walter Gropius, Italian rationalism was based on the idea that architectural form should be derived from functional necessity. Architects belonging

Abstraction and Architecture  125 to the movement such as Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, Alberto Sartoris, and Giuseppe ­Terragni had strong connections to Como and had exhibited their designs at the ­M ilione gallery in 1932. They preferred modern materials such as curtain glass walls and reinforced concrete, promoted the ideal of efficiency, tended to express the interior structure of their buildings externally, created buildings with forms which promoted visual transparency, and viewed architectural decoration as a bourgeois and excessive form of waste. In spite of their strong distaste for architectural ornament, architects like Terragni did include decorative art works in a figurative style as part of the mural schemes of their buildings. Radice’s aforementioned work Female Nude was a fresco created for a temporary building constructed on the grounds of the 1933 Milan ­Triennale by a team of architects which included Terragni.44 Over time, however, ­Terragni was brought to the conclusion that abstract art also had the capacity to serve a decorative function within rationalist buildings. The Milione gallery was in favor of this development: In a 1935 issue of the gallery’s bulletin one reads: “If this discipline that has brought architecture to rationalism has a sibling in painting, it is abstraction: which is evident in the theory and evident in the works.”45 Aside from the broader issue of “discipline” one of the reasons for the bringing together of abstract art and rationalist architecture in this period was that the latter, in addition to practical questions of utility and efficiency, was defended in terms that stressed its connection to the classical past. In a series of manifestoes published in 1927 the rationalist architects had argued that “there is no incompatibility between our past and present. We do not want to break with tradition; it is tradition which transformed itself, and assumes new aspects,” and they cited as inspiration “the almost Greek purity of certain factories with walls of glass.”46 The rationalists were therefore far from claiming that their architecture was simply functional in a narrow sense of that word. In this they had drawn, like Mario Radice, inspiration from the writings of Ozenfant and Le ­Corbusier about the “new spirit” uniting the ancient and the modern, which was being born across the arts in Europe.47 Alberto Sartoris, in a 1936 article on T ­ erragni’s architecture titled “Tradition and Functionalism,” stressed the degree to which it does not disown connections with the great centuries that have innovated in the artistic field, but begins precisely from this goal to study in a significantly updated manner the spirit of true tradition which is that which never dies, but is renewed.48 Buildings by rationalist architects such as Terragni would embody the classical spirit but without repeating the visible signs of an external classicism, preferring rather to ­internalize the tradition of classical buildings in a modern, machine-like geometric style. Given the many commonalities between geometric abstraction and rationalist architecture, particularly their shared interest in unifying classical and modern aesthetics, and the fact that Terragni and Radice both hailed from Como, it is perhaps not surprising to discover that the artist was commissioned by Terragni to produce a series of abstract murals for the architect’s 1936 major project the Casa del Fascio, a Fascist government building (Figure 4.7). However, in a report published in the journal Quadrante in 1936 in which Terragni described and defended the Casa del Fascio in Como, the architect said very little about classicism. Rather, he stressed three principles: order, transparency, and poetry, which he connected with the contemporary

126  Abstraction and Architecture

Figure 4.7  Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–1936.  Photograph: ­A nthony White.

political ideals of Fascism.49 As I argue below, it was the degree to which Radice’s abstract art conformed to a set of ideals connected to these principles, as much as its capacity to make explicit reference to the classical past, that signaled to Terragni its suitability as a component of an Italian rationalist architecture which would serve the political ideals of Fascism.

Mario Radice, Panels for the Assembly Hall of the Casa del Fascio in Como, 1936 When, late in 1935, Radice was commissioned to produce a series of decorations for Terragni’s Casa del Fascio, he designed several works for this landmark work of rationalist architecture, including a 6-meter abstract mural incorporating a photomechanical image of Mussolini; a number of frescoed cement panels with abstract designs carrying writings and statements by the Fascist leader; and a marble monolith bearing the incised words “Order, Authority Justice” (Figure 4.8). 50 The below analysis focuses on one of those works, known as Panels for the Assembly Hall of the Casa del Fascio in Como and dating from 1935–1937, which consisted of two reinforced cement panels suspended before one of the interior walls of Terragni’s building by means of metal supports (Figure 4.9). An abstract geometric design was painted onto the surface in a fresco technique and rectilinear perforations in the panels allowed the viewer to see through the works onto the wall behind. The texts borne by the panels read as follows: The Fascist creed is a heroic belief in the strength of the intelligent and functioning human will. Where there is a will there is a way.51

Figure 4.8  M  ario Radice, Monolith and Portrait of Mussolini for the Assembly Hall of the Casa del Fascio di Como di Terragni, 1936. Dimensions and medium unknown, lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice.

Figure 4.9  M  ario Radice, Panels for the Assembly Hall of the Casa del Fascio in Como, 1935–1937. Fresco on reinforced cement, 124 × 230 cm (48 × 90 inches), lost. Photograph. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice.

128  Abstraction and Architecture The Fascist Squadrons in the heroic days of the vigil, the members of the squadrons that risked their lives without fear, the members of the squadrons in their enormous majority came from the popular masses of the fields, from the cities, and from the youth in our schools. We will never allow even a single line of this typically and profoundly popular character of the black shirts to be altered.52 “I don’t give a damn,” the proud motto of the fighting squadrons scrawled by the wounded on their bandages, not only refers to a gesture of philosophical stoicism, but also sums up a doctrine that is not merely political. It describes a fighting spirit that accepts all risks. It signifies a new style of Italian life.53 We are against the easy life.54 The broader political function of the building in which these works were situated, as well as the texts placed upon them, immediately draws our attention to the relationship between these works and their cultural and political context. 55 As ­Luciano Caramel has concluded in a broader discussion of Italian art and architecture in this period, “Terragni and the abstract artists… believed, at least initially, that ­Mussolini would realize their ideal of a new Italy of rationality and order. Even with the abstractionists, therefore, formal order was equated with the political order of Fascism.”56 In many cases this formal order was conceived, in a manner which supports the recent, palingenetic reading of fascism as a national ideology of cultural rebirth, as a unique fusion of the ancient rules of classical architecture with the most modern capacities of rational, technological construction processes. 57 Terragni’s Casa del Fascio, for example, unites traditional and modern building principles—such as mural and frame construction—in a manner which suggests a similarity with Fascism’s broader equation between the “strength of tradition and the vitality of modernity.”58 Terragni’s choice of marble as a material for the wall surfaces in various parts of the building, and Radice’s own decision to produce modern abstract panels using a technique based on ancient frescos, provide further evidence in favor of this reading. Another avenue of interpretation, however, is to explore the connections between the form of Radice’s work and a set of ethical principles put forward in Italy during the Fascist period. Rather than arguing that it was primarily their capacity to synthesize tradition and modernity that made them candidates for appropriation as Fascist propaganda, I maintain that in Radice’s work geometric abstract form was accommodated to embodying principles and standards of human conduct that were defended in a range of official texts in Italy at this time. First, I discuss how the form of the panels supported an ethical injunction that artists work to serve the broader society. Second, I examine how the principle of visibility presented in the panels’ perforated surfaces could stand for the transparency between the individual and the state. Third, I demonstrate how Radice’s panels could be seen to extol the ethic of stoic self-­sacrifice. My reading of Radice’s work is grounded in an understanding of how the object appeared within a broader discursive and architectural context in 1930s Italy, drawing upon the writings both of the artist and the architect while relating them to specific statements by Mussolini and his ideological supporters. In his description of the works for the Casa del Fascio published in the October 1936 issue of Quadrante, Radice explained that the panels represent “the two fundamental aspects of the Regime: its bellicose character and its social character.”59 The

Abstraction and Architecture  129 second text on the Casa del Fascio panels refers to the “squadrons” or blackshirts who violently promoted the cause of Fascism by murdering political opponents and filling the ranks of the “March on Rome,” the political action which led to ­Mussolini’s installation as Prime Minister in 1922. In this text, delivered during a lecture in April of 1934, Mussolini extols the squadrons for being drawn from the people and for their belligerent attitude. From the references in the third text to “philosophical stoicism” and “a new style of Italian life” we understand that an ethic is at stake in these writings. One of the central concepts behind the ethical philosophy pronounced in official Fascist texts was the idea of the “ethical state” put forward by Giovanni Gentile, the Italian idealist philosopher. Gentile rejected the notion that the modern state should be a secular organization which dispassionately administers and reconciles the needs of self-interested individuals. Gentile’s idea of the relationship between the individual and the state was expressed in the text he coauthored with Mussolini titled the “Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism”: Fascist man is not only an individual but also a nation and a country. He embodies the ideal of individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, sharing traditions and a common mission. This moral law supplants the instinctual lure of a life enclosed within the circle of evanescent pleasures with a higher life founded upon duty; a life free from limitations of time and space; a life in which the individual, by means of self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, through death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.60 Under Fascism the individual was understood to be participating in a higher moral order that absorbed and transcended his or her own interests. Gentile’s idea of the ethical state dictated that certain ethical principles be followed by individuals. Chief among these principles was a requirement that individuals overlook their self-interest, even to the point of self-sacrifice, in deference to the higher interests of the state. Turning now from the texts to the form of the panels, in these works Radice responded to a contemporary demand that artists reject the individual, autonomous artwork—viewed by many at this time as a bourgeois and decadent form—and subordinate their individual interests to a larger, overarching order. Radice’s panels adhered to this principle in a variety of ways, but principally by conforming to the overall design of the building. Speaking of the Casa del Fascio, Terragni concluded in his essay on the building that the design of the various parts of the building were closely interrelated in their design; that the dimensions of the doors and windows, for example, were derived from the dimensions of the structural supports. As Terragni explains, By conforming to the laws of proportion and harmony, the architecture succeeds in forming this complex of diverse elements into a unified artifact. In this way an architectural order is located on a political level and coincides with the new order Fascism has conquered for corporate Italy.61 Similarly, Radice argued that “the dimensions of the panels and their arrangement in the hall have been established according to a harmonic relationship,” and that even

130  Abstraction and Architecture the metal bars holding up the panels “participate in the decorative complex.”62 These comments about harmony and proportion, which reflect the architect’s and artist’s shared interest in the writings of theorists such as Ozenfant and Jeanneret as well as those by Ghyka, asserted that no aspect of the work existed outside the broader, integrated whole of their carefully coordinated arrangement within the building’s interior. In his designs for the panels, which were deeply inspired by seeing both Terragni’s original drawings for the structure and the finished building itself, Radice created a sense of the deeply integrated, interlocking unity between his work and the overall building through a geometry of alternating solids and voids, which closely corresponded to a number of details of the architecture, particularly the window openings, with their characteristic L-shaped formations. Moreover, the panels were literally open to their context, allowing the greater organizing structure of the ­building— represented in microcosm by the structural grid of the wall of glass bricks—to be literally visible through the panel’s openings. As Terragni was moved to observe of Radice’s panels in 1936, “It is the first realization of an abstract decoration that is perfectly inserted into an architectural work of great political value.”63 In this way, Radice integrated the individual artwork and the overarching structure of its architectural context, visually proclaiming his conformity to the ethical demand that artists subordinate their individual interests to a broader architectural and social program. Another way in which Radice’s panels could be seen to embody an ethical principle articulated in Italy during the 1930s was through transparency. Quoting Mussolini’s statement that “Fascism is a house of glass into which everyone can look,” Terragni stressed that his building creates visibility between government offices and public areas, between outside the building and inside.64 This is realized architecturally in the visual access between the assembly hall and the directory room on the first floor, spaces which are separated by floor-to-ceiling panes of glass. Terragni argued that this meant there was “no obstruction, no barrier, no obstacle between the political leader and the people.”65 This architectural openness, a relatively standard feature of modernist architecture in this period, in this case corresponded to a political ethics of visibility between the machinery of government and the everyday person. The openings within Radice’s abstract panels directly supported this idea. Not only were the panels transparent to the architectural context by virtue of their perforations, but visitors to the assembly hall would have looked up beyond the panels to the directory room on the second floor. In this way Radice’s works acted as a repoussoir and both mimicked and foreshadowed the architectural transparency between various parts of the building as the eye of the visitor to the assembly hall climbed from the ground to the glass-enclosed, bureaucratic spaces above. At one level this transparency simply corresponds to the ethical ideal that the machinery of government be visible. However, the principle of visibility has a broader application in Terragni’s building. It puts forward the idea that there is ideally no separation between the state as represented by the building and those individuals who are drawn into its activities. As Terragni explained in his account of the building’s design, we had to consider the possibility of this vast space being entered by Fascists and people in side-by-side formation for mass gatherings; we had to annul every

Abstraction and Architecture  131 break in continuity between internal and external… the concept of visibility, the instinctive connection established between the public and the employees of the federation, predominates.66 In this structure of visibility, where ideally there is no separation between what is outside and what is inside, we can see correspondences with the state institutions Michel Foucault examined in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. As Foucault argues, “It is the fact of being constantly seen, of being always able to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection.”67 The transparency of ­Terragni’s building and Radice’s panels not only expressed the transparency of the workings of the Fascist government to the individual, but also as a corollary the visibility of the individual to the state, who becomes thereby subject to its powers. On one wall in the directory room on the first floor of the building there was a geometric abstract mural designed by Radice in 1936 within which was situated an image of Mussolini, a photomechanical, double life-size photograph of the Fascist leader produced by the Italian designer Marcello Nizzoli (Figure 4.10).68 The design of the mural adhered in its rectilinear arrangement of forms to the overall layout of Terragni’s building. Once more the artist sought to create a correspondence between the forms of the mural and the architecture of the Casa del Fascio, through a series of alternating, counterposed, and overlapping geometric shapes, which mimicked the play of void and solid throughout the building. However, rather than an enfranchisement of the people, here the intention was to convey a sense of power concentrated in the leader. The image of Mussolini at the center of the mural appeared to stand at

Figure 4.10  Mario Radice, Plastic Fresco Mural for the Directory Room of the Casa del Fascio, Como, 1935–1936. Painted bas-relief, 400 × 600 cm (157.5 × 236.2 inches), lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice.

132  Abstraction and Architecture the head of the table and thereby make the leader symbolically present at all Fascist executive meetings in Como.69 The text of this mural read as follows: However, a danger could threaten the regime: this danger can be represented by that which is commonly known as the “bourgeois spirit,” a spirit, in other words, of satisfaction and adaptation, of a tendency to skepticism, to compromise, to careerism… For this danger there is only one remedy: the principle of continual revolution. This principle is recommended both to the young in years and to the young at heart.70 This text, which in the broader context of the mural containing the image of M ­ ussolini reads like a speech bubble emanating from the dictator himself, warns against a lack of faith commonly associated at that time in Italian government circles with the bourgeoisie, a class which Fascist doctrine saw as being superseded by the Fascist revolution. Given that this was the Fascist party executive meeting room for the province of Como, the text is targeted specifically at the office-holders in the headquarters, to whom it recommends the Fascist ethic of steely reserve and constant militancy. Just as the subject’s visibility to the broader political and social context is indirectly represented in Radice’s perforations within the panels for the assembly room, here the office-holders are encouraged to open themselves, under the ever-watchful eye of Mussolini, to the higher moral purpose of nation and country as articulated in Gentile’s theory of the “ethical state.” Turning now to examine the third ethical question raised by Radice’s work for the Casa del Fascio, the form of the artist’s panels also supported the celebration of stoic self-sacrifice. As Terragni explained, apart from being a political headquarters, the building had a moral purpose—to commemorate the martyrs of the Fascist revolution.71 He argued that the use of rich materials such as marble in the Casa del Fascio was eminently suited to this celebratory function of the building. He stressed that the black marble, which lined the entrance ceiling, created a religious atmosphere, preparing the visitor for the martyrial space inside.72 As we have seen, the texts on Radice’s panels promote a belligerent ethic and a cold-blooded attitude to war. They contain sentiments that are specifically designed to inure individuals to the physical deprivation and risk involved in military self-sacrifice. Viewed in this light, the perforations in Radice’s panels, places where the physical coherence of the artwork has been “sacrificed” in favor of a unity between object and architectural context, can be understood to create a visual parallel with the vaunted physical wounds borne by the members of the Fascist squadrons. An ethic of self-sacrifice in political or military conflict, and the subjection of both the artist’s autonomy and the individual work to a broader architectural and political program, parallels a theory of society where, in the words of Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, “the individual only played a role within the state and in subordination to that state.”73 Radice’s perforations, by rupturing the spatial illusionism of painting, present the ethic of belligerent stoicism not simply as a pattern of human action or a construction of art but as belonging to a natural and transcendent order. It is possible therefore to read Radice’s panels for the Casa del Fascio, in the texts they carry and in their deeper formal structures, as the expression of a constellation of ethical ideals articulated in Italy during the Fascist period. Not only did they emerge from a context in which it was feasible to read modern techniques of construction and

Abstraction and Architecture  133 design in terms of traditional rules of classical proportion, these works also took on a range of ethical meanings connected to Fascist ideology by virtue of the way in which they sacrificed their material integrity to a broader architectural and material order. Through realizing the ideals of coordination, visibility, and self-abnegation, Radice’s geometric abstraction was pressed into the service of Fascist ethical concepts during the 1930s.

Mario Radice and Cesare Cattaneo’s Camerlata Fountain, 1936–1939 At the same time that Radice was working on the panels discussed above he was also engaged on work for a different, sculptural project with the Como-born architect Cesare Cattaneo (1912–1943) known as the Fountain for Piazza Corsica in Como-­ Camerlata (hereafter Camerlata Fountain). This work, like those intended for the Casa del Fascio, was closely connected with its particular context—however in this case, rather than a building that directly celebrated and embodied the ideals of Fascism, the more immediate context for the fountain was the modern environment of urban traffic (Figure 4.11). As the history of its conception in 1935–1936 demonstrates, Cattaneo and Radice’s work was not intended as an explicitly political work like the panels for the Casa del Fascio, and was far less related to the question of how to connect classical traditions with modern art. Nevertheless, by seeking to remedy the tensions and anxieties associated with the contemporary experience of vehicle-generated

Figure 4.11   Mario Radice with Cesare Cattaneo, Fountain for Corsica Square in ­C omo-Camerlata, 1936–1962. Reinforced cement, 896 × 493 × 155 cm (352  ×  194.1 × 61 inches), Corsica Square, Camerlata. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice.

134  Abstraction and Architecture mobility, the fountain was one of many initiatives within Fascist culture—similar to the urban demolitions of the 1930s in Rome discussed in the previous chapter—to impose a sense of order and clarity on the chaos of a modern urban environment. As I will argue however, the history of the work’s initial installation and public reception elicited several different readings of the work that fundamentally transformed its intended significance at both an aesthetic and social level. In their 1935 proposal to build the fountain in a busy, circular road junction called Piazza Corsica in Camerlata near the city of Como, Cattaneo and Radice argued that the work should closely relate to the environment of the intersection. However, rather than responding to the static, historical architecture around the square, the form of the fountain was to “accord in its forces and its spirit with… the setting of the great highways that converge there in a radial pattern and with the same tone of rapid and continuous circulation.”74 Camerlata Fountain was intended to incorporate the regular, daily movement of people and vehicles along streets and highways into its design, and to serve as a monument to the intense mobility which has come to define the lived experience of modernity. In pursuing these aims, Cattaneo and Radice were continuing a long-standing tendency within modern art and architecture. The concept of mobility was dear to the Italian futurist movement, which viewed great movements of people and vehicles as one of the most pressing themes of modern art and literature. Moreover, the futurists worshipped the automobile, that quintessential industrial medium of human mobility, as a symbol of the flight from the past. As Marinetti argued, “A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath… is more beautiful than the V ­ ictory of ­Samothrace.”75 Marinetti also imagined that the water canals of the nation’s ­cities, which, as an important means of conveying goods within and between population centers until recent times, were the contemporary, liquid equivalents of paved streets, would be diverted into the museums to send the masterpieces floating out into the city: “Turn aside the canals to flood the museums!… Oh, the joy of seeing the glorious old canvases bobbing adrift on those waters, discolored and shredded!”76 The futurist painter and sculptor Boccioni titled one of his works The Street Enters the House, and the Como-born, futurist architect Antonio Sant’Elia, who imagined a “Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic,” provided in his visionary urban plans for the rapid movement of vehicles in submerged roadways.77 In this sense the futurists had envisaged a world profoundly transformed by the intensely mobile activity of the streetscape. Other artists and architects would be inspired by the more innovative dimensions of these manifestos. The Italian architect Giacomo Matte-Trucco, in his design for the ­Lingotto plant for the Fiat automobile company in Turin commenced in 1915, produced the first architectural form in which automobile traffic was explicitly incorporated, by facilitating the passage of motor vehicles along curved internal motorways placed inside and upon the roof of the building, somewhat in the manner of a contemporary parking lot. Le Corbusier, whose work had so stimulated both the abstract artists and rationalist architects in Italy in this period, imagined the modern city and its buildings as dominated by the reality of the motor car, arguing in 1924 that a “city made for speed is made for success.”78 He designed the Villa Savoye in such a way that a semicircular driveway around the ground floor precisely corresponded to the turning

Abstraction and Architecture  135 79

radius of a Voisin automobile. The car was essential to Le Corbusier’s vision in two senses. He believed that the type of mass production already established for cars could be applied to housing; and his urban plans were dependent upon the possibility of rapid, car-based transit between one part of the city and another, a utopian vision of a swift-moving city, which enabled a multiplication of the area devoted to traffic and in which “Cafes and places of recreation would no longer be the fungus that eats up the pavements.”80 As John Tomlinson argues in The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy, the increased speed made possible by automobiles and other forms of transport can involve significant forms of liberation, and many have been willing to sacrifice anything to achieve it. Nevertheless, he argues, it can also lead to a diminishment of experience, and planners who facilitate the increasing speed of everyday life can be thereby guilty of Le Corbusier’s “indifference and insensitivity to the social anthropology of street life.”81 The advent of faster and faster travel moreover creates a situation in which the nervous systems of the city’s inhabitants are fundamentally altered. As Georg Simmel once argued in respect of the modern city: “The rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions. These are the psychological conditions which the metropolis creates.”82 Simmel’s remarks raise the question of whether the increased tempo of everyday life made possible by the combination of improved roads and faster cars leads to an impoverishment of experience which outweighs the benefits of convenience and more rapid exchanges between individuals and communities. In the case of Cattaneo and Radice, who were enthusiastic about the increased mobility brought about by modernity, a similar question arises as to whether, in their manner of addressing the reality of modern traffic behavior in Camerlata Fountain, they contributed to the diminishment of experience brought about through the ever-hastening speed of vehicular transport, or whether they were able to mitigate the deleterious effects of the increasingly rapid, mechanized transit of bodies. Certainly, their intention was clear. In the 1935 report proposing the fountain to the government of Como, Cattaneo and Radice began from the premise that the location, Piazza Corsica, was not a “classic Italian city square.”83 The surrounding buildings, in their estimation, were hybrid, disordered and lacking in dignity, and a state of confusion was caused by a proliferation of pavements, tramlines, telephone poles, signs, and gas pumps. Moreover, the square’s very existence was related not to the buildings per se but rather to the junction of major highways and roads leading to neighboring cities. As the authors pointed out, furthermore, the Piazza was already characterized by great amounts of traffic, a fact that they believed would be intensified due to the city of Como’s recent decision to exclude any residential function for the square in future urban plans. The square was and would remain, in other words, not a place for living in but a space for moving through, a description which would later be confirmed by the authors of the 1937 urban plan for the city who argued that “the square has lost its function and aspect of a center of a quarter and has become that of an important traffic hub into which highways flow.”84 Contributing to this sense of mobility was the fact that the routes meeting at Piazza Corsica were feeder roads from the world’s first restricted access, toll motorway which led from Milan to Varese and Como and which had been completed only a few years earlier. As Richard Vahrenkamp has shown in his discussion of these motorways, “accessibility to tourist destinations for the residents of large cities in

136  Abstraction and Architecture Italy influenced motorway construction,” and the original purpose of these roads was largely to convey tourist traffic from the metropolitan center of Milan in the south to the popular holiday destinations of the lakes and mountains on the border with Switzerland.85 Inspired by the context of this intense traffic region, Cattaneo and Radice argued that their fountain should be conceived directly in relation to the environment—not however to the surrounding buildings and the immediate inhabitants of the area—but to the existence of and uses for the major roads which determined the traffic flow around the square. What this implied for Cattaneo and Radice was a new conception of a fountain, one that had to take into account the square’s function as a major traffic hub but also the fact that most viewers would experience the work in an extremely short time while travelling in a vehicle at rapid pace. The public, they noted, who “circulate for a few moments… is mostly a public of drivers, that see while turning around, and need to grasp the complex from any point of view.”86 From these principles they reasoned that the Fountain would have to be vertical in emphasis to be visible from a distance; transparent so that drivers could see through it; curved so as to develop in time and be equally viewable from any point as the viewer moves through the roundabout; and composed of what they described as “ample and clear rhythms” in a formal harmony accessible to whoever looks at it, and understandable in an instant.87 The choice of the circle as the principle motif of the fountain was motivated, they argued, by the traffic moving around a circular roadway and the fact that the circle is a perfect geometrical form immediately graspable by a viewer. Horizontally and vertically placed circles interspersed with spheres, created in reinforced cement and clad in marble, were to be stacked vertically so as to leave empty spaces to allow transparency and facilitate visual access across the Piazza. The effect of the circles and spheres, the authors hoped, would be to lend an element of harmony to the intersection that was patently missing from it. From these arguments in the original proposal we can see that the intention of the creators was to directly address the placeless, transitory quality of the square but in doing so also inject a sense of dignity and balance. They sought to achieve this by creating a rationally ordered form in a busy and chaotic transport hub, which would help to stabilize and make sense of the viewer’s experience of the built environment, and which, by being clad in marble, would create a sense of endurance through time. The question remains to what degree were they successful in this endeavor. Evaluating this success is complicated by several factors. First, the fountain was not built in its intended location during the 1930s, but rather was installed temporarily in the Sempione Park in central Milan in 1936 as part of the Triennale of Decorative Arts, Industrial Design and Modern Architecture, where it remained until 1937 when it was demolished and only rebuilt in its intended location near Como in the early 1960s. While installed in Milan during 1936 and 1937 the work, which was constructed solely in cement and was surrounded not by roads and cars but by trees, grass, and plants, was significantly different from the proposal as set down by the authors. Second, critics made comments about the work that produced a range of differing, contradictory readings of the Fountain. One critic, in noting that that the fountain was ideally to be seen from a moving automobile, added a comment not found in the original 1935 proposal: that the work itself gives “the sensation of speed.”88 Another critic, who argued that the fountain should remain in Milan rather than being moved

Abstraction and Architecture  137 to Como, pointed out that the basins of water underneath the fountain were popular with children, who used them as an arena in which to race wind-up boats and shoot toy arrows with elastic cords.89 Another reviewer commented that the fountain had the appearance of a series of soap bubbles that chase each other only to disappear into the sky or to collapse into the pools below.90 The same reviewer, describing how the fountain “stands out from the greenery with its strange profile of white spheres with superimposed circles,” called the fountain a “phantom-like tower.” These interpretations suggest that the forms of the work itself as well as its initial location in Milan brought to mind the idea of speed, but also ephemerality, inconstancy, and play. These aspects of the work’s reception in Milan add a layer of a different kind of mobility to the work from that which the authors intended, intensifying and shifting the original address of automobile traffic and introducing an irreverent and somewhat unsettling tone. A further layer of meaning was added to the work by Cattaneo and Radice when they presented it to Marinetti, who was by that time a member of the Italian Academy, as an entry for an art prize. In a letter to the futurist, penned in 1939, the authors stated that the work expresses “the dynamism of large-scale motor traffic.”91 They also added, “The people who pass swiftly by have a need for the sudden and decisive emotions that only our time can provide. Bold forms, of an almost irritating simplicity, of immediate clarity, in the blinding sunlight.” Elsewhere they commented that the construction creates a “frightening contrast between the slenderness of the supports and the enormous weight launched into the air.” Silvia Danesi points out that by describing the work as “a monument to motor traffic in the center of a large modern square” in this letter Cattaneo and Radice transformed the fountain into a futurist gesture.92 The earlier concern with providing a sense of balance and harmony for the drivers who circulate was thereby changed to incorporate a rather different understanding of the work. In this reading the dynamism of the work is far less the cause of dignity but rather what the authors call “violent emotions,” including irritation, fear, and blindness.93 These statements need to be read against the context of the increasingly virulent criticisms of abstraction and modernism in the later 1930s—particularly after the “Degenerate Art” exhibition held in Munich in 1937—from which many Italian artists sought protection within Marinetti’s recently expanded futurist movement.94 Nevertheless, in this re-reading, rather than lending a sense of proportion and harmony to the intersection and its rapid flows of vehicular traffic, the work now exacerbated the disorienting and shocking effects of modern transport. The sense of clarity and dignity that Radice and Cattaneo originally claimed to be the central preoccupation of the Camerlata Fountain was overturned in favor of a reading which emphasizes what Ornella Selvafolta has described as the work’s evident “asymmetrical swerves” and “unstable balances.”95 Far from regulating the effects of modernity with an ordering principle which would put a brake on the disembedding quality of the automobile and its arteries, this structure sought to accelerate it. This reinterpretation of the work, like that of the critics in 1936, subtly but significantly altered the tenor of the sculpture, demonstrating that the work was open to quite different, even contradictory interpretations. As I argue below, similar arguments can be made about the panels for the Casa del Fascio. Before embarking on that discussion, however, the analysis now turns to another work by Radice from 1937.

138  Abstraction and Architecture

Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, 1937 As the foregoing discussion of the Camerlata Fountain has shown, Radice’s sculpture was deeply intertwined with its context; unlike the panels for the Casa del ­Fascio, however, this work was concerned less with a promoting a political ideology and more with a specific technological question posed by modern transport. Another work produced by Radice, this time in collaboration with another Como-born abstract artist, Manlio Rho, was an installation design created for the 1937 “Celebratory Colonial Exhibition of the Imperial Victory,” held at the Villa Olmo in Como. This exhibition, the design for which was overseen by rationalist architects including Giuseppe Terragni and Cesare Cattaneo, commemorated the first anniversary of ­Italy’s violent invasion of Ethiopia.96 Radice and Rho, who described their Room of the Gold Medals for the Villa Olmo exhibition as an “architectural ensemble,” commented that the work was composed of “purely plastic elements integrated with light and color” (Figure 4.12).97 An abstract architectonic unit ran the length of the room, upon which were placed, at regular intervals, texts lauding the exploits of decorated military officers during Italy’s colonial occupations of Africa, many of whom had died in combat. In addition, one side panel in the space carried Mussolini’s motto: “Better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a lamb.”98 Through the language of abstraction Radice and Rho glorified the carnage of Italy’s colonial wars, which in 1936 had seen thousands of Ethiopian soldiers killed not only through the use of conventional weapons but also through the use of poison gas.99

Figure 4.12  Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, Colonial Exhibition Celebrating the Imperial Victory, 1937.  Medium and dimensions unknown, lost. Photograph, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Mario Radice archive. Further reproduction in any medium is prohibited. Courtesy of Barbara Radice.

Abstraction and Architecture  139 By diffusing the space with indirect light, the artists lent a strongly spiritual tenor to the installation. In his impressionistic review of the exhibition in La Provincia di Como, Flaminio Tamberi made the following comments: Unadorned room where there are no decorative elements… Immaterial room. A  large tablet in the middle… it has sprung from a vision of magnificence. Spiritual magnificence. Like a meeting with the highest heaven. Like a losing of one’s personality upon being touched by divine grace. Light is color, color is light. Astral heights for a terrestrial emotion where, however, the emotion pays homage to the sense and presence of the sublime.100 By synthesizing the art object with the architecture through light and color, a transcendent experience was produced that, as this contemporary review testifies, sought to do away with the spectator’s sense of individuality and physical presence. The result was a denial of the physical dimension of the artwork and the physical embodiment of the spectator in a quasi-divine vision. The sublimation that occurs in Radice’s and Rho’s propaganda installation evokes the dual connotations of that term as defined by Laplanche and Pontalis in The Language of Psychoanalysis: sublime in the sense of art works that are “grand or uplifting,” and in the sense of a chemical process in which “a body is caused to pass directly from a solid to a gaseous state.”101 Indeed, by privileging the faculty of sight over the tactile and somatic, a kind of liquidation of the body’s solidity is achieved in this installation.102 This use of geometric abstraction parallels certain contemporary developments in rationalist architecture. While rationalism started out as a movement dedicated to principles of efficiency, functionality, and the provision of basic public housing needs, during the 1930s modernist architects were increasingly called upon to fulfil the celebratory needs of the regime. Rationalists under Fascism were therefore faced with the challenge of converting their modern, unadorned buildings into something that could convey the transcendent values of Fascist political ideology. In many cases their response was to elevate the materiality of architecture beyond the questions of efficiency and function into a spiritualized language of geometric form. Speaking of this aspect of rationalism, Nathalie Vernizzi argues that In the final analysis a strange syncretism between Mediterranean culture, antique rationalism, Renaissance civilization, an idealism of Italian tradition and religious spiritualism had provoked a transformation of rationalism into an absolute mythic value, a revealed truth that was only to be attained irrationally. In this way, Rationalism cast off its sense of restraint and logic in order to become the instrument of a lyrical and nostalgic historicism, ultimately falling into the sphere of idealism and religiosity.103 When Radice and Rho collaborated with rationalist architects to produce The Room of the Gold Medals for the Colonial exhibition of 1937 in Como the outcome was an ethereal, temple-like space that was perfectly suited to celebrating the regime’s idea of Fascism as a “political religion.”104 To return to the comment by Clement Greenberg with which I began this chapter, if the American critic was correct in arguing that Mussolini had wanted to create an art of “admiration and wonder” to cozen the masses, then in this example the Italian abstractionists’ work could fit

140  Abstraction and Architecture the bill. By privileging the optical dimension through light and color over the tactile and somatic, the messy reality of violent death in colonial war was disavowed by an immaterial environment in which the physicality of form and of the spectator’s body was vaporized. As Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi argues, Fascist spectacles, which promoted self-abnegation in favor of the national interest, had as one of their aims the denial of the physical realm.105 Putatively intended as a commemoration of Italian sacrifice, as a form of respect for the fallen bodies of the soldiers, the effect of this work was rather to celebrate and promote the dematerialization of the body that takes place literally in war. Differently from the Camerlata Fountain, but akin to the decorative panels for the Casa del Fascio, in The Room of the Gold Medals Radice’s geometric abstract art directly served to propagandize the ideals of Mussolini’s government. However, all three works can also be compared and contrasted at another level; their differing fates after World War II with regard to their physical existence and their interpretation. Indeed, these site-specific works would be subject to a number of restagings and reinterpretations after the fall of Mussolini, which have transformed how successive generations have understood them. If the works by Depero and Scipione examined in earlier chapters of this book were examples of a kind of “rebirth” of earlier artistic traditions which served to problematize, rather than secure, the relationship between present and past in Fascist culture, might the postwar reproductions and reinterpretations of Radice’s site-specific works similarly be thought to trouble the history of modernism’s relationship to Fascism? The remainder of the chapter is dedicated to answering this question.

An “Open Work?” The argument of this chapter so far has been that Radice’s works were closely related to their particular historical context, evoking themes germane to Fascist ideology in the case of the Panels for the 1936 Casa del Fascio and the 1937 The Room of the Gold Medals and the infrastructure of modern urban transport in the case of the 1936 Camerlata Fountain. In what follows I embark on a different approach, tracing the history of the works’ reception beyond their original historical context up to the present day, in order to reveal meanings for the works different to that which might seem to naturally emerge from their original social and political background. We have already seen the subtle transformations wrought upon the significance of the Camerlata Fountain for viewers upon its installation in Milan in 1936 and by the authors in a letter written in 1939. I now turn to examine the afterlife of the works from the end of World War II, a period which saw the end of Fascism in Italy and the inauguration of the Republic in 1946. In this new context, Radice’s works produced a range of interpretations, which in spite of their anachronistic status in relation to the Fascist era, open new horizons for understanding Radice’s work even within the time of its own creation. These competing, often incompatible readings of artworks demonstrate that, in spite of the significant historical break which took place after the fall of Fascism, there were continuities to be observed in thinking about art between the period which preceded the end of World War II and that which came after.106 During the 1930s, Terragni defended the Casa del Fascio as the reflection of an ordered unity of individual design elements that could be seen as parallel to the

Abstraction and Architecture  141 social order ushered in by Fascism—the subordination of individual particularity to a broader, overarching political unity. However, upon visiting Como today it emerges that Terragni’s building does not appear unified in the way that the architect described. Close inspection of the building’s design in situ reveals that there are radical inconsistencies between the designs of each façade, so that the Casa del Fascio appears to be composed alternatively of a transparent grid, a solid block, and a shallow theatrical plane, depending upon which façade is viewed (Figure 4.13). As the visitor to the site circumnavigates the exterior of the structure, each successive impression of the building swings into view only to be undermined by the next. The apparently solid mural element on the right-hand side of the façade, for example, becomes a thin, stage-set flat as one rounds the corner of the building to reveal the architectural grid behind it. It is this quality of the building that the Italian architectural critic Giuseppe Pagano referred to in 1937 when, in an article published in Casabella, he criticized Terragni’s preoccupation with “accidental plastic novelties and strange novelties,” drawing attention to the “great stylistic and compositional difference that exists ­between the principal and lateral façades which makes one feel the lack of unity that is the true measure of a work of art.”107 Seen through this lens, Terragni seems to have taken delight in continually unveiling nothing. A similar interpretation has been put forward by the American architect Peter Eisenman, who argues that that the building generates “unstable relationships that lead to no aesthetic or perceptual unity,” a feature that he casts in a positive light.108

Figure 4.13  Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio, Como, 1932–1936. Photograph: ­A nthony White.

142  Abstraction and Architecture Comparable observations apply to Radice’s panels. Although the original murals were destroyed in the waves of iconoclastic violence sweeping Italy after the fall of Mussolini in 1943, remaining evidence of the works existed in contemporary photographs. These photographs were however subject after the war to a different, revisionist form of iconoclasm: they were reproduced in exhibition catalogues with their Fascist slogans and images of Mussolini obliterated. Radice manually removed from the photographs those portions of the panels and murals which originally bore the texts and images. As Barbara Radice, the artist’s daughter, wrote in an article published around the time of the 2002 retrospective of his work: The horror of World War II had taken with it… his beloved panels and frescoes, which were destroyed in 1945 because they were associated with the writings of the regime. I remember my father scratching the words off photographs with a razor blade and filling the empty spaces with grey so that he could at least show the work in photographic form. Those were dark years.109 It was only in 2002, five years after the artist’s death, that Luciano Caramel published photographs of the panels with the texts intact in his catalogue raisonné of Radice’s work.110 Although the artist removed the original significance of the works by disguising the texts, in the process he also released another meaning different from that which I argued for earlier in this chapter. A close examination of both the altered photographs and those with the texts intact demonstrates that in this work three different spatial registers jostled for the viewer’s attention: two-dimensional opaque shapes coinciding on a flat surface, three-dimensional solid forms located in an architectural space, and the real, empty space behind the panels intruding into a two-dimensional composition. The rectilinear forms that appear on the panels are highly ambiguous at a spatial level and their overlapping, interlocking movement creates a desire for order and system that is eternally frustrated (Figure 4.9). Furthermore, as is evident from photographs showing different viewing perspectives upon the works, in the original installation the architectural grid of the glass blocks behind the works in situ visually shifted around within the perforations as the viewer moved from one side of the assembly hall to the other. Robbing the planes of their two-dimensionality, as well as the panels themselves of their solidity, the compositions have to curry favor with a negation of their existence as pure, abstract forms. Speaking of what he called Radice’s “phenomenal conception of space,” Luciano Caramel argued in an article published in 1968 that Radice’s panels for the assembly hall of the Casa del Fascio present a spatial journey, rich with harmonies and inter-relations, of course, but “open” we would say today, so much so that the viewer is not limited to looking “from the outside” with the usual “glance” with which one grasps the synthesis, but is involved in a dynamic experience along the ductus that the work offers. Nor is it a one-way itinerary, the viewer necessarily begins from where they want or where they happen upon.111 In making this argument, Caramel was drawing upon a theory Umberto Eco put forward in a 1962 article titled “The Open Work in the Visual Arts.” Eco described

Abstraction and Architecture  143 what he saw as a tendency in art since World War II emphasizing the active role of the spectator in constituting the work. As an example of this tendency, he cited Jackson Pollock’s drip painting technique of the 1940s and 1950s, with its radically ambiguous, “open” forms.112 Caramel’s 1968 interpretation would, of course, turn most of what I argued above about Radice’s panels’ conformity with the ideological program of the Casa del Fascio on its head. Transparency would be repudiated because the viewer’s crucial role in constituting the experience and significance of the work would deny that there was a unified thing or concept that the work was transparent to. More significantly, the ideals of self-sacrifice and the individual’s subordination to the state extolled in the theory of the “ethical state” would be replaced by what Eco called the capacity of the “open work” to represent modern man’s “reconquest of his lost autonomy.”113 The evident anachronism of this reading shifts our attention from the narrower question of the particular ethical stance embodied by Radice’s work to a broader question about the ethics of interpretation. To whom or what are we responsible in our investigations of the meaning of a work of art? One approach, well established within art history, asks us to ignore our present way of thinking and viewing and reinsert the work into its original political and social context.114 A version of that has been attempted in the earlier parts of this chapter. Within the tradition of hermeneutics, however, there is an equally strong argument that interpretation can only ever be grounded in the circumstances of contemporary reception. Although these two positions may seem irreconcilable, scholars of hermeneutics such as Hans Georg ­Gadamer and Hans Robert Jauss have argued that these two interpretive horizons are not radically disconnected, as there is a fusing of the two in the history of any particular work’s successive receptions.115 At the same time, it is also apparent that reception does not always involve a seamless transfer of cultural history from one generation to the next, and scholars like Paul de Man have emphasized the antagonistic, even self-contradictory relationship that obtains in the relationship of modern authors to the past.116 Moreover, as Georges Didi-Huberman argues in his comparison of Fra Angelico’s frescoes of the 15th century with the work of Jackson Pollock 500 years later, each work can be thought to contain within it contrary or contradictory historical meanings that can be teased out at any time and that are not necessarily a product of the time in which they take place.117 At the very least, it is possible to speak about how the afterlife of artworks and their concomitant reinterpretations may be compelling enough not only to transform such works’ meaning for the present but also to affect our understanding of their historical significance. In his 1968, “open work” interpretation of Radice’s panels, Caramel was silent about the political context of Fascism.118 Although the art historian’s more recent writings on the artist have since given a fuller picture of the political and social context of the works, clearly showing the relationships that could be drawn between abstraction and Fascist ideology in Italy, in his 2002 essay for a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work, Caramel retained crucial elements of his original 1968 “open work” reading of the panels.119 This interpretation suggests that there were elements of Radice’s work that could not be fully explained, certainly not in positive terms, within the ethical and political frameworks germane to the context in which it was produced. Nevertheless, the panels had the capacity to suggest a very different kind of ethic, one of individual autonomy, openness, and indeterminacy that was simply not representable within the immediate context in 1930s Italy.

144  Abstraction and Architecture What does this mean for the interpretation of Radice’s panels today? Clearly, the modernist language of openness, integration with architectural space, and transparency are capable of being accommodated to widely divergent ethical ideals. As Ernst Bloch pointed out in Principle of Hope, a text written between 1938 and 1947, in the case of architecture the significance of certain modernist motifs is dependent upon the social and political context in which they appear: The essential feature with which the new architecture began was openness: it broke the dark stone caves, it opened up fields of vision through light glass walls, but this will towards an adjustment with the outside world was undoubtedly premature… the open door, the tremendously opened windows are threatening in the age of growing fascism… the glass door right down to the floor really requires sunshine to peer and break in, not the gestapo.120 Similar to what Bloch describes for modernist architecture, the full significance of Radice’s work, and it could be argued, modernist abstraction in Italy more generally, is in a dependent relationship with the specific historical condition of its reception. As Diane Ghirardo has argued for Terragni’s architecture, it makes no sense to assess Italian rationalist buildings in terms of formal qualities that exist outside of history as artistic form does not inherently embody social, political, or moral principles.121 During the Fascist period, viewers would have been encouraged to see the transparency in Radice’s works as part of the invitation to participate in the “ethical state,” a participation that implied the subsumption of their individuality by the broader social and political order. If more recently it has been possible to read this in a different light, through an ethic of individual autonomy proposed within the theory of the “open work” put forward by Umberto Eco, this only makes sense in a context where Gentile’s idea of the ethical state, the original political function of the Casa del Fascio and the entire apparatus of Fascist ideology no longer exists. However, the evolving interpretation of Mario Radice’s panels demonstrates that neither the original sociopolitical context, the inherent properties of artistic form, nor even both in combination are sufficient to explain the meaning of any particular art work, as alternative meanings may exist, which await an unanticipated interpretive framework to be fully realized.

Camerlata Fountain 1962–2010 The postwar reception of Radice and Cattaneo’s fountain throws up similar problems of interpretation. Although the Milan version of the fountain was disassembled in the late 1930s, in interviews recorded and published in the 1980s, Radice incorrectly claimed that the work had been destroyed in a bombing raid during the war and in one instance, speculating on the motives of the purported Allied bombing crews in attacking the work, commented as follows: “who knows what they thought it was, probably an anti-aircraft placement.”122 Although it is difficult to imagine anyone truly mistaking the sculpture, whether from the air or from the ground, for an ­anti-aircraft gun placement—particularly given its original location in a public park—in certain respects the comparison is apt as both are made of cement and have a circular form. Furthermore, as a critic pointed out in a 1936 article published in Il popolo d’Italia describing the fountain, it was located in the park on an axis between

Abstraction and Architecture  145 a decommissioned Austrian mortar gun sitting just outside the Castello Sforzesco and the Arch of Peace.123 The latter is a neoclassical triumphal arch originally intended to commemorate the entry of Napoleon into Milan, which, like the Austrian mortar, acknowledges the invading force of a foreign military power. The connections made by the critic and Radice between the fountain and military history provoke the question of whether, at a time of increased global military tension in the 1930s, there might have been any other, more profound correspondences between the work and wartime events and infrastructure more generally. Returning to the original justification for the fountain—the many roads and highways in the region of Como—it emerges that one of the prime motivations for building roads in this area was the necessity for highways to enable military supplies and vehicles to get from one part of the country to another during a conflict. As Vahrenkamp has argued, there had been bad experiences suffered during the war in Italy, with truck traffic on streets which were not made to have a solid surface. There was thus a search for new concepts for building solid roads made out of concrete or asphalt, and these would make up the Autobahn. The 14-ton trucks, which supplied the fighting front with materials, destroyed the flimsy streets in no time at all.124 One of the lessons of World War I, therefore, was a need for more substantial and efficiently managed roads. In this way, the rapid movement along roads and highways to which the fountain refers are part of a military-industrial infrastructure that relies on speed for wartime defense and offence. As Paul Virilio argues in Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology, many changes in modern society—including the predominance of rapid movement with its attendant infrastructure of mass-produced vehicles, extensive highway systems, and advanced technologies of electronic ­communication—are generated by the requirement for speed inherent to the military-industrial complex. From this he concludes “history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems.”125 Significant in this regard is the fact that the Milan Triennale where the fountain was first installed was opened just a few weeks after the proclamation of the Italian Empire in Africa, which had been created through Mussolini’s military invasion of ­Ethiopia in 1935–1936. To the degree that the fountain was originally about speed, then, it turned out to also be about war, and so Radice’s comment about its apparent similarity to an anti-aircraft gun placement was insightful. In this sense, although the fountain did not directly propagandize Fascist ideology, it was inevitably caught up in the events which flowed from that. After the fountain was reconstructed and installed during the 1960s on the site near Como for which it was originally intended, discussions of the work by local residents have provoked a series of reminiscences of the past and protests about the present. For example, in the aforementioned interview conducted in the 1980s in which Radice discussed the fountain along with many other aspects of his career, the artist recounted that he used to go to the Camerlata fair before the war with Terragni to purchase threaded chestnuts in garland shapes.126 Local residents, prompted by proposals mooted during 2008 to relocate the work to a central location in Como where it could be more readily appreciated by tourists, recalled fond childhood memories of the fountain. One writer to the local newspaper La Provincia di Como remembered that as a boy he had watched the work being constructed in the early 1960s with his nose pressed to the window of his bedroom, and that in his youth he had spent

146  Abstraction and Architecture many nights with his friends seated at the edge of the pools or on the lowest ring or standing on the raised circle. This, however, he added, was before there was such a “disgusting” amount of traffic, the latter being a theme echoed by many other writers to the same newspaper, one of whom argued that the traffic in the square had become “unbearable.”127 Another writer to the newspaper pointed out that the Piazza, “devastated by incessant traffic, is clearly no longer, not even in spatial terms, what it once was.”128 Yet another, comparing the current state of the intersection with the original purpose of the work as stated in the authors’ proposal, noted in 2010 that What use to the citizens of Camerlata is a fountain that expresses “harmony” through its structure when its environment is degraded and impoverished to the point where the meaning of urban redefinition that Cattaneo and Radice thought to give to the area through the monument has been betrayed?129 Many contributors to the debate in the pages of La Provincia di Como argued that in view of the severe damage caused to the sculpture, which had been blackened by pollution and cracked by the vibrations of moving vehicles, that it was not time to move the sculpture away from the intersection for which it was intended, which would thereby eliminate its site-specific nature, but rather to reduce or redirect the large amount of traffic circling through the square. What this suggests is that the idea of site-specificity to which the work responded had been destroyed over time, not by a change in the sculpture but rather by a transformation of the context for which the work was built. The city had become too dynamic it seems even for a work expressly designed as a monument to mobility. Although the original purpose of the Camerlata Fountain was to add a level of order and clarity to an otherwise chaotic stretch of urban space, in the various readings of the work activated by its differing contexts, the work’s meaning was mobile in ways that exceed this aspiration for harmony. In one context it was imagined as providing a guiding fulcrum to a busy intersection; in another it was conceived as an astonishing, even fearful construction, connected not just to a national road system but also to the historical events of wartime Europe. Lastly, in debates between 2008 and 2010 among Como residents about the most appropriate location for the rebuilt structure, it is apparent that the work had, in a sense, not only outlived its usefulness but was also in danger of being destroyed once more, not by military hardware—as Radice had fantasized—but by the very forces of speed, mobility, and transport infrastructure that the Fountain was originally designed to tame. In the repeated outcries of local residents regarding the insufferable traffic situation in Camerlata, for which debates about the work’s destiny seem to be a continual touchstone, the Fountain acts as an enduring beacon for the unfulfilled promise of a more harmonious urban environment than the town planners of Como have allowed for up to this day.

Reconstruction of The Room of the Gold Medals (2005) The third and final work examined in this chapter through the lens of its postwar reception is a 2005 reconstruction of The Room of the Gold Medals by Radice and Rho. Several recreations of Radice’s architectural works have been executed since 1945. In 2002 for example, the mural for the directory room was reconstructed for the retrospective of the artist’s work, part of which was held in the Casa del Fascio

Abstraction and Architecture  147

Figure 4.14  Mario Radice, Plastic Fresco Mural for the Directory Room of the Casa del Fascio, Como, 1935–1936 (Reconstruction by Studio Terragni and Exnext, 2002). Photograph © Paolo Rosselli. Courtesy of Barbara Radice.

(Figure 4.14). As Colombio Severino noted in the Corriere della Sera the day after the exhibition opening, The decorative intervention by Radice, which was destroyed after the war, is re-proposed for the occasion in the original location through photographic reconstruction. It represents an exceptional example, perhaps the only example, of a practical application of the relationship between abstract painting and architecture.130 The reconstruction, which was carried out by Studio Exnext and Attilio Terragni, involved copies of the abstract geometric panels and the photo of Mussolini originally installed in 1936—described by one reviewer as “an icon of the history of modern architecture in Italy”—on a wall of the directory room on the first floor of the building.131 For this exhibition a part of history was recreated, and for those visiting the building and especially the room in which the mural was installed, history was being “reenacted.” I use this term advisedly: arguably any display that seeks to re-create an architectural environment necessarily involves reenactment as it relies upon the spectator’s physical presence for its efficacy. The viewer is to some extent physically interpolated by this work, as a contemporary drawing by Radice suggests by showing an imagined visitor to the room who is standing in the doorway as a virtual part of the mural design.132 Furthermore, the design of the overall room involves a relationship between the image of the leader and the table which meets it perpendicularly, thus creating an axis, which extends into the space into which the viewer enters, a feature also included in the reconstruction.

148  Abstraction and Architecture There was a degree of fidelity in the reconstruction of Radice’s mural in the directory room of the Casa del Fascio in 2002 in that a life-size copy of the photomechanical image of Mussolini was included and therefore helped to remind viewers of the original function of the building and its interior design. However, this was not an exact copy of the original mural in its entirety, as the curators and designers did not reproduce the texts by Mussolini which appeared on the original mural. In this reconstruction history was reenacted but also obfuscated as the precise meaning of the mural, and the relationship between art and Fascism more generally, was elided by leaving the texts blank. By omitting the original texts, the curators avoided the appearance of having contravened the Italian statute regarding “the defense of Fascism,” which specifies that it is a crime to promulgate Fascist ideology. Although in 2002 such activity was only technically considered illegal in Italy if it was specifically aimed at the re-formation of the Fascist party, under the circumstances their reticence is perhaps understandable.133 In 2003, after the Radice exhibition had closed, Terragni’s building reverted to its everyday function of housing the Guardia di Finanza and the directory room to its purpose as a meeting room for the staff employed there, during which time the reconstruction of Radice’s mural nevertheless remained in place. Most visitors to the building were prevented from seeing the image of Mussolini, however, as the latter was normally masked by a white panel bearing the shield of the province of Como. More recently, when a version of the mural was reconstructed elsewhere in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rovereto in 2014 on the occasion of the exhibition “Mario Radice: Architettura, numero, colore,” both the text and the image of Mussolini were omitted from the reconstruction.134 These reconstructions and others like them raise issues familiar to scholars who have examined debates in postwar Germany about how to properly mourn or represent historically the legacy of National Socialism. To summarize such discussions in a way which risks oversimplification, the danger is in allowing a repression of the historical details of the past, a repression that can take many forms, whether in the work of Holocaust deniers, or a less systematic but equally pernicious failure to remember, in which, as Theodor Adorno argued in 1959, “the murdered are to be cheated even out of the one thing that our powerlessness can grant them: remembrance.”135 Although he was a strident critic of the amnesiac tendency in German culture, Theodor Adorno was nevertheless circumspect about the capacity of public enlightenment to explore the past, contemplating whether “an insistence on the past doesn’t awaken a stubborn resistance and bring about the exact opposite of what is intended.”136 Radice’s reconstructed mural at Como is not a complete denial of the past; after all, the image of Mussolini appeared there, if only to be later covered up, and the catalogues of the artist’s work which were issued with the exhibition were quite open about the original meaning of the works. At the same time, the elision of the mural’s original political texts should not be viewed as a reflective moderation along the lines of Adorno’s caution about insisting too much on the past. Rather, given Italian laws prohibiting the defense of Fascism, the strength of feeling among many Italians who have strongly repudiated the nation’s Fascist past, and the rise of active and vocal neo-Fascist groups for whom such exhibits have become the occasion for celebrations of Fascism rather than an analysis of it, the partial quality of the Radice reconstruction should be viewed as an understandable, if problematic form of reserve with regard to a difficult historical legacy.

Abstraction and Architecture  149 In 2005 a component of Radice and Rho’s 1937 work The Room of the Gold ­ edals was reconstructed for the exhibition Archipittura held at the Como ­Pinacoteca M ­(Figure 4.15 and Plate 8). On that occasion the work was partly recreated within a larger exhibition which aimed to demonstrate how artists and architects worked together in northern Italy from the 1930s to the 1950s.137 In this reconstruction, the central panel and two flanking panels of Radice and Rho’s room were rebuilt for the exhibition. One of the flanking panels included the statement by M ­ ussolini—“It is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a lamb”—and the exhibition included photographs of the original exhibition which made clear what its propaganda purpose had been. To the extent that these latter photographs and the statement by Mussolini were included, as in the case of the Mural when it was shown with the photomechanical image of Mussolini, there was an acknowledgment of the original purpose of the installation, which—when it opened in 1937—had been designed to celebrate recent Italian conquests in Africa. On the central panel of the 2005 reconstruction, in place of the names of the awarded and fallen Italian soldiers, appeared quotations by artists, architects, and writers who promoted the idea of the integration of art and architecture in this period. For example,

Figure 4.15   Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, The Room of the Gold Medals, Colonial ­E xhibition Celebrating the Imperial Victory, 1937 (Reconstruction by Studio Beretta, ­Pinacoteca Civica, Como, 2005). Photograph © Sergio Beretta. Courtesy of ­Barbara Radice.

150  Abstraction and Architecture a quote by Radice read “those who completely ignore the problems of architecture will be almost incapable of understanding not only abstract art but every branch of the plastic arts.” Elsewhere on the panel appeared a statement by the Italian author ­Massimo Bontempelli arguing that “all the arts are subordinated to the spiritual necessity of coordination of the parts into a whole that we call architectural necessity.”138 As the designer of the installation has explained, there was no documentation of the texts on the 1937 display beyond what is visible in the two remaining photographs of the original work and an exceedingly vague description in the exhibition catalogue. For this reason the decision was made, appropriately perhaps for an exhibition focusing on the synthesis of the arts, to substitute the statements by artists and critics.139 However, by occluding the original purpose of the work to memorialize soldiers who fought and died in Africa—many of whose names are still clearly identifiable in the 1937 photographs—these texts turned Radice and Rho’s original installation from a memorial into a stage design for broadcasting theories about art. As Giuliana Pieri has recently argued, a similar phenomenon can be observed in postwar rereadings of the work of Renato Bertelli, whose striking portrait bust of Mussolini Profilo continuo del DUCE of 1933 has been interpreted by critics in a manner which focuses on the aesthetic at the expense of the political, thereby contributing to “the post-war strategy of oblivion of the cult of the dictator and the art that originated around it.”140 As recent developments in Italy have shown, commemorating Italian Fascist soldiers in a public manner has become increasingly controversial, and against the background of increasing neo-Fascist activity across Italy, has begun to attract the attention of authorities, as was evident in the case of the jail sentences handed down in 2017 for the defense of Fascism to those who built a sacrarium to the disgraced Fascist general Rodolfo Graziani in the Italian town of Affile.141 Like Graziani, many of the soldiers commemorated in Radice and Rho’s original design would have been considered guilty of violent acts, including the use of poison gas against Ethiopians, which are today considered war crimes. Reconstructing a memorial to such individuals could run the risk of appearing to defend rather than investigate the Fascist past, and there is strong resistance, particularly on the left, to the idea that soldiers who fought on the side of Mussolini should be given the same memorialization as those who sought to liberate the country from Fascism.142 Nevertheless, because of the way in which, as one critic put it, “in place of the names of the fallen, the painters Rho and Radice indicate the aspiration to abstraction,” the reconstruction produced a form of sublimation, of replacing the evidence of the physical mortality of human beings with an aestheticized presentation, a long way from any meaningful reenactment of the broader meaning of the work.143 Not simply omitting but replacing the names and deeds of the awarded and dead soldiers with statements about abstract art’s relationship to architecture can be viewed as a more profound kind of erasure than not showing them at all. Without suggesting that these issues are easily resolved, alternatives to this kind of historical elision exist within contemporary art, such as the work by Fabio Mauri titled What Is Fascism (1971), which, as Massimo Carboni noted on the occasion of its re-presentation in 1993, involved an extremely precise reconstruction of the rhetorical and triumphal celebrations held in Italy during the twenty-year reign of Fascism: texts, costumes, and music were taken from that era, and the performance concluded with a terrifying, truly unforgettable blaring of air-raid sirens.144

Abstraction and Architecture  151 Another viewer of the same 1993 version of the performance, which among dances, gymnastics, and lectures, involved young women reading out Fascist political tracts, was led to contemplate the fact that “many of our mothers must have been like that when they were young girls,” concluding that the cruelty of the spectacle “stems from the fact that it is not swathed in indignation, it does not scream at us that which shrieks or whispers within us.”145 As Giulio Carlo Argan noted, Mauri’s artistic strategy, in its emphasis on repetition, is “non-immunizing: it does not remove, but presents memory.”146 As these comments demonstrate, the reconstruction of a Fascist environment could potentially lead to quite different effects to those produced in 2005 reconstruction in Como, the latter of which tended to confirm the argument of Krystyna von Henneberg that “Italy offers an unusually profound and long-standing case of official reticence in dealing with the history of overseas conquest.”147 Reconstructions have the potential to speak to the way in which physical conditions affect the thinking and experience of historical actors. In his article “The Use and Abuse of Historical Reenactment,” Alexander Cook argues that “an awareness of the material environment in which history takes place is surely an important consideration, when interpreting its written remains…. Physical space has both a constraining and an enabling influence on human action.”148 The reconstructions of Radice’s works in Como had the potential to bring home the spatial and aesthetic constructs that were deployed in Fascism to persuade and convince individuals of the power and necessity of the regime. However, the partial nature of reconstructions in which key information was omitted or substituted meant that a reenactment took place, which was not so much unfaithful to the past but, in a sense, too close to it. In the original works and in the reiterations, rather than being given the materials with which to determine their own understanding of political and ideological processes of Fascism, partly due to significant cultural and legal considerations but also due to curatorial choices, viewers were presented with a sublimation, or to use Argan’s term, an “overcoming” of history that obstructed critique.149 Mario Radice’s abstract geometric works were certainly informed by the Fascist regime’s ideology of uniting past and present in a synthesis which has been described as a form of palingenesis or cultural rebirth; but they were also intended to embody a set of ethical tenets dear to Mussolini’s thinking. To understand the meaning of these artworks it is important to be aware of the specific political, theoretical, and ethical contexts from which they inevitably emerge. This implies an ethics of interpretation, which insists that attention be paid to the interpretive context for which that object was intended. However, in making this argument, a question also arises of exactly which framework of production and reception is most relevant to understanding any particular work. This is particularly pertinent given that, in art historical analysis, attention to the formal qualities of the object studied requires an encounter with an object, which sometimes remains, or can be reconstructed—that is to say produced— outside its initial context. Such encounters cannot always be completely determined by a set of texts, beliefs, and practices that are judged to be contemporaneous with the initial emergence of the object in history. On the contrary, any encounter with an artwork requires the viewer to be open to the ways in which objects raise questions that cannot necessarily be answered by paying strict attention only to the immediate historical context of the work’s production. In the case of Radice, the method adopted in this chapter—which has sought to “anachronize” the artist’s work and emphasize the disjunctions between the present moment of interpretation and the past moment

152  Abstraction and Architecture of production—can serve to elucidate how, despite appearances and the statements of contemporary critics, abstract art was not necessarily and straightforwardly concomitant with the demands of Fascist ideology at the time of its initial exhibition. At the same time, it has been shown that in subsequent but partial reconstruction of such works the ideologies of the Italian Fascist state continue to cast long shadows over the contemporary moment.

Notes 1 Osvaldo Licini, “Natura di un discorso,” Corriere Padano, 9 October 1937, 3. Several publications cited in this chapter, particularly newspaper reviews of the artist’s work, were sourced directly from the press clippings collection in the Mario Radice archives of the Musei Civici in Como. In such cases, full publication details such as authors, titles, and page numbers were often not available. 2 Edward Lucie-Smith, Art of the 1930s: The Age of Anxiety (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1985), 70. 3 Some of the more important general studies of Italian abstraction include Aspetti del primo astrattismo italiano, exh. cat. (Monza: Galleria Civica d’arte moderna, 1969); Paolo F ­ ossati, L’'immagine sospesa. Pittura e scultura astratte in Italia, 1934–40 (Turin: E ­ inaudi, 1971); Elena Pontiggia, Il Milione e l’Astrattismo 1932–1938 (Milan: Electa, 1988); ­Nathalie Vernizzi, Razionalismo lirico: Ricerca sulla pittura astratta in Italia ­(Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro di Vanni Scheiwiller, 1994); Abstracta: Austria, G ­ ermania, Italia ­1919–1939. Die andere “entartete Kunst”——L’altra “arte degenerata,” exh. cat., Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bolzano, dual German and Italian text (Milan: Electa, 1997); Luciano Caramel, Kandinsky e l’Asttratismo in Italia 1930–1950, exh. cat., P ­ alazzo Reale, Milan (Milan: Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, 2007) and Maria Antonella Pelizzari, “Abstraction,” in Painting in Italy 1910s–1950s: Futurism, Abstraction, Concrete Art, exh. cat., Sperone Westwater, New York (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2015), 82–203. 4 Clement Greenberg, “Avant-garde and Kitsch,” in Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 20–21. 5 See Paola Pettenella, “Straniera, bolscevizzante e giudaica,” in Abstracta: Austria, G ­ ermania, Italia 1919–1939, 153–159. 6 See Luciano Caramel, “Gli astratti: Tra idea e prassi,” in Gli anni Trenta: Arte e cultura in Italia (Milan: Gabriele Mazzotta, 1982), 151. 7 Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 37–43. 8 Griffin, Modernism and Fascism. 9 D. N. Rodowick, The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 35; Didi-Huberman, The Surviving Image, 49. 10 David Forgacs, “Post-War Culture: Renewal or Legacy of the Past,” in Reconstructing the Past: Representations of the Fascist Era in Post-war European Culture, ed. Graham Bartram, Maurice Slawinski, and David Steel (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996), 50. 11 The pre-eminent scholar of Radice’s life and work is Luciano Caramel, the author of the 2002 catalogue raisonné of the artist. See Luciano Caramel, “Terragni e gli astrattisti comaschi,” Quadrante Lariano 1, no. 3 (May–June, 1968), 43–53; Caramel, “Le decorazioni di Mario Radice a Marcello Nizzoli per la Casa del Fascio di Como di Terragni,” in L’Europa dei razionalisti: pittura scultura architettura negli anni trenta, exh. cat., ­Palazzo Volpi, Como (Milan: Electa, 1989), 78–89; Caramel, “Il metro della polidimensionalità,” in Radice: Catalogo generale (Milan: Electa, 2002), 16–24; Caramel, “Settant’anni di pittura,” in Mario Radice: 1898 – 1987 Rettrospetiva, exh. cat., Palazzo del Broletto and Casa del Fascio, Como (Milan: Electa, 2002), 12–37. Other significant publications include Guido Ballo, Mario Radice (Turin: Industria Libraria Tipografica Editore, 1973), and Mario Radice: Architettura, numero, colore, exh. cat., Museo di arte modern e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2014).

Abstraction and Architecture  153 12 Caramel, “Il metro della polidimensionalità,” 10. 13 Caramel, “Settant’anni di pittura,” 13. 14 Caramel, “Il metro della polidimensionalità,” 11. 15 Amedée Ozenfant and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, La peinture moderne (Paris: Les Editions G. Cres & Cie, 1925). Quoted in Ballo, Mario Radice, 22. 16 Ballo, Mario Radice, 23. 17 See Matila C. Ghyka, The Golden Number, Pythagorean Rites and Rhythms in the Development of Western Civilisation, trans. Jon E. Graham (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2016). 18 David Rifkind, “Furnishing the Fascist Interior: Giuseppe Terragni, Mario Radice and the Casa del Fascio,” Architectural Research Quarterly 10, no. 2 (2006), 162. 19 Mario Radice, “Risposta a Soffici: Pittura moderna,” Libro e Moschetto, 5 September 1942, 3. Reprinted in Ballo, Mario Radice, 152. 20 Edoardo Persico, “Mistica dell’Europa” (1934), in Destino e modernità. Scritti d’arte 1929–1935, ed. Elena Pontiggia (Milan: Medusa Edizioni, 2001), 159. 21 Léger’s work was exhibited at the Milione gallery in late 1932. See Fernand Léger, “Risposta di Léger al referendum sull’arte astratta, in Cahiers d’art N. 3 6. e année, 1931,” Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, no. 4 (1932), n.p. 22 Piero Maria Bardi, “Fine della Scultura e della Pittura?” Quadrante III, nos. 27–28 (July– August 1935), 49. 23 Oreste Bogliardi, Virginio Ghiringelli, and Mario Reggiani, “Dichiarazione degli espositori della prima collettiva di pittori astratti,” manifesto, November 1934, Milan, in Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia: Manifesti, polemiche, documenti. Dal Novecento ai dibattiti sulla figura e sul monumentale 1925–1945, vol. 3, bk. 1, ed. Paola Barocchi (Turin: ­Giulio Einaudi editore, 1990), 318. 24 “Dichiarazioni di A. A. Soldati,” Il Milione, no. 37, 20 February 1935, n.p.; Fausto Melotti, [untitled statement], Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, no. 40 (10 May 1935), n.p. 25 Mario Radice, Memorie del primo astrattismo italiano degli anni ’30 e ’40 (Lugano: Edizioni Pantarei, 1979), 17–19, 23–25. 26 Alberto Sartoris, “Mario Radice,” Origini 4, nos. 3–4 (January–February 1940), 6. 27 Radice, Memorie del primo astrattismo italiano degli anni ’30 e ’40, 22; Barbara Radice, “Mario Radice: Astratto per sempre” (interview with Mario Radice) Modo, no. 39 (1981), 77. 28 Carlo Belli, Kn (1935) (Milan: Vanni Scheiwiller, 1972), 169–170. 29 Bogliardi, Ghiringelli, and Reggiani, “Dichiarazione degli espositori della prima collettiva di pittori astratti,” in Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 319. 30 Melotti, “Introduzione,” n.p. 31 Gustavo Barela, “Esegesi dell’arte moderna,” Critica fascista 10, no. 17 (1932), 338. 32 Belli, Kn, 208, 217. 33 See Golan, Muralnomad. 34 Mario Tinti, “Orientazioni: Scultura e pittura nell’architettura moderna,” Casabella 4, no. 6 (1931), 53. 35 See Bruno Moretti, “La nuova Sede dell’Università Cattolica,” L’Italia (October 8, 1932). Quoted in Richard A. Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 333. 36 Laura Malvano, Fascismo e politica dell’immagine (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1988), 49. 37 Mario Sironi et al., “Manifesto della pittura murale,” in La Colonna (December, 1933). Reprinted and translated in Mario Sironi et al., “Manifesto of Mural Painting” (1933), Art in Theory: 1900–1990, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Cambridge: B ­ lackwell, 1993), 409. 38 See “La pittura murale e la scultura decorativa,” in Quinta Triennale di Milano, ­C atalogo ufficiale (Milan, 1933), 65. 39 See Mario Sironi, “Pittura murale,” Arca 3, no, 1 (1932). Quoted in Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 131. 40 Roberto Papini, “La V Triennale a Milano. Ispezione alle arti,” Emporium (1933), 351. See also “La pittura murale e la scultura decorativa,” in Quinta Triennale di Milano, Catalogo ufficiale (Milan, 1933) 65.

154  Abstraction and Architecture 41 Gino Severini, “Pittura murale: sua estetica e suoi mezzi,” (1927) in Ragionamenti sulle arti figurative (Milan: 1936) 75 ff. Quoted in Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 275. See also Gino Severini, “Idolatria dell’arte e decadenza del quadro,” in Critica Fascista, no. 15 (1927). Quoted in Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, ed. Barocchi, 21–23. 42 Fillia, “La nuova architettura e la plastica murale,” in Fillia, Gli ambienti della Nuova Architettura (Turin: UTET, 1935), 269–270. Quoted in Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo, exh. cat., Mole Antonelliana, Turin, ed. Crispolti (Turin: 1980), 534. 43 Gino Ghiringelli, “Pitture murali nel Palazzo della Triennale,” in Quadrante 1, no. 2 (1933), 8. See Bossaglia, Il Novecento Italiano (1979), 157–159. 44 See Crispolti, “Settant’anni di pittura,” 13. 45 Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, no. 39 (1935), n.p. Quoted in Aspetti del primo astrattismo italiano, exh. cat. (Monza: Galleria Civica d’arte Moderna, 1969), 35, n. 70. 46 Gruppo 7, “Architecture,” (1926) trans. Ellen Shapiro, Oppositions 6 (Fall 1976), 90. 47 Etlin, Modernism in Italian architecture, 1890–1940, 254. 48 Alberto Sartoris, “Tradizione e funzionalismo,” Quadrante, nos. 35–36 (October 1936). 30. 49 Giuseppe Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” Quadrante, nos. 35–36 (October 1936), 5–27. 50 Caramel, Mario Radice: Catalogo generale, 118–119, 122–123, 125–126, 128, 346–347. 51 Benito Mussolini, “Il 1934,” in Popolo d’Italia, 2 January 1934. Reprinted in Scritti e Discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 9 (Milan: Ulrich Hoepli, 1934), 8. 52 Benito Mussolini, “La festa del lavoro” (21 April 1934), in Scritti e Discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 9, 50. 53 Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile, “Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism,” in A Primer of Italian Fascism, ed. and trans. Jeffrey Schnapp (Lincoln: University of N ­ ebraska Press, 2000), 53. 54 Mussolini and Gentile, “Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism,” 63. 55 Caramel, “Il metro della polidimensionalità,” 16–24. 56 Caramel, “Abstract Art of the Thirties,” in Italian Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1900–1988, ed. Emily Braun (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1989), 190. 57 See Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, 235–236. 58 Dennis Doordan, Building Modern Italy: Italian architecture, 1914–1936 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988), 138–139. 59 Mario Radice, “Le Decorazioni,” Quadrante, nos. 35–36 (October, 1936), 33. 60 Mussolini and Gentile, “Foundations and Doctrine,” 47. 61 Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” 27. 62 Radice, “Le Decorazioni,” 33. 63 Giuseppe Terragni, letter to P. M. Bardi, August 14, 1936, quoted in Alberto ­L ongatti, “Gli uomini, i fatti, i luoghi, le idee,” in Mario Radice: 1898–1987 retrospettiva, exh. cat., Palazzo del Broletto and Casa del Fascio, Como (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2002), 38. 64 Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” 6, 11. 65 Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” 6. 66 Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” 5–6. 67 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), 187. 68 See Caramel, “Le decorazioni di Mario Radice a Marcello Nizzoli per la Casa del Fascio di Como di Terragni,” 78–89. 69 Rifkind, “Furnishing the Fascist Interior,” 161; Thomas Schumacher, Surface and Symbol: Giuseppe Terragni and the Achitecture of Italian Rationalism (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991), 163. 70 Benito Mussolini, “Sintesi del regime” (18 March 1934), Scritti e Discorsi di Benito ­M ussolini, vol. 9, 42–43. 71 Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” 15. 72 Terragni, “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como,” 21. 73 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 121. 74 Cesare Cattaneo and Mario Radice, “Progetto di Fontana per il Piazzale Corsica in ­Camerlata.” Unpublished manuscript, 1935, Carlo Belli Papers, Archive of the Trento and Rovereto Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rovereto, Italy.

Abstraction and Architecture  155 75 Marinetti, “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” (1909), in Umbro Apollonio, Futurist Manifestos (New York: Viking Press, 1973), 20–21. 76 Marinetti, “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” 23. 77 Antonio Sant’Elia, “Manifesto of Futurist Architecture” (1913), in Apollonio, Futurist Manifestos, 160. 78 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning (London: The Architectural Press, 1971) quoted in John Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy (­London: Sage, 2007), 32. 79 Neil Jackson, “Where Now The Architect?” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 13 (2003), 208. 80 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (New York: Praeger, 1959), quoted in ­Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (­London: Penguin, 1988), 167. 81 Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 35–36. 82 Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), quoted in Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 37. 83 Cattaneo and Radice, “Progetto di Fontana,” 1. 84 Cattaneo and Radice, “Progetto di Fontana,” 16; Municipio di Como - Ufficio Urbanistica, “Piano regolatore di massima edilizio e di ampliamento di Como,” 15 November 1937, 19, Rete Archivi Piani urbanistici. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.rapu.it/ricerca/ scheda_piano.php?id_piano=195 85 Richard Vahrenkamp, “Motorization and Autobahn Projects in Germany and Europe in the Interbellum,” Working Paper in the History of Mobility, No. 15, 2009. Accessed 10 April 2010. www.vahrenkamp.org/WP15_Autobahn_Interbellum.pdf. 86 Cattaneo and Radice, “Progetto di Fontana,” 2. 87 Cattaneo and Radice, “Progetto di Fontana,” 5. 88 “Le novità alla Triennale. Una fontana monumentale,” Il Popolo d’Italia (Milan), 29 May 1936, 4. 89 “Esordio d’una fontana al Parco,” Corriere della sera (Milan), 7 June 1936. 90 “Il Re consacrerà domani alla VI Triennale di Milano i nuovi aspetti dell’arte decorativa del tempo di Mussolini. L’Ordinamento delle Mostre e la partecipazione delle Nazioni straniere,” Ambrosiano, 30 May 1936, 4. 91 Quoted in Silvia Danesi, “Cesare Cattaneo: The Como Group—Neoplatonism and Rational Architecture,” Lotus 16 (1977), 103. 92 Danesi, “Cesare Cattaneo,” 103. 93 Quoted in Danesi, “Cesare Cattaneo,” 103. 94 Pettenella, “Straniera, bolscevizzante e giudaica,” 153–159; Crispolti, Il Mito della macchina e altri temi del futurismo (Trapani: Celebes, 1969), 252, 795. 95 Ornella Selvafolta, “Cattaneo e Radice, percorsi in comune,” in Archipittura: Interrelazioni fra le arti a Como nell’eta del razionalismo (Lipomo: Cesarenani, 2005), 55. 96 See Mostra coloniale celebrativa della vittoria imperiale: Catalogo generale (Como: Villa Olmo, 1937). The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was also celebrated in a panel inscribed with a speech given by Mussolini on the occasion of the African invasion, and installed in the Casa del Fascio in 1937. See Caramel, Radice: Catalogo generale, 347. 97 Mario Radice and Manlio Rho, “Sala Medaglie d’oro,” unpublished manuscript, 1937. Quoted in Caramel, Radice: Catalogo generale, 349. 98 Richard J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010), 248. 99 Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of C ­ alifornia Press, 2004), 126. 100 Flaminio Tamberi, “La mostra dell’Impero: Quasi un riassunto,” La Provincia di Como, 30 June 1937, 6. See also “Sala R,” Mostra coloniale celebrativa della vittoria imperiale, 29. 101 J. Laplanche and J. -B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald ­Nicholson-Smith (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974), 431–432. 102 See Rosalind Krauss, “Entropy,” in Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, Formless: A User’s Guide (New York: Zone, 1997), 75–76. 103 Vernizzi, Razionalismo lirico, 241. See also Corrado Maltese, Storia dell’arte in Italia, 1785–1943 (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), 422. 104 See Emilio Gentile, “Fascism as Political Religion,” Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990).

156  Abstraction and Architecture 05 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, 12–13, 122. 1 106 See Ben-Ghiat, “Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1 ­ 930–50,” 627–665; and David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 107 Giuseppe Pagano, “Tre anni di architettura in Italia,” Casabella 110 (1937), 2–5. Quoted in Sergio Poretti, La Casa del Fascio di Como (Rome: Carocci, 1998) 111, n. 23. 108 Peter Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques (New York: Monacelli Press, 2003), 37. 109 Barbara Radice, “A 20th Century Artist,” Domus 855 (January 2003), 24. 110 Caramel, Radice: Catalogo generale, 123. 111 Caramel, “Terragni e gli astrattisti comaschi,” 51. 112 Umberto Eco, “The Open Work in the Visual Arts,” in The Open Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) 84–104. 113 Eco, “Openness, Information, Communication,” in The Open Work, 83. 114 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 29–108. 115 See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1992) and Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 116 See Paul De man, “Literary History and Literary Modernity,” Daedalus 99, no. 2 (1970), 400. 117 See Didi-Huberman, “Before the Image, Before Time,” 37–38. 118 Caramel, “Terragni e gli astrattisti comaschi.” 119 Caramel, “Settant’anni di pittura,” 23. 120 Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959), 734. I would like to thank Julian Stallabrass for bringing this text to my attention. 121 Diane Ghirardo, “Terragni, Conventions, and the Critics,” in Critical Architecture and Contemporary Culture, eds. William J. Lillyman, Marilyn F. Moriarty, and David J. Neuman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 91–103. 122 Mario Radice, “Conversazioni con M. R.,” interview by Angelo Maugeri. Accessed 10 April 2010. www.edixxon.com/radice/02_conversazioni/htx2485.html. See also Luigi Cavadini, La Fontana di Camerlata (Como: Archivio Cattaneo, 2012), 35. 123 “Le novità alla Triennale. Una fontana monumentale,” Il Popolo d’Italia (Milan), 29 May 1936. 124 See Vahrenkamp, “Motorization and Autobahn Projects,” 13. 125 Paul Virilio, Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology (Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2006), 90. 126 Radice, “Conversazioni con M. R.”. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.edixxon.com/ radice/02_conversazioni/htx5355.html. 127 See Ettore Meroni, “E la fontana di Camerlata: lasciateci almeno quella!” La Provincia di Como, 10 May 2008. See Comune di Como, “Rassegna stampa,” no. 2164, 10 May 2008. Accessed 17 February 2019. http://rassegnastampa.comune.como.it/archivio/2008/05_ maggio/10/04%20-%20fontana%20di%20camerlata.pdf 1 28 Antonio Marino, “Fontana di Camerlata, un ‘sacrilegio’ spostarla,” La Provincia di Como 2 May 2008. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/ Cara%20provincia/7260/. 1 29 Giugno73 [pseud.], “Crepe sulla fontana: Allarme a Camerlata” (online reader comment), La Provincia di Como, 29 April 2010. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/Cronaca/253548/. 1 30 Colombo Severino, “Como ricorda Radice,” Corriere della Sera, 1 December 2002, 59. 131 Maria Vittoria Capitanucci, “Mario Radice: Retrospettiva,” Abitare, no. 426 (March 2003), 158. 132 See Caramel, Radice: Catalogo generale, 131. 133 See “Cosa dice la legge contro l’apologia del fascismo,” Il Post, 13 September 2017. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.ilpost.it/2017/09/13/camera-approvato-apologia-fascismo/. 134 For a photograph of the reconstructed mural see Painting in Italy 1910s–1950s, 157, ill. 117.

Abstraction and Architecture  157 135 Theodor Adorno, “What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?” in Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, trans. and ed. Geoffrey Hartman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 117. 136 Adorno, “What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?” 117. 137 See Archipittura: Interrelazioni fra le arti a Como nell’eta del razionalismo, exh. cat., Pinacoteca comunale di Como, Como (Lipomo: Cesarenani, 2005). 138 Archipittura, 92. 139 Sergio Beretta, email to author, 17 January, 2018. 140 Giuliana Pieri, “The Destiny of the Art and Artefacts,” in The Cult of the Duce: ­M ussolini and the Italians (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 235. 141 See “Sacrario di Affile, condannati per apologia del fascismo il sindaco e due assessori. Anpi: ‘Ora si demolisca’,” La repubblica, 7 November 2017. Accessed 4 January 2019. http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/11/07/news/sacrario_gerarca_fascista_graziani_ condannati_il_sindaco_e_due_assessori_di_affile-180494086/?refresh_ce. 142 See Guido Capizzi, “Approvato dalla Camera il progetto di legge sul reato di apologia del ­fascismo,” La citta futura, 23 September 2017. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.lacittafutura.it/ interni/approvato-dalla-camera-il-progetto-di-legge-sul-reato-di-apologia-del-fascismo. 143 Rachele Ferrario, “Como: Quando i pittori svelano la loro anima d’ architetti,” Corriere della Sera, 19 June 2005, 34. 144 Massimo Carboni, “Inside out. (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy),” Artforum International, 1 October 1 1993. Accessed 20 February 20 2019. www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Inside+out.%22+(Museo+d%27Arte+Contemporanea+Luigi+­Pecci %2C+Prato%2C+Italy)-a014559570. 145 Ferdinando Taviani, “Cose dell’altro mondo: l’arte figurativa che fa teatro in Mauri,” in Fabio Mauri: Opere e Azioni 1954–1994, exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Roma, Rome (Milan: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, 1994), 39. 146 Giulio Carlo Argan, “Fabio Mauri” (1971), in Fabio Mauri: Opere e Azioni 1954–1994, 285. 147 Krystyna von Henneberg “Monuments, Public Space, and the Memory of Empire in Modern Italy,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 16, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2004), 37. 148 Alexander Cook “The Use and Abuse of Historical Reenactment,” Criticism 46, no. 3 (Summer 2004), 492. 149 Argan, “Fabio Mauri,” 285.

5 Conclusion Recreations and the Fascist Age

Conventional histories of modern art have tended to emphasize the continuity between various forms of innovative, avant-garde practice from the 1860s up until the late 20th century.1 Although the assumed preeminence of the idea of the avant-garde experienced a short interregnum during the historicist 1980s, in recent years it has been replaced by a concept of “contemporaneity,” which—in spite of its often-vaunted distinction from earlier 20th-century practices—is similarly wedded to the concept of innovation at the level of technique and subject matter.2 Another narrative of this era, however, could tell a very different story—one which strings together the various repetitions which have marked the history of modern and contemporary art. This might begin with neoclassicism in the late 18th century, before moving on to discuss Pre-Raphaelite historicism in the 19th century, the “return to order” movement of Europe between the wars, followed by the so-called neo-avant-garde of post–World War II, and the “retro” postmodernism of the 1980s. The periods that have previously been privileged in art history, such as the 20th-century historical avant-gardes, the late 19th-century French revolutions in painting from Manet to Cézanne, and the ­A merican postwar emergence of large-scale abstract painting, would in this narrative be seen as the exceptions: the points in history where returns did not take place and were therefore anomalous within the broader trajectory of modern and contemporary art. In recent years the art world’s most noteworthy examples of returns have been the numerous historical art exhibitions restaged at various venues across the world. Although earlier examples of reconstructed exhibitions existed—such as the Los ­A ngeles County Museum of Art’s “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany” of 1991—the reconstruction of the 1969 “When Attitudes ­B ecome Form” exhibition at the Ca’ Corner della Regina in 2013; The Jewish Museum’s 2014 remake of a 1966 exhibition “Other Primary Structures”; and the Fondazione ­Prada’s 2018 “Post Zang Tumb Tuuum. Art Life Politics: Italia 1918–1943” which re-­ presented Fascist-era exhibitions, are all signs of a growing interest in the recreation of modern and contemporary art displays. Critical responses to this phenomenon have been varied. Although Hal Foster has argued that the restaging of historical exhibitions “cannot help but derealize the art” in a manner that gets in the way of “coming to terms with the past,” Catherine Spencer insists that such recreations “can challenge our conventional definition of a ‘historical’ exhibition, and prompt us to create alternative histories.”3 In the act of doubling which recreation inevitably entails, counterposing an older or original phenomenon to its more recent and inevitably different counterpart, “recuration”—as this phenomenon is sometimes described— has its historical parallel in the reiterations of earlier art encountered throughout the many works discussed in this book.

Conclusion  159 There are significant differences between the works of artists who consciously drew upon or referred to earlier art movements in their practice and the recent rise of this approach to curating. Nevertheless, in their continual reversion to the art of the past, whether to folk art techniques of textile production, the dramatic scenarios of baroque and mannerist painting, or the classical traditions of design embodied in the idea of divine proportion, the artists who form the principal focus of this study re-proposed techniques and concepts with a strong pedigree in the ancient and early modern periods in a manner which may be productively compared with the contemporary recuration tendency. In the case of “Other Primary Structures” for example, the curator Jens Hoffman sought not simply to imitate the earlier exhibition (partly through reinstallation of actual works but also through large-scale photographs of the original installation) but also to improve upon it, updating it with new and added works for a new era.4 Similarly, artists in the 1920s and 1930s drew on the historical models of the past while making those models relevant to a contemporary context. This commonality between 20th-century art and 21st-century curating lends support to the idea that the broader history of modern and contemporary art, contrary to how it is so often characterized, is constituted by the phenomenon of return rather than rupture. The critical leverage which this unconventional reading of the last 150 years of art provides the historian is the equation it makes of the idea of a recreation or a restaging of art as happens within the curatorial domain, and the art historical concept of revival which animated a great deal of European art between the wars. If we understand the work of artists such as Depero, Scipione, and Radice not within the concept of rebirth—as writers such as Mark Antliff and Roger Griffin would have it—but rather within the concept of recreation we will have a better purchase on the specificity of the works under examination. During the principal period under examination in this book, from 1917 to 1937, there were plenty of artists and critics arguing for a seamless or continuous merging between the modern and the higher verities of a golden age that had been achieved in the distant past, whether of the Greco-Roman classical tradition, the early or high Renaissance, or even in some cases less highly regarded traditions including Etruscan art and the Byzantine era. The artists who are discussed in this book in depth, however, produced works that revealed deep fissures within the presumed unfolding of the palingenetic hypothesis and its application to artistic practice within the Fascist era. Each of the three artists who have been discussed in this study produced works that conform to Sven Lüttiken’s description of the cinematic remake: “one that sees the ‘original’ not as a Vorbild to be followed… but as something to be questioned and perverted.”5 Depero, Scipione, and Radice— wittingly or no—each provided a reading of the past that, far from aiming at a rebirth of a prior state of affairs, held the idea of the differences between the past and present and their interconnection up to scrutiny. In Chapter 2, which focused on the cloth pictures which Fortunato Depero produced during the 1920s, I showed how the futurist artist brought together the aesthetics of modernist fine art with folk artisanal practices in a way that tended to make both look out of sync rather than suggest that their widely different temporal registers could be meaningfully synthesized. In Chapter 3, which examined paintings by ­Scipione from the early 1930s, I demonstrated how his overheated, neo-baroque scenes of hybrid creatures and solicitous prostitutes served neither to eulogize the great traditions of Italian art, nor to celebrate the new beginnings promised by F ­ ascism but to identify a recent past made strange and alien by the destructive changes wrought

160  Conclusion by Mussolini. In Chapter 4 I argued that Mario Radice, in his perforated murals produced for the Fascist headquarters in Como in the late 1930s, opened his geometric abstract frescos to classically inspired modernist architecture so that it became integrated with its physical environment, while also opening his art to forms of material and historical contingency that outstripped the Fascist dream of palingenesis. In its focus on three important strands of 20th-century avant-garde art, this book has sought to reorient our understanding of the relationship between art and politics under the conditions of Italian Fascism and to consider how movements like futurism, expressionism, and abstraction—which may have had their origins in a particular city or country but soon found followers across the European continent and beyond— were affected by a diverse range of historical events that took place between the wars. If the first two of these movements had already been frequently associated with fascism in the art historical literature, whether in Marinetti’s fervid passion for the ideologies of Mussolini or the early Nazi enthusiasm for the work of expressionist painters in Germany, rarely has abstraction been openly conceived as a tool of a fascist state. At the same time, as I have argued throughout this book, the close fit between the artifacts produced by these artists is troubled by the singularity of artworks which do not readily conform to what Fascist cultural policy officially prescribed for individual artists and artworks. If each of the three artists put great store in making connections with the hallowed and celebrated masterpieces of the past, the relationship between past and present embodied in these works was often far removed from the fusion of past and present which many of Mussolini’s ideologues had in mind. Rather than a mere updating of ancient practices to adapt to modern conditions, a return of the past in order to attack the decadence of the present, or even a productive merging of two temporal registers, each of these artists produced a critical relationship between past and present in their work which exceeded particular claims made for art under the Fascist regime. In this sense their work aligns with a premise underpinning the exhibition When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013 articulated by one of the curators, Germano Celant. Speaking of the restaging of the 1969 exhibition, which took place not in its original venue at the Bern Kunsthalle but rather in the Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice, Celant argued that the re-presentation of the works along with elements of the original architecture within the baroque space of the Venice venue avoided a “coincidence and identity of the exhibition with itself” through a “linguistic wrong-footing” which aimed to “stimulate comment and different interpretations.”6 Although Celant argued for seeing this dissonance as tantamount to that between a readymade object and its exhibition space—such as those produced by Duchamp in the early 20th century—insofar as the art that forms the subject of this study is concerned, I argue that in spite of being far removed from the readymade, each work produces a similarly probing disjunction between the historical periods to which it refers, be that ancient, early modern or baroque, and its re-presentation in a modern context. In such cases, it is not only the historical material itself that comes under scrutiny but also the contemporary moment in which it is re-presented and indeed the entire process of temporal interconnection between different historical phases or moments. However, the fragility of the critical potential of such a gesture is evident, for example, in how the tensions within Depero’s work prior to 1925 subsequently collapse into a more dogmatic form of ideological or commercial propaganda, and the fact that in the later reconstructions of Radice’s abstract installations

Conclusion  161 the “­counter-memorial” function of the work—its capacity to draw attention to the historical and ideological conditions of Fascism and abstract art’s complicity in that condition—was significantly attenuated by the omission of important details.7 Three years after the 1981 publication of “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting,” Benjamin H. D. Buchloh added a postscript to his essay when it was included in the anthology Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation. In the postscript he wrote that his original argument—that 1970s neoexpressionist paintings were comparable to works of the “return to order” movement of the 1920s which revealed “the inherent authoritarian tendency of the myth of a new classicism”—was flawed.8 At issue was what Buchloh described as the limited value of a discussion which viewed the present in terms of a legacy of unresolved problems from a former era. He was not withdrawing his criticisms of either “return to order” or neoexpressionist painting but rather arguing that such art should be seen in relationship not to the past but rather to the particular conditions of the present. There is significant disagreement between the thesis of the present study and that of Buchloh’s original essay from over three decades ago—that artists who rejected the avant-garde after 1915 were actively softening up viewers for a nascent totalitarianism. However, given the issues raised by recent reconstructions of Fascist-era installations discussed in Chapter 4, the increasingly strident criticism of art exhibitions and historiography in Italy covering this period (with the 2013 exhibition “The Thirties: The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism” described by Ara Merjian as demonstrating a “blithe disregard for ideological implication” for failing to come to terms with the political circumstances in which the works were created), and what Fabio Benzi has called the “skillful historical and critical mystification” perpetrated by writers from the 1940s to the present day regarding a prominent Italian artist working during the years of the regime, it is appropriate to conclude by adopting the principle within Buchloh’s postscript and direct attention to the particular conditions that affect the present historiography and exhibition of the material covered in this book.9 The contemporary situation in Italy with regard to the memorialization of art and culture in the Fascist era is extremely fraught. As Joshua Arthurs points out in his analysis of the fierce debates concerning the best way to maintain the sculptural and architectural site once known as the Foro Mussolini—which was built between 1928 and 1938 and is still replete with Fascist iconography—“the voices most eager to ‘remove politics’ from the discussion tend to belong to Mussolini’s ideological heirs.”10 Even further, a division of the pro-fascist political party CasaPound have held events in the capital of Trentino celebrating the career of Fortunato Depero, claiming the artist as one of their own (conveniently overlooking the artist’s 1945 repudiation of Fascism) and arguing that those who oppose their activities are against “those who think and act freely.”11 Conversely, as D. Medina Lasansky has argued, although the current prevalence of mediaeval and Renaissance festivals held throughout Italy have a significant connection to Fascist ideas of history regarding the “racist dialogue of national superiority,” discussion of these events in the public domain avoids acknowledging the important role Fascist cultural officialdom played in shaping the enduring form which these touristic performances have taken.12 As Lasansky concludes, the result is to create a memory of the past that suppresses the existence of Fascism. The project of this book has been to connect works created by Italian modern artists in the age of Fascism to the political circumstances from which they emerged. As I have demonstrated, in many respects the works of Depero, Scipione, and Radice

162  Conclusion were in line with expectations of artistic practice that were espoused at the highest levels of the Fascist hierarchy. At the same time, by emphasizing the tensions, disjunctions, and even derangement of these expectations which the works embodied prior to, during, and after the years of the Fascist government I have sought to complicate the straightforward association of these artists’ practice with the ideologies of the regime. In so doing I have argued for an understanding of history in which several preconceptions about 20th-century art have been overturned. The critical potential of modern art, as we have seen, is not always predicated upon its rejection of the past but rather can emerge from an understanding of both the continuities and breaks between the present day and that which has gone before. Equally, an art history which abandons the idea of a strictly delimited historical period and is open to what precedes and what follows any moment in time, stands to gain a far richer and more complex understanding of any particular artist or group of art works. Dwelling on what came before any particular historical period and re-presenting, revising, and rethinking the past are important elements of what has been described as the “return to order” period of the 1920s and 1930s and a recent trend toward restaging of landmark modern and contemporary art exhibitions. Such restagings, to be sure, have the capacity to provide a critical lens through which to look at the past.13 They nevertheless also have the potential to restate some of the more pernicious mythologies of recent history, myths that haunt a contemporary moment in which the return to a familiar past seems to offer the only hope to generations disenfranchised by an increasingly rapacious modernity. Artists such as the ones examined in this book, who grappled with this simultaneous distance and proximity of the past, were therefore addressing one of the most urgent problems faced by our contemporary culture.

Notes 1 Hunter, Jacobus, and Wheeler, Modern Art. 2 See Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2011). 3 Hal Foster, Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency (London: Verso, 2015), 131; ­Catherine Spencer, “Making it New: The Trend for Recreating Exhibitions,” Apollo 181, no. 631 (May 2015), 24. 4 See Jens Hoffman, “Another Introduction,” in Other Primary Structures, exh. cat., Jewish Museum, New York (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), n.p. 5 Sven Lütticken, “Planet of the Remakes,” New Left Review, no. 25 (January–February, 2004), 116. 6 Germano Celant, “A Readymade: When Attitudes Become Form,” in When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969, Venice 2013, exh. cat, Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2013), 391. 7 For a fascinating recent discussion of the concept of the “counter-memorial” see Veronica Tello, Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). 8 Buchloh, “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting,” in Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation, eds. Brian Wallis and Marcia Tucker (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), 111, 132–134. The essay was originally published without the postscript in October, no. 16 (Spring 1981), 39–68. 9 Ara Merjian, “The Thirties: The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism,” Frieze, no. 154 (April 2013). Accessed 20 February 2019, https://frieze.com/article/thirties-arts-italy-beyond-­ fascism; Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due guerre, 257.

Conclusion  163 10 Joshua Arthurs, “Fascism as ‘Heritage’ in Contemporary Italy,” in Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, eds., Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe Veltri (London: Routledge, 2010), 124. See also Hannah Malone, “Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in Contemporary Italy” Modern Italy 22, no. 4 (2017), 445–470. 11 Filippo Castaldini, quoted in Sandra Matuella, “CasaPound, prima conferenza blindata,” Il Trentino, 13 November 2013. Accessed 19 February 2019. www.giornaletrentino.it/ cronaca/trento/casapound-prima-conferenza-blindata-1.668099. 12 Lasansky, “Tableau and Memory,”, 44. 13 An example of such an exhibition, which opened as the writing of this book was in its final stages, was provided by Post Zang Tumb Tuuum. Art Life Politics: Italia 1918 – 1943 (Milan: Prada Foundation, 2018).

Bibliography

“Arazzi di Depero, Theatre de la Fourmie, Paris, Marinetti esalta Depero a Parigi.” La Liberta (Trento), 23 June 1925 [Dep.8.1.1.328]. “Carnevale e morto.” Il Messaggero, 18 February 1923 [Dep.8.1.1.115]. “Case d’abitazione a Milano.” Architettura 15, no. 9 (1936): 437–440. “Correzioni ed aggiunte al Catalogo della Prima Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale.” Travaso delle idee, 18 January 1931. “Cosa dice la legge contro l’apologia del fascismo.” Il Post, 13 September 2017. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.ilpost.it/2017/09/13/camera-approvato-apologia-fascismo/ “Cronache d’Arte. Depero.” L’Avanti, 12 March 1926 [Dep.8.1.2. 49]. “Dichiarazioni di A. A. Soldati.” Il Milione, no. 37, 20 February 1935, n.p. “Esordio d’una fontana al Parco.” Corriere della Sera (Milan), 7 June 1936. “Evviva la faccia loro…: Divagazioni sul secondo Rinasicmento artistico.” Il Piccolo Martedi, 1925 [Dep. 8.1.1.324]. “Il Re consacrerà domani alla VI Triennale di Milano i nuovi aspetti dell’arte decorativa del tempo di Mussolini. L’Ordinamento delle Mostre e la partecipazione delle Nazioni straniere.” Ambrosiano (Milano), 30 May 1936, 4. “Il vernissage della XVII Esposizione Biennale di Venezia.” La Tribuna, 3 May 1930, 3. “La pittura murale e la scultura decorativa.” In Quinta Triennale di Milano, Catalogo ufficiale (Milan, 1933), 65. “La prima dei ‘Balli plastici’ al Teatro dei Piccoli.” Corriere d’Italia, 16 April 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.47]. Le fortificazioni militari. “Dosso del Sommo.” Accessed 28 October 2014. www.fortificazioni. net/Trento/dosso_del_sommo.html. “Le novità alla Triennale. Una fontana monumentale.” Il Popolo d’Italia (Milan), 29 May 1936. “Sacrario di Affile, condannati per apologia del fascismo il sindaco e due assessori. Anpi: ‘Ora si demolisca’.” La repubblica, 7 November 2017. Accessed 4 January 2019. http://roma. repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/11/07/news/sacrario_gerarca_fascista_graziani_condannati_il_ sindaco_e_due_assessori_di_affile-180494086/?refresh_ce. “Sala R.” Mostra coloniale celebrativa della vittoria imperiale: Catalogo generale, 29. Como: Villa Olmo, 1937. Abstracta: Austria, Germania, Italia 1919–1939. Die andere “entartete Kunst”—L’altra “arte degenerata.” Exhibition catalog, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bolzano. Milan: Electa, 1997. Adam, Peter. Art of the Third Reich. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992. Adorno, Theodor. “What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?” In Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, translated and edited by Geoffrey Hartman, 114–129. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Agamben, Giorgio. The Church and the Kingdom. London: Seagull Books, 2012.

166 Bibliography Aguirre, Mariana. G. “Artistic Collaboration in Fascist Italy: Ardengo Soffici and Giorgio Morandi.” Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2008. Amato, Orazio. “Gli artisti romani alla Biennale di Venezia.” Capitolium 6, no. 12 (December 1930). Quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere, 108. Amigoni, Ferdinando. “Putting Ghosts to Good Use: Savinio, Bontempelli, Landolfi.” Italica 77, no. 1 (2000): 69–80. Aniante, “Pittura futurista depero.” Giornale d’Italia, 21–22 January 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.69]. Anonymous note, November 1930 (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno, ­Direzione generale di Pubblica, sicurezza, Atti speciali, busta 4). Quoted in Emilio Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 11, no. 2 (2006): 154. Antliff, Mark. Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilisation of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Antomarini, Brunella and Susan Stewart. “Introduzione.” In Scipione: Poesie e prose, edited by Brunella Antomarini and Susan Stewart, 7–12. Milan: Charta, 2001. Antonietta Raphaël: sculture – dipinti – disegni. Exhibition catalog, Galleria Ceribelli, ­B ergamo. Bergamo: Lubrina, 2003. Anzani, Giovanni and Carlo Pirovano. “La pittura del primo Novecento in Lombardia ­(1900–1945).” In La pittura italiana. Il Novecento, edited by Carlo Pirovano, 85–241. Milan: Electa, 1991. Appella, Giuseppe, ed. Scipione: Lettere a Falqui 1930–1933. Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1988. Appella, Giuseppe. Scipione: 306 disegni. Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1984. Archipittura: Interrelazioni fra le arti a Como nell’eta del razionalismo. Exhibition catalog, Pinacoteca comunale di Como, Como. Lipomo: Cesarenani, 2005. Argan, Giulio Carlo. “Fabio Mauri” (1971), in Fabio Mauri: Opere e Azioni 1954–1994, 285. Argan, Giulio Carlo. [Untitled essay]. In Mafai: Opere recente, n.p. Exhibition catalog. Rome: L’Attico, 1964. Armellini, Guido. Le immagini del fascismo nelle arti figurative. Milan: Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, 1980. Arthurs, Joshua. “Fascism as ‘Heritage’ in Contemporary Italy.” In Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, edited by Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe Veltri, 114–127. London: Routledge, 2010. Aspetti del primo astrattismo italiano. Exhibition catalog. Monza: Galleria Civica d’arte moderna, 1969. Atkinson, David. “Totalitarianism and the Street in Fascist Rome.” In Images of the Street: Planning, Identity and Control in Public Spaces, edited by Nicholas Fyfe, 13–30. London: Routledge, 1998. Austin, Linda, M. “Elaborations of the Machine: The Automata Ballets.” Modernism/­modernity 23, no. 1 (January 2016): 65–87. Baldacci, Paolo. “Scipione spartiacque tra due mondi.” In Scipione 1904–1933, 2007, 13–22. Baldacci, Paolo. De Chirico: The Metaphysical Period 1888–1919. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1997. Balla, Giacomo and Fortunato Depero. “Ricostruzione futurista dell’Universo” (1915). In ­Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo, edited by Giovanni Lista, 30–36. Milan: ­Abscondita, 2012. Ballo, Guido. Mario Radice. Turin: Industria Libraria Tipografica Editore, 1973. Bardi, Piero Maria. “Fine della Scultura e della Pittura?” Quadrante III, nos. 27–28, (July– August 1935): 49. Bardi, Piero Maria. “Mostre romane: L’arte sacra, Scipione e Mafai.” L’Ambrosiano 8, no. 269 (1930): 3. Barela, Gustavo. “Esegesi dell’arte moderna.” Critica fascista 10, no. 17 (1932): 338.

Bibliography  167 Barocchi, Paola, ed. Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia: Manifesti, polemiche, documenti. Dal Novecento ai dibattiti sulla figura e sul monumentale 1925–1945, vol. 3, bk. 1, Turin: ­Giulio Einaudi editore, 1990. Barocchi, Paola, ed. Testimonianze e polemiche figurative in Italia: Dal Divisionismo al Novecento. Messina and Florence: Casa Editrice G. D’Anna, 1974. Barnes, Albert C. “Giorgio de Chirico.” In Recent Paintings by Giorgio de Chirico. New York: Julien Levy Gallery, 1936. Reprinted and translated in Metafisica, nos., 7–8 (2008): 725–727. Barrès, Maurice. Greco ou Le secret de Tolède, 18th edition. Paris: Emile-Paul, Editeurs, 1912. Bartolini, Luigi. “Quinta lettera dalla Quadriennale.” Corriere Adriatico, 17 February 1931. Bartorelli, Guido. Numeri innamorati: Sintesi e dinamiche del secondo futurismo. Turin: Testo & Immagine, 2001. Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Baudelaire, Charles. “Women and Prostitutes.” In The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays by Charles Baudelaire, edited and translated by Jonathan Mayne, 34–40. London: Phaidon Press, 1964. Baxa, Paul. Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2010. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Belli, Carlo. “Memoria di Depero.” In Passamani, Fortunato Depero 1892–1960, XLVII– XLVIII. Belli, Carlo. Kn (1935), Milan: Vanni Scheiwiller, 1972. Belli, Gabriella. “Fonti del racconto popolare di Depero.” In Depero, Exhibition catalog, ­Museo Provinciale d’Arte di Trento. Milano: Electa, 1988, 206–209. Belli, Gabriella. DeperoFuturista. Milan: Skira, 1999. Belli, Gabriella. La Casa del Mago: Le Arti applicate nell’opera di Fortunato Depero ­1920–1942. Florence: Charta, 1992. Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino. “Piazza Navona” (1833). In Giuseppe Gioachino Belli: Sonetti, edited by Pietro Gibellini, 222. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1984. Bellonci, Goffredo. “In morte di Scipione.” L’Italia letteraria, 19 November 1933. Bellow, Juliet. Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde. ­Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Belting, Hans. Art History after Modernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Belzoni, Manlio. “Della mostra d’arte di Rovereto, e d’altre cose.” La Gazzetta del Turismo e dello Sport, 21 December, 1922 [Dep.8.1.1.120]. Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. “Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930–50.” The Journal of Modern History 67 (1995): 627–665 Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Benjamin, Walter. “N (Theoretics of Knowledge; Theory of Progress).” The Philosophical Forum 15, nos. 1–2 (Fall–Winter 1983–84): 1–40. Benzi, Fabio. Arte in Italia tra le due guerre. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013. Berghaus, Günter. Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996. Berghaus, Günter. Italian Futurist Theatre, 1909–1944. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Berman, Russell A. “Modern Art and Desublimation.” In Modern Culture and Critical Theory: Art, Politics, and the Legacy of the Frankfurt School, 70–98. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

168 Bibliography Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Penguin, 1988. Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Turn. New York: The Guilford Press, 1997. Bethke, Jennifer Ruth. “From Futurism to Neoclassicism: Temporality in Italian Modernism, 1916–1925.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2005. Biancale, Michele. “Problemi d’arte decorativa.” Unknown publication, May 1923 [Dep.8.1.2.118]. Bidou, Henri. “La semaine dramatique: A propos de ballets.” Feuilleton du Journal des débats, May 21, 1917. Quoted in Juliet Bellow. Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 122, no. 49. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Bindi, Gaia. “Scipione e i Salmi.” Commentari d’arte: rivista di critica e storia dell’arte 2, no. 3 (1996): 60–72. Bindi, Gaia. “Scipione poeta e pittore.” Bollettino dell’arte 81, no. 96–97 (1996): 135–170. Biro, Matthew. “Raoul Hausmann’s Revolutionary Media: Dada Performance, Photomontage and the Cyborg.” Art History 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 26–56. Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959. Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, 2nd edition. New York: ­Oxford University Press, 1997. Boccioni, Umberto. “Futurist Sculpture” (1912). In Futurism: An Anthology, edited by ­Lawrence S. Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, 113–119. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Bogliardi, Oreste, Virginio Ghiringelli, and Mario Reggiani. “Dichiarazione degli espositori della prima collettiva di pittori astratti.” Manifesto, November 1934, Milan. In Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 316–320. Bonesegale, Giovanna. “Verso un’arte ‘nuova e moderna’: le generazioni del dubbio.” In Roma 900: De Chirico, Guttuso, Capogrossi, Balla, Casorati, Sironi, Carrà, Mafai, Scipione e gli altri nelle Collezioni della Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, 131–146. Exhibition catalog, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Parma. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015. Borgogelli, Alessandra. “Scipione e la riscoperta del seicento.” In Scipione e la Scuola romana, edited by Anna Caterina Toni, 135–148. Rome: Multigrafica editore, 1989. Bossaglia, Rossana. Il “déco” italiano: fisonomia dello stile 1925 in Italia. Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1975. Bossaglia, Rossana. Il Novecento Italiano (1979). Milan: Charta, 1995. Bosworth, Richard J. B. Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915–1945. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Bosworth, Richard J. B. The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism. London: Arnold, 1998. Bosworth, Richard J. B. Mussolini. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010. Bottai, Giuseppe. “Risultanze dell’inchiesta sull’arte fascista.” Critica fascista 5, no. 4 (1927): 61–64. ­ ntiBraun, Emily. “Antonietta Raphael: Woman, Foreigner, Jew, Wife, Mother, Muse, and A Fascist.” In Mothers of Invention: Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture, edited by Robin Pickering-Iazzi, 166–174. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Braun, Emily. “Expressionism as Fascist Aesthetic.” Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 2 (April 1996): 283. Braun, Emily. “Kitsch and the Avant-Garde: The Case of de Chirico.” In Rethinking Art between the Wars: New Perspectives in Art History, edited by H.D. Christensen, Ǿ. Hjort, and N.M. Jensen, 73–90. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2001. Braun, Emily. “Sul Novecento e sulla Scuola Romana.” In Scuola romana: Artisti tra le due guerre, edited by Fagiolo dell’Arco and Valerio Rivosecchi, 209–214. Milan: Mazzotta, 1988.

Bibliography  169 Braun, Emily. Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Breton, André. “Le surréalism et le peinture.” La Révolution Surréaliste 2, no. 7 (15 June 1926): 4–6. Breton, André. Nadja. London: Penguin, 1999, 23, 24, 32 and 86. Brose, Margaret. “Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Sentimento del Tempo: Baroque Rome and the Experience of Time.” Pacific Coast Philology 21, nos. 1/2 (1986): 65–72. Bryson, Norman. Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting.” In Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation, edited by Brian Wallis and Marcia Tucker, 222–238. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984. Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting.” October, no. 16 (Spring 1981): 39–68. Caillois, Roger. Man and the Sacred. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Callari, Francesco. “L’arte di Gino Bonichi (Scipione).” Corriere Padano, 15 August 1935. Calvino, Italo. “Eugenio Montale, Forse un mattino andando.” In Letture montaliane in ­occasione dell’80° compleanno del poeta. Genoa: Bozzi, 1977, 37–45. Calvino, Italo. “Eugenio Montale, Forse un mattino andando” In Why Read the Classics? translated by Martin McLaughlin, 209–218. London: Jonathan Cape, 1999. Campanini, Paola. “Il ‘mondo meccano’ di Fortunato Depero: Storia e utopia dei Balli ­plastici.” Ariel, 2–3 (1993): 309. Campiglio, Paolo. Lucio Fontana: La scultura architettonica. Nuoro: Ilisso, 1995. Candido e Eliseo, [title unknown] Quadrivio 14 April 1935. Cannistraro, Philip V. and Brian R. Sullivan. Il Duce’s Other Woman. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1993. Cannistraro, Philip V. La fabbrica del consenso: fascismo e mass media. Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1975. Capitanucci, Maria Vittoria. “Mario Radice: Retrospettiva.” Abitare, no. 426 (March 2003): 158. Capizzi, Guido. “Approvato dalla Camera il progetto di legge sul reato di apologia del fascismo.” La citta futura, 23 September 2017. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.lacittafutura. it/interni/approvato-dalla-camera-il-progetto-di-legge-sul-reato-di-apologia-del-fascismo. Caramel, Luciano. “Abstract Art of the Thirties.” In Italian Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1900–1988, edited by Emily Braun, 187–194. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1989. Caramel, Luciano. “Gli astratti: Tra idea e prassi.” In Gli anni Trenta: Arte e cultura in Italia. Milan: Gabriele Mazzotta, 1982, 151–158. Caramel, Luciano. “Il metro della polidimensionalità.” In Radice: Catalogo generale. Milan: Electa, 2002, 16–24. Caramel, Luciano. “Le decorazioni di Mario Radice a Marcello Nizzoli per la Casa del Fascio di Como di Terragni.” In L’Europa dei razionalisti: pittura scultura architettura negli anni trenta, 78–89. Exhibition catalog, Palazzo Volpi, Como. Milan: Electa, 1989. Caramel, Luciano. “Settant’anni di pittura.” In Mario Radice: 1898–1987 Rettrospetiva, 12–37. Exhibition catalog, Palazzo del Broletto and Casa del Fascio, Como. Milan: Electa, 2002. Caramel, Luciano. “Terragni e gli astrattisti comaschi.” Quadrante Lariano 1, no. 3 (May– June, 1968): 51. Caramel, Luciano. Kandinsky e l’Asttratismo in Italia 1930–1950. Exhibition catalog, ­Palazzo Reale, Milan. Milan: Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, 2007. Caramel, Luciano. Mario Radice: Catalogo generale. Milan: Electa, 2002.

170 Bibliography Carboni, Massimo. “Inside out. Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy).” Artforum International, 1 October 1993. Accessed 20 February 2019. www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Inside+out.%22+(Museo+d%27Arte+Contemporanea+Luigi+Pecci%2C+­ Prato%2C+Italy)-a014559570. Carrà, Carlo. “Dello stato della pittura italiana.” In Pittura Metafisica. Florence: Vallecchi, 1919), Republished in Barocchi, Testimonianze e polemiche figurative in Italia, 401. Carrà, Carlo. “Le Arti – Depero.” L’Ambrosiano, May 1923 [Dep.8.1.1.237]. Carrà, Carlo. Pittura metafisica. Florence: Vallecchi, 1919. Cary, Joseph. Three Modern Italian Poets: Saba, Ungaretti, Montale. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Catherine Spencer, “Making it New: The Trend for Recreating Exhibitions.” Apollo 181, no. 631 (May 2015): 24. Cattaneo, Cesare and Mario Radice. “Progetto di Fontana per il Piazzale Corsica in ­Camerlata”. Unpublished manuscript, 1935, Carlo Belli Papers, Archive of the Trento and Rovereto Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rovereto, Italy. Cavadini, Luigi. La Fontana di Camerlata. Como: Archivio Cattaneo, 2012. Cecchi, Emilio. “La seconda Quadriennale d’arte nazionale” Circoli 5, no. 1 (March 1935): 274. Celant, Germano. “A Readymade: When Attitudes Become Form.” In When Attitudes ­Become Form: Bern 1969, Venice 2013, 389–392. Exhibition catalog, Ca’ Corner della Regina, ­Venice. Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2013. Celant, Germano. “Futurism as Mass Avant-Garde.” In Futurism and the International Avant-Garde, edited by Anne d’Harnancourt, 35–42. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1980. Cocteau, Jean. “Le Numéro Barbette.” La Nouvelle Revue Française 13, no. 154 (1926): 257–263. Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1965. Cook, Alexander. “The Use and Abuse of Historical Reenactment.” Criticism 46, no. 3 (­Summer 2004): 487–496. Costantini, Vincenzo. ‘L’arte applicata e le Biennali di Monza.” Arte pura e decorativa, no. 7 (July 1922). In Anty Pansera, Storia e cronaca della Triennale. Milan: Longanesi, 1978. Cowling, Elizabeth and Jennifer Mundy, eds. On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910–1930. London: The Tate Gallery, 1990. Craig, Edward. “The Actor and the Über=Marionette.” The Mask 1, no. 2 (April 1908): 3–15. Crispolti, Enrico. “Topografia, itinerari e tempi della ‘Scuola romana’.” In Scipione e la Scuola romana, edited by Anna Caterina Toni, 83–110. Rome: Multigrafica editore, 1989. Crispolti, Enrico. Il Mito della macchina e altri temi del futurismo. Trapani: Celebes, 1969. Croce, Benedetto. Scritti e discorsi politici (1943–1947), vol. 1, edited by Angela Carella. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1993. Crow, Thomas. Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris. New Haven: Yale University Press: 1985. Crowson, Lydia. “Cocteau and ‘Le Numéro Barbette’.” Modern Drama 19, no. 1 (1976): 79–87. Daly, Selena. Italian Futurism and the First World War. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2016. Danesi, Silvia. “Cesare Cattaneo: The Como Group—Neoplatonism and Rational Architecture.” Lotus 16 (1977): 89–121. Daval Béran, Diane. “‘D’APRES’ ovvero i grandi maestri riveduti e corretti.” In Il futuro alle spalle: Italia – Francia. L’arte tra le due guerre, edited by Federica Pirani, 123–126. Exhibition catalog, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Rome: Edizioni De Luca, 1998. Davis, Whitney. Queer Beauty: Sexuality and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Freud and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Bibliography  171 De Chirico, Giorgio. “La mania del Seicento.” Valori plastici 3, no. 3 (1921): 60–62. Quoted in Borgogelli, “Scipione e la riscoperta del seicento.” 137. De Chirico, Giorgio. “Prefazione.” In Giorgio de Chirico. Milan: Galleria Arte, 1921. Republished in Il meccanismo del pensiero: Critica, polemica, autobiografia 1911–1943, edited by Maurizio Fagiolo, 223. Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1985. De Chirico, Giorgio. “Raffaelo Sanzio” Il Convegno, no. 3, 1920. Quoted in Jennifer Mundy. “La Muta, after Raphael 1920.” In Cowling and Mundy, On Classic Ground: 75. De Chirico, Giorgio. L’Italia letteraria, 28 December 1930. Quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere, 109. De Chirico, Giorgio. Letter to Paul Guillaume, 18 September 1915. In La Pittura ­Metafisica, 115. Exhibition catalog, Venice, Istituto di Cultura di Palazzo Grassi. Venice: Neri Pozza Editore 1979. De Chirico, Giorgio. Piccolo trattato di tecnica pittorica. Milan: Scheiwiller, 1928. Reprinted in Il meccanismo del pensiero: Critica, polemica, autobiografia 1911–1943, edited by ­Maurizio Fagiolo, 306. Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1985. De Chirico, Giorgio. The Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico. London: Peter Owen, 1971. De Man, Paul. “Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist’s Über das Marionettentheatre.” In The ­R hetoric of Romanticism, 263–290. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. De Man, Paul. “Literary History and Literary Modernity.” Daedalus 99, no. 2 (1970): 384–404. del Guercio, Antonio. “L’immanenza della storia.” In Il futuro alle spalle: 255–272. Depero. Exhibition catalog, Museo Provinciale d’Arte di Trento. Milano: Electa, 1988. Depero, Fortunato. “Il teatro plastico Depero: Principi e applicazioni.” Il mondo 5, no. 17 (27 April 1919): 10. Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo, 62–63. Depero, Fortunato. “Le invenzioni di Depero.” L’Impero, 3, no. 53 (March 1925). Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo, 92. Depero, Fortunato. “Brindiamo” 1914–1916 [Dep.4.2.3.1]. Depero, Fortunato. “Complessità plastica – Gioco libero futurista – L’essere vivente artificiale” (1914), reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo, 14–28. Depero, Fortunato. “Complesso plastico-mobile: Conferenza di Fortunato Depero.” Cronache d’Attualità 2, no. 13 (5 July 1919). Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo, 78. Depero, Fortunato. “Dal torre universitaria al Col di Lana.” In Fortunato Depero: Nelle opere e nella vita. Trento: Legione Trentina, 1940, 65. Depero, Fortunato. “‘Guerra-Festa’ di Depero.” In Depero Futurista. Milan: Dinamo-Azari, 1927, n.p. Depero, Fortunato. “Mondo e teatro plastico.” Penombra 2, no. 4–5 (1919): 21. Reprinted in Lista, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo, 68. Depero, Fortunato. “W la macchina e lo stile d’acciaio” (1927). In Prose futuriste, edited by Riccardo Maroni, 46. Trento: Voci della Terra Trentina, 1973. Depero, Fortunato. A passo romano: lirismo fascista e guerriero programmatico e costruttivo. Trento: Edizioni di credere obbedire combattere, 1943. Depero, Fortunato. Fortunato Depero: nelle opere e nella vita. Trento, Editrice Mutilati e Invalidi, 1940. Depero, Fortunato. Futurism and Advertising. La Jolla: Parentheses, 1990. n.p. Didi-Huberman, Georges. “Before the Image, Before Time: The Sovereignty of Anachronism.” In Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art in and out of History, edited by Claire J. Farago and Robert Zwijnenberg, 31–44. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Didi-Huberman, Georges. The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg’s Theory of Art. University Park: University of Pennsylvania, 2017. Doordan, Dennis. Building Modern Italy: Italian Architecture, 1914–1936. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988, 138–139.

172 Bibliography Duran, Adrian R. Painting, Politics and the New Front of Cold War Italy. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. E.Z., “Futuristi a Palazzo Madama.” Il Corriere, 13 January 1925 [Dep. 8.1.1.295]. Eco, Umberto. “Openness, Information, Communication.” In The Open Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, 44–83. Eco, Umberto. “The Open Work in the Visual Arts.” In The Open Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) 84–104. Efra, “La mostra di pittura futurista inaugurata oggi a Milano.” La Sera, 22 March 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.73]. Eisenman, Peter. Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques. New York: Monacelli Press, 2003. Elswit, Kate. “The Some of the Parts: Prosthesis and Function in Bertolt Brecht, Oskar Schlemmer, and Kurt Jooss.” Modern Drama 51, no. 3 (2008): 389–410. Quoted in Bellow, ­Modernism on Stage, 93. Esposito, Fernando. Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity. Houndsmills: Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2015. Etlin, Richard A. Modernism in Italian architecture, 1890–1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1924. n.p. Quoted in Carol S. Eliel, “Purism in Paris, 1918–1925.” In L’Esprit nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918–1925, 49. Exhibition catalog, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Maurizio and Valerio Rivosecchi. Scipione: Vita e opere. Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1988. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Maurizio and Valerio Rivosecchi, eds. Scuola romana: Artisti tra le due guerre. Exhibition catalog, Palazzo reale, Milan. Milan: Mazzotta, 1988. Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Farinacci, Roberto. “Ma che basta!” Il Regime Fascista, 1 June 1935. Quoted in Emily Braun, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 177. Fer, Briony. “Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis.” In Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars, edited by Briony Fer, David Batchelor, and Paul Wood, 170–249. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Feroldi, Pietro. “Scipione: Mostra postuma a Brera.” Il popolo di Brescia, 27 March 1941. Ferrario, Rachele. “Como: Quando i pittori svelano la loro anima d’ architetti.” Corriere della Sera, 19 June 2005, 34. Fillia, “La nuova architettura e la plastica murale.” In Gli ambienti della Nuova Architettura, edited by Fillia, 269–270. Turin: UTET, 1935. Quoted in Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo, edited by Enrico Crispolti, 534. Exhibition catalog, Mole Antonelliana, Turin. Turin: Assessorato per la Cultura, Musei Civici, 1980. Flipper, Joseph S. Between Apocalypse and Eschaton: History and Eternity in Henri de Lubac. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2015. Fogarty, Gerald P. The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis. Denis J. O’Connell, American agent in Rome (1885–1903). Rome: Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1974. Fogu, Claudio. “To Make History Present.” In Donatello among the Black Shirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy, edited by Claudia Lazzaro and Roger J. Crum. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005, 33–49. Fogu, Claudio. “Futurist mediterraneità between Emporium and Imperium.” Modernism/­ modernity 15, no. 1 (2008): 25–43. Fore, Devin. Realism after Modernism: The Rehumanization of Art and Literature. ­Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

Bibliography  173 Forgacs, David. “Post-War Culture: Renewal or Legacy of the Past.” In Reconstructing the Past: Representations of the Fascist Era in Post-war European Culture, edited by Graham Bartram, Maurice Slawinski and David Steel. Keele: Keele University Press, 1996, 49–63. Fortunato Depero to Rosetta Amadori Depero, 16 July 1915. Quoted and translated in Selena Daly, Italian Futurism and the First World War. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2016, 56. Fossati, Paolo. L’immagine sospesa. Pittura e scultura astratte in Italia, 1934–40. Turin: ­Einaudi, 1971. Foster, Hal, et al. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004. Foster, Hal. Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency. London: Verso, 2015. Foster, Hal. Compulsive Beauty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1979. Fox Laurier, Jacques. “A Marionette in Rome.” In The Mask: The Marionette Tonight (1918): 124. Quoted in Paola Campanini, “Il ‘mondo meccano’ di Fortunato Depero: Storia e utopia dei Balli plastici.” Ariel 2–3 (1993): 317, n. 82. Fracchia, Umberto. “Note d’arte.” Idea Nazionale (Rome) 1919. Quoted in “Un artista roveretano a Roma.” La liberta, 4 March 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.167]. Franki, Serge. “Au salone de l’art d’Aujourd’hui.” In Les Artistes d’Aujourd’hui (Paris), 1 ­February, 1926 [Dep.8.1.1.332]. Fraquelli, Simonetta. “All Roads Lead to Rome.” In Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930–45, Exhibition catalog, Hayward Gallery, 130–136. London: The South Bank Centre, 1995. Freud, Sigmund. “The ‘Uncanny’” (1919). In Studies in Parapsychology. New York: Collier Books, 1971, 191–160. Frisardi, Andrew. “Introduction: Giuseppe Ungaretti and the Image of Desolation.” In ­Frisardi, Giuseppe Ungaretti: Selected Poems, ix–xxviii. Frisardi, Andrew, ed. Giuseppe Ungaretti: Selected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Fuchs, Georg. Revolution in the Theatre: Conclusions Concerning the Munich Artists Theatre (1909), translated by Constance Connor Kuhn. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1959. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method, translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad, 1992. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. “Guerra-festa.” Accessed 4 May 2014. www.gnam.beni culturali.it/index.php?it/23/gli-artisti-e-le-opere/205/guerra-festa. Gardner Troy, Virginia. “Stitching Modernity: The Textile Work of Fortunato Depero.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 20, no. 1, (2015): 24–33. Gasco, Alessandro. “Teatri ed arte: Balli plastici.” La Tribuna, 16 Aprile 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.48]. Gentile, Emilio. “Fascism as Political Religion.” Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990): 229–251. Gentile, Emilio. The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, translated by Keith Botsford. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Ghirardo, Diane. “Terragni, Conventions, and the Critics.” In Critical Architecture and Contemporary Culture, edited by William J. Lillyman, Marilyn F. Moriarty, and David J. ­Neuman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 91–103. Ghiringelli, Gino. “Pitture murali nel Palazzo della Triennale.” Quadrante 1, no. 2 (1933): 8. Ghyka, Matila C. The Golden Number, Pythagorean Rites and Rhythms in the Development of Western Civilisation, translated by Jon E. Graham. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2016. Giacconi, A. “Espoizioni milanesi.” Il secolo illustrato 9, no. 4 (1921): 106, quoted in Elena Pontiggia, “De Chirico in Milan, 1919–1902.” Metafisica, nos. 5–6 (2006): 173. Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Gilbert Clavel to Fortunato Depero, letter dated 28 October 1918. Quoted in Nicoletta ­Boschiero, “Depero e Clavel: marionette che passione!” In Depero e il teatro musicale, edited by Daniela Fonti and Claudia Terenzi. Milan: Skira, 2007, 30.

174 Bibliography Gincar, “I balli plastici al Teatro dei Piccoli.” Il Giornale d’Italia (Rome), 16 Aprile 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.32]. Giovannetti, Eugenio. “Fortunato Depero.” Il Tempo, 21 January 1919 [Dep.8.1.1.68]. Giugno73 [pseud.], “Crepe sulla fontana: Allarme a Camerlata.” La Provincia di Como, 29 April 2010. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/Cronaca/253548/. Gli antichi pittori spagnoli della Collezione Contini Bonacossi. Exhibition catalog, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome. Milan: Casa editrice d’arte Bestetti e Tumminelli, 1930. Golan, Romy. Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Golan, Romy. Muralnomad: The Paradox of Wall Painting, Europe 1927–1957. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Golsan, Richard. “Introduction.” In Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, edited by Richard ­G olsan, ix–xviii. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from Cultural Writings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Green, Christopher. Art in France: 1900–1940. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-garde and Kitsch” [1939] In Art and Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, 3–21. Greene, Vivien. “The Opera d’Arte Totale.” In Italian Futurism: 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2014, 211–213. Griffin, Roger. “An Unholy Alliance? The Convergence between Revealed Religion and ­Sacralized Politics in Inter-war Europe.” In Catholicism and Fascism in Europe ­1918–1945, edited by Jan Nelis, Anne Morelli and Danny Praet, 49–66. Hildesheim: Georg Olms ­Verlag, 2015. Griffin, Roger. “I am no longer human. I am a Titan. A god! The Fascist Quest to Regenerate Time.” In A Fascist Century: Essays by Roger Griffin, edited by Matthew Feldman, 3–23. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Griffin, Roger. Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and ­Hitler. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Grondin, Jean. “Play, Ritual and Festival in Gadamer: On the Theme of the Immemorial in His Later Works.” In Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, edited by Hans Georg Gadamer and Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt, 51–58. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001. Gruppo 7, “Architecture” (1926) translated by Ellen Shapiro, Oppositions 6 (Fall 1976): 86–102. Hayum, Andrée. “Lionello Venturi, Roberto Longhi and the Renaissance ‘primitives’.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17, no. 3 (2012): 331–349. Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hoffman, Jens. “Another Introduction.” In Other Primary Structures, n.p. Exhibition catalog, Jewish Museum, New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Hunter, Sam, John M. Jacobus, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography, 3rd edition. New York: Prentice Hall, 2004. I segni nascosti: Taccuini e album di Melli, Scipione-Mafai-Raphael, Fazzini, 1905–1963, Exhibition catalog. Udine: Casa Cavazzini, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 2014. Il futuro alle spalle: Italia – Francia. L’arte tra le due guerre. Exhibition catalog, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Rome: Edizioni De Luca, 1998. Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, no. 39 (1935): n.p. Insolera, Italo and Alessandra Maria Sette, Roma tra le due guerre: Cronache da una città che cambia. Rome: Palombi Editore, 2003. Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore Veronese – Marconi. “Guerra-festa.” Accessed 3 February 2019. www.giuseppeveronese.it/public/152/2267_Fortunato%20Depero.doc.

Bibliography  175 Jackson, Neil. “Where Now the Architect?” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 13 (2003): 207–217. Jahier, Piero. “Arte alpina.” Dedalo, no. 2 (1920): 90. Quoted and translated in Michelangelo Sabatino, “Back to the Drawing Board: Revisiting the Vernacular Tradition in Italian Modern Architecture.” Annali di architettura, no. 16 (2004): 175, 184, n. 47. Jannelli, Eugenio. “I futuristi italiani all’esposizione Internazionale di Parigi.” Il Popolo ­d’Italia, July 1925 [Dep.8.1.1.335]. Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, translated by Timothy Bahti. ­M inneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Jentsch, Ernst. “Zur Psychologies des Unheimlichen” (1906), translated in Remo Ceserani, La narrazione fantastica. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1983. Appendix. Jewell, Keala. The Art of Enigma: The de Chirico Brothers and the Politics of Modernism. University Park: Penn State Univesity Press, 2004. Jones, Owen. The Grammar of Ornament. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1868. Kakru [Guido Bertoldi], “Fortunato Depero a Monza.” La Liberta, 22 February 1923 [Dep.8.2.8.30]. Kallis, Aristotle. “‘In miglior tempo…’: What Fascism did not Build in Rome.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 16, no. 1 (2011): 64–71. Keats, Jonathon. “Fortunato Depero’s Italian Futurism.” Forbes, 29 May 2009. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/2009/0608/art-fortunato-depero-­ italian-futurism.html. Kirk, Terry. “Framing St. Peter’s: Urban Planning in Fascist Rome.” Art Bulletin 88, no. 4 (2006): 756–776. Koss, Juliet. Modernism after Wagner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Krauss, Rosalind. “Entropy.” In Formless: A User’s Guide, edited by Yve-Alain Bois and ­Rosalind Krauss, 73–79. New York: Zone, 1997. Kuznets, Lois R. When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Laplanche, J. and J. -B. Pontalis. The Language of Psycho-Analysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974. Lazagna, Carla Sanguineti. “La concezione delle arti figurative nella politica cuturale del fascismo.” Il movimento di liberazione in Italia 4, no. 89 (October–December 1967): 3–27. Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and its Planning. London: The Architectural Press, 1971. Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. New York: Praeger, 1959. Léger, Fernand. “Risposta di Léger al referendum sull’arte astratta, in Cahiers d’art N. 3 6. e année, 1931.” Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, no. 4 (1932): n.p. Licini, Osvaldo. “Natura di un discorso.” Corriere Padano, 9 October 1937, 3. Longhi, Roberto. “Al Dio ortopedico” Il Tempo 22 February 1919. Reprinted in Barocchi, Testimonianze e polemiche figurative in Italia, 407–410. Longhi, Roberto. “Clima e opere degli irrealisti.” L’Italia letteraria, 14 April 1929, 4. Longhi, Roberto. “La mostra romana degli artisti sindacati.” L’Italia letteraria, 7 April 1929, 4. Loreti, Silvia. “Modern Narcissus: The Lingering Reflections of Ancient Myth in Modern Art.” Papers of Surrealism no. 9 (2011): 1–29. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Art of the 1930s: The Age of Anxiety. London: Weidenfeld and ­Nicholson, 1985. Lukach, Joan. “De Chirico and Italian Art Theory, 1915–1920.” In William Rubin, ed., De Chirico. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1982, 35–54. Lumley, Robert. Entering the Frame: Cinema and History in the Films of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011. Lupo, Giuseppe. Poesia come pittura: De Libero e la cultura romana 1930–1940. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002.

176 Bibliography Lütticken, Sven. “Planet of the Remakes.” New Left Review, no. 25 (January–February, 2004): 103–119. Lyford, Amy. “‘Le numéro Barbette’, Photography and the Politics of Embodiment in Interwar Paris.” In The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the Wars, edited by Whitney ­Chadwick, 223–235. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Lyford, Amy. Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Lyttelton, Adrian. The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929, 2nd edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. M. “Visitando la Mostra d’Arte—Fortunato Depero.” unknown publication, October 1922 [Dep. 8.1.1.126]. Mafai, Mario. “Autobiografia.” In Mafai. Rome: Ente Premi Roma- Palazzo Barberini, 1969, 18. Mafai, Mario. “La pittura del 1929.” Il Contemporaneo 1, May 1954. Reprinted in Mafai. Rome: Ente Premi Roma- Palazzo Barberini, 1969, 42. Mafai, Mario. Diario 1926–1965. Rome: Edizione della Cometa, 1984. Malaparte, Curzio. “Commemorazione del Seicento.” Valori plastici 3, no. 4 (1921): 80–87. Malgeri, Francesco. “Chiesa cattolica e regime fascista.” Italia contemporanea, no. 194 (March 1994): 53–63. Malone, Hannah. “Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in Contemporary Italy.” Modern Italy 22, no. 4 (2017): 445–470. Maltese, Corrado. Storia dell’arte in Italia, 1785–1943. Turin: Einaudi, 1992. Malvano, Laura. Fascismo e politica dell’immagine. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1988. Maraini, Antonio. “Italian Art under Fascism.” The Studio, CXII, no. 525 (December 1936): 296–314. Marchesini, Cesare G. Corriere Padano, 23 November 1933. Marchiori, Giuseppe. “Alla II Quadriennale: La mostra personale di Scipione.” Corriere padano, 15 February 1935. Marchiori, Giuseppe. Scipione. Milan: Hoepli, 1939. Marinetti, F. T. “L’arte decorativa futurista alla mostra di Monza.” Le arti decorative, no. 2 (10 June 1923): 29–33. Marinetti, F. T. “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism.” Le Figaro (Paris), 20 ­February 1909. In Futurism: An Anthology, edited by Lawrence S. Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, 49–53. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Marinetti, F. T. “The Pope’s Monoplane.” In F. T. Marinetti: Selected Poems and Related Prose. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, 41–54. Marino, Antonio. “Fontana di Camerlata, un ‘sacrilegio’ spostarla.” La Provincia di Como, 2 May 2008. Accessed May 2009. www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/Cara%20provincia/7260/ Mario Radice: Architettura, numero, colore. Exhibition catalog, Museo di arte modern e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2014. Maselli, Ercole. [title unknown], L’Italia letteraria, 30 March, 1935. Matuella, Sandra. “CasaPound, prima conferenza blindata.” Il Trentino, 13 November 2013. Accessed 19 February 2019. www.giornaletrentino.it/cronaca/trento/casapoundprima-conferenza-blindata-1.668099. Radice, Mario. “Conversazioni” (interview with Angelo Maugeri). Accessed 4 January 2019. www.edixxon.com/radice/02_conversazioni/htx5355.html. Maugeri, Angelo. Mario Radice. Como: Roberto Cantiani, 1986. Medina Lasansky, D. “Tableau and Memory: The Fascist Revival of the Mediaeval/Renaissance Festival in Italy.” The European Legacy 4, no. 1 (1999): 26–53. Melotti, Fausto. “Introduzione.” Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione 13, no. 40 (10 May 1935), n.p.

Bibliography  177 Menna, Filiberto. “Il futurismo e le arti applicate: La ‘Casa d’Arte Italiana’.” In Studio di storia dell’arte in onore di Vittorio Viale, edited by Association internationale des critiques d’art, 91–97. Turin: Edizioni d’Arte Fratelli Pozzo, 1967. Merjian, Ara. “A Future by Design: Giacomo Balla and the Domestication of Transcendence.” Oxford Art Journal 35, no. 2 (2012): 121–146. Merjian, Ara. “The Thirties: The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism.” Frieze, no. 154 (April 2013). Accessed 20 February 2019. https://frieze.com/article/thirties-arts-italy-beyond-fascism. Merjian, Ara. Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Modernism, Paris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. ­Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. Meroni, Ettore. “E la fontana di Camerlata: lasciateci almeno quella!” La Provincia di Como, 10 May 2008. See Comune di Como, “Rassegna stampa.” no. 2164 10 May 2008. Messina, Maria Grazia. “Valori plastici, il confronto con la Francia e la questione dell’arcaismo nel primo dopoguerra.” In Il futuro alle spalle, 19–35. Mezio, Alfredo. “Il pittore dagli occhi cerulei.” Quadrivio, 30 June 1935. Molony, John N. The Emergence of Political Catholicism in Italy. London: Croom Helm, 1977. Momigliano, Arnaldo. “How Roman Emperors Became Gods.” American Scholar, no. 55 (Spring 1986): 181. Quoted in Aby M. Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, translated by Michael P. Steinberg. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995, 109. Monsignor Bornewasser, [title unknown], L’Osservatore Romano, 6 November 1929, ­104–105. Quoted in L’almanacco degli artisti, edited by Carlo D’Aloiso da Vasto. Rome: Fratelli Palombari Editori, 1930, 104–105. Montale, Eugenio. Cuttlefish Bones (1920–1927). Edited and translated by William ­A rrowsmith. New York: William Arrowsmith, 1992. Moretti, Bruno. “La nuova Sede dell’Università Cattolica.” L’Italia (October 8, 1932). Quoted in Richard A. Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991, 333. Mostra coloniale celebrativa della vittoria imperiale: Catalogo generale. Como: Villa Olmo, 1937. Mucci, Renato. “Un artista d’eccezione.” La Donna. Rivista quindicinale illustrata, 1924 [Dep.8.1.1.282]. Mundy, Jennifer. “La Muta, after Raphael 1920.” In Cowling and Mundy, On Classic Ground, 75. Mundy, Jennifer. “The Daughters of Lot 1919.” In Cowling and Mundy, On Classic Ground, 56. Municipio di Como—Ufficio Urbanistica, “Piano regolatore di massima edilizio e di ampliamento di Como.” 15 November 1937, 19. Accessed 4 January 2019. www.rapu.it/ricerca/ scheda_piano.php?id_piano=195 Muñoz, Antonio. Il Museo di Roma. Rome: Governatorato di Roma, 1930. 8, quoted in Joshua Arthurs, “Roma Sparita: Local Identity and Fascist Modernity at the Museo di Roma.” Città e Storia 3, no. 1–2 (2008): 198. Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina, “Costumi.” Accessed 4 January 2019. www. museosanmichele.it/museo/percorso/terzo-piano/costumi/. Mussolini, Benito and Giovanni Gentile. “Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism” (1932). In A Primer of Italian Fascism, edited and translated by Jeffrey Schnapp, 47–71. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Mussolini, Benito. “Il Novecento.” Scritti e Discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 5, 279–282. Milan: Hoepli, 1934. Reprinted in Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 9–12. Mussolini, Benito. “La festa del lavoro” (21 April 1934). In Scritti e Discorsi di Benito ­M ussolini, vol. 9, 50. Milan: Ulrich Hoepli, 1934.

178 Bibliography Mussolini, Benito. “Mandate to the office of the governatore of Rome.” 31 December 1925, in Scritti e Discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 5, Dal 1925 al 1926. Milan: Hoepli, 1934, 243–45. Quoted in Terry Kirk, “Framing St. Peter’s: Urban Planning in Fascist Rome.’” Art Bulletin 88, no. 4 (2006): 756–776. Mussolini, Benito. “Sintesi del regime” (18 March 1934). Scritti e Discorsi di Benito ­M ussolini, vol. 9. Milan: Ulrich Hoepli, 1934, 42–43. Mussolini, Benito. “Il 1934.” In Popolo d’Italia, 2 January 1934. Reprinted in Scritti e Discorsi di Benito Mussolini, vol. 9. Milan: Ulrich Hoepli, 1934. 8. Nagel, Alexander and Chris Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone Books, 2010. Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Myth Interrupted.” In The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Nataloni, Angelo. “Padre Agostino Gemelli: Soldato di Dio o ufficiale di Cadorna?” Rome: Società di Cultura e Storia Militare, n.d., 5. Accessed 8 May 2014. http://www.arsmilitaris. org/pubblicazioni/Padre%20Agostino%20Gemelli.pdf. Neppi, Alberto. “La seconda Quadriennale d’arte.” Rassegna italiana 39, no. 202 (March 1935): 208–209. Neppi, Alberto. “Scipione e Mafai alla Galleria di Roma.” Il Lavoro Fascista, 15 November 1930. Quoted in Scipione 1904–1933, 1985, 169. Neuland-Kitzerow, Dagmar, Salwa Joram, and Erika Karasek, eds. Inlaid Patchwork in ­Europe from 1500 to the Present. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2009. Oh! Uomo. Directed by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, 2004. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “I balli plastici al ‘Teatro dei Piccoli’: l’esposizione di pittura.” L’idea nazionale (Roma) 15 April, 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.49]. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “Due decoratori.” L’Idea Nazionale, 23 March 1921 [Dep.8.1.1.95]. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “La mostra al ‘Convegno’: Giovani pittori romani.” La Tribuna, 27 January 1929, quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione, 79. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “I balli plastici al ‘Teatro dei Piccoli’: l’esposizione di pittura.” L’idea Nazionale, 17 Aprile 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.49]. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “Il pittore Scipione.” In Forme e colori nel mondo. Lanciano: Carabba Editore, 1938, 323. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “Mafai e Scipione alla Galleria di Roma.” La Tribuna, 13 November 1930. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. “Sala XVI: Mostra Postuma di Gino Bonichi (Scipione).” Seconda Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale. Rome: Tumminelli & C. Editori Stampatori, 1935, 75. Oppo, Cipriano Efisio. La Tribuna (Rome), 13 November 1930. Orlando, Ruggero. Roma fascista, 28 April 1929. Quoted in Scipione 1904–1933, 2007, 99. Ort. “Note d’arte. La mostra di Depero.” Unknown publication, March 1921 [Dep.8.1.1.159]. Ossola, Carlo. Giuseppe Ungaretti. Milano: Mursia, 1975. Owen, Richard. “PM ‘Defends’ Mussolini.” The Weekend Australian, 13 September, 2003, 14. Ozenfant, Amedée and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret. La peinture moderne. Paris: Les Editions G. Cres & Cie, 1925. Quoted in Ballo, Mario Radice, 22. P. B., “La seconda Quadriennale romana.” Il Frontespizio, July 1935, 12. Pacini, R. “La pittura contemporanea alla seconda Quadriennale.” La Stirpe, May 1935. Pagano, Giuseppe. “Tre anni di architettura in Italia.” Casabella 110 (1937): 2–5. Quoted in Sergio Poretti, La Casa del Fascio di Como. Rome: Carocci, 1998, 111, n. 23. Papapetros, Spyros. On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Papini, Roberto. “La mostra delle arti decorative a Monza.” Emporium 57, no. 341 (1923): 275–289. Papini, Roberto. “La V Triennale a Milano. Ispezione alle arti.” Emporium LXXVIII, no. 468 (1933): 331–384. Parker, Grant. “Narrating Monumentality: The Piazza Navona Obelisk.” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16, no. 2 (2003): 193–215.

Bibliography  179 Parlane, Anna. “Michael Stevenson.” PhD Dissertation, University of Melbourne, 2018. Passamani, Bruno, ed. Fortunato Depero: 1892–1960. Bassano del Grappa: Museo Civico— Palazzo Sturm, 1970. Passamani, Bruno. Depero. Rovereto: Comune di Rovereto, Musei Civici, Galleria Museo Depero, 1981. Pavolini, Corrado. “La prima Mostra nazionale dell’Animale nell’Arte.” Rassegna dell’istruzione artistica 1, no. 3 (May–June 1930): 174. Pavolini, Corrado. “Artisti giovani al ‘Convegno di Roma.’” Il Tevere, 23 January 1929. Quoted in Lorenzo Giusti, Corrado Pavolini: Critico d’arte. Naples: Ligouri editore, 2008, 114. Pavolini, Corrado. “La prima Mostra dell’Animale nell’arte.” Il Tevere, 4 April 1930. Pelizzari, Maria Antonella. “Abstraction.” In Painting in Italy 1910s–1950s: Futurism, Abstraction, Concrete Art, 82–203. Exhibition catalog, Sperone Westwater, New York. Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2015. Persico, Edoardo. “Mistica dell’Europa” (1934). In Destino e modernità. Scritti d’arte 1929– 1935, edited by Elena Pontiggia, 156–163. Milan: Medusa Edizioni, 2001. Persico, Edoardo. Tutte le opere (1923–1935), vol. 1, edited by Giulia Veronesi. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964. Petropoulos, Jonathan. Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Pettenella, Paola. “Straniera, bolscevizzante e giudaica.” In Abstracta: Austria, Germania, Italia 1919–1939. Die andere “entartete Kunst” – L’altra “arte degenerata” Exhibition catalog, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bolzano. Milan: Electa, 1997, 153–159. Piccioni, Leone. “Prefazione.” In Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo: Tutte le poesie, 7th edition. edited by Leone Piccioni, ix–lvii. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974. Quoted in Bindi. “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 147. Pieri, Giuliana. “The Destiny of the Art and Artefacts.” In The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, 227–240. Pinkus, Karen. Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Pius XI. “‘Abbiamo poco:’ Allocuzione di Sua Santità Pio XI in occasione dell’inaugurazione della nuova Pinacoteca Vaticana.” 27 October 1932. Accessed 4 January 2019. https://w2. vatican.va/content/pius-xi/it/speeches/documents/hf_p-xi_spe_19321027_abbiamo-poco. html. Pius XI. “Divini illius magistri.” 31 December 1929. Accessed 20 February 2019. http://w2. vatican.va/content/pius-xi/it/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-­i lliusmagistri.html. Pius XI. “Mens nostra.” 20 December 1929. Accessed 20 February 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/ content/pius-xi/it/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19291220_mens-nostra.html. Pius XI. “Quas primas.” 11 December 1925. Accessed 20 February 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/ content/pius-xi/it/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html. Poggi, Christine. Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pollard, John. Catholicism in Modern Italy: Religion, Society and Politics since 1861. ­London: Routledge, 2008. Pontiggia, Elena. Il Milione e l’Astrattismo 1932–1938. Milan: Electa, 1988. Pontiggia, Elena. Modernità e classicità. Il ritorno all'ordine in Europa, dal primo dopoguerra agli anni Trenta. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2008. Post Zang Tumb Tuuum. Art Life Politics: Italia 1918–1943. Milan: Prada Foundation, 2018. Prickett, Stephen. Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition: Backing into the Future. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pucci, Lara. “Remapping the Rural: The Ideological geographies of strapaese.” In Film, Art, New Media: Museum Without Walls? edited by Angela Dalle Vacche, 178–195. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2012.

180 Bibliography Puccini, Mario. Critica fascista 4, no. 23 (1926): 435–436. Reprinted in A Primer of Italian Fascism, edited by Jeffrey Schnapp, 227–230. Lincoln: University of Nebraksa Press, 2000. R., ‘La Veglia Futurista alla Casa d’Arte Depero.” Il Trentino Meridionale 3, 18 January 1923. Reprinted in Fortunato Depero: Scritti e documenti, editi e inediti. Trento: Edizioni d’Arte Il Castello, 1992, 141. Radice, Barbara. “A 20th Century Artist.” Domus 855 (January 2003): 24. Radice, Barbara. “Mario Radice: Astratto per sempre” (interview with Mario Radice). Modo, no. 39 (1981): 77. Radice, Mario and Manlio Rho. “Sala Medaglie d’oro.” unpublished manuscript, 1937. Quoted in Caramel, Radice: Catalogo generale, 349. Radice, Mario. “Le Decorazioni.” Quadrante, nos. 35–36 (October, 1936): 33. Radice, Mario. “Risposta a Soffici: Pittura moderna.” Libro e Moschetto 5 (September 1942): 3. Reprinted in Ballo, Mario Radice, 152. Radice, Mario. Memorie del primo astrattismo italiano degli anni ’30 e ’40. Lugano: Edizioni Pantarei, 1979. Rainey, Lawrence. “Introduction: F. T. Marinetti and the Development of Futurism.” In Futurism: An Anthology, edited by Lawrence S. Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, 1–39. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Rainey, Lawrence, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Ramey, Joshua. “Learning the Uncanny.” In Deleuze and Education, edited by Inna Semetsky and Diana Masny, 177–195. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Ravetto, Kriss. The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Re, Lucia. “‘Barbari civilizzatissimi’: Marinetti and the Futurist Myth of Barbarism.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17: 3 (2012): 350–368. Recchi, Mario. “Scenografia italania a Parigi.” Il Popolo d’Italia (May, 1917) [Dep.8.1.1.50]. Giovanni Lista, ed. Ricostruire e meccanizzare l’Universo. Milan: Abscondita, 2012. Rifkind, David. “Furnishing the Fascist Interior: Giuseppe Terragni, Mario Radice and the Casa del Fascio.” Architectural Research Quarterly 10, no. 2 (2006): 157–170. Rivosecchi, Valerio and Antonello Trombadori. Roma appena ieri nei dipinti degli artisti italiani del Novecento. Rome: Newton Compton, 2006. Rivosecchi, Valerio. “Catalogo: I tempi, i temi, le opere.” In Scuola romana: Artisti tra le due guerre, edited by Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, 21–24. Milan: Mazzotta, 1988. Roberts, David. The Total Work of Art in European Modernism. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2010. Rodowick, D. N. The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Letter to D’Alembert and Writings for the Theater, translated and edited by Allan Bloom, Charles Butterworth, and Christopher Kelly. Lebanon: The University Press of New England, 2004. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Politics and the Arts, Letter to D’Alembert on the Theater, edited by Allan Bloom. Glencoe: Free Press, 1960. Russolo, Luigi. “Arti e Lettere: La Mostra futurista Depero.” La Borsa 9 March 1926 [Dep.8.1.2.71]. Sabatino, Michelangelo. Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Salvagnini, Sileno. Il sistema delle arti in Italy: 1919–1943. Bologna: Minerva Edizioni, 2000. Santangelo, Antonino. “Scipione 1904–1933.” In Scipione: cinque tricomie raccolte dal ­centro di azione per le arti in occaisone della mostra postuma nelle sale della Pinacoteca di Brera. Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941. Quoted in Fagiolo dell’Arco and Rivosecchi, Scipione: Vita e opere, 59.

Bibliography  181 Sant’Elia, Antonio. “Manifesto of Futurist Architecture.” In Futurist Manifestos, edited by Umbro Apollonio, 160–171. New York: Viking Press, 1973. Sarfatti, Margherita. “Fortunato Depero alla Galleria Centrale.” Il Popolo d’Italia (Milan), 1 February 1921 [8.1.1.111]. Sarfatti, Margherita. “Il Sei e Settecento a Firenze.” Il Primato Artistico Italiano 7, no. 7 (July 1922): 2, 6–7. Quoted in Jennifer Ruth Bethke, “From Futurism to Neoclassicism: Temporality in Italian Modernism, 1916–1925.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2005, 230, 234. Sarfatti, Margherita. “L’arte decorativa a Monza.” unknown publication (May 1923) [Dep.8.1.1.181]. Sartoris, Alberto. “Mario Radice.” Origini 4, nos. 3–4 (January–February 1940): 6. Sartoris, Alberto. “Tradizione e funzionalismo.” Quadrante, nos. 35–36 (October 1936): 30. Schmeid, Wieland. Giorgio de Chirico: The Endless Journey. Berlin: Prestel, 2002. Schnapp, Jeffrey. “Epic Demonstrations: Fascist Modernity and the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution.” In Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, edited by Richard Golsan, 1–37. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992. Schnapp, Jeffrey. “Forwarding Address.” Stanford Italian Review 8, nos. 1–2 (1990): 53–80. Schumacher, Thomas. Surface and Symbol: Giuseppe Terragni and the Achitecture of Italian Rationalism. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991. Scipione 1904–1933. Exhibition catalog, Palazzo Ricci, Macerata. Rome: De Luca Editore, 1985. Scipione 1904–1933. Exhibition catalog, Casino dei Principi, Rome. Rome: Palombi Editori, 2007. Scipione: Carte segrete. Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1982. Scipione to Domenico Maria Lazzaro, 13 August 1927 and 11 February 1928, in Lazzaro: Opere 1927–1964, 38, 40. Exhibition catalog, ex Convento del Carmine, Marsala. Palermo: Sellerio, 2000. Scipione to Enrico Falqui, 28 December 1931. In Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui ­1930–1933, 41. Scipione to Enrico Falqui, 3 April 1933. In Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui 1930–1933, 106. Scipione to Mario Mafai, August 1933. Quoted in Lamberto Vitali. “Scipione Bonichi.” ­Domus 8, no. 90 (June 1935): 62. Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February–March, 1931, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 60. Scipione to Renato Marino Mazzacurati, February 1929, in Scipione: Carte segrete, 44. Scipione, “Scipione e Il Greco” Primato 2, no. 23 (December 1941): 19. Scipione, et al., to Alfonso Silipo, undated postcard (c. Easter 1930). In Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui 1930–1933, 161. Scipione, letter to Enrico Falqui, 24 November, 1931. In Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui 1930–1933, 39. Scipione, letter to Enrico Falqui, November 9, 1932. In Appella, Scipione: Lettere a Falqui 1930–1933, 79. Scipione, to Mario Mafai, 21 December 1932, In Scipione: Carte Segrete, 95. Scudiero, Maurizio. Depero: L’uomo e l’artista. Rovereto: Egon, 2009. Segel, Harold B. Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons and Robots in Modernist and Avant-garde Drama. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Selvafolta, Ornella. “Cattaneo e Radice, percorsi in comune.” In Archipittura: Interrelazioni fra le arti a Como nell’eta del razionalismo. Lipomo: Cesarenani, 2005, 56–61. Settimelli, Enrico. “I balli plastici al teatro dei Piccoli.” publication unknown, 15 Aprile, 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.44]. In SIC 3, no. 34 (1918): n.p. Severini, Gino. “Idolatria dell’arte e decadenza del quadro.” Critica fascista 2, no. 15 (1927): 24. Quoted in Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 21–23. Severini, Gino. “Pittura murale: sua estetica e suoi mezzi” (1927). In Ragionamenti sulle arti figurative. Milan: 1936, 75. Quoted in Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 275.

182 Bibliography Severino, Colombo. “Como ricorda Radice.” Corriere della Sera 1 December 2002, 59. Sheen, Fulton. “Il nuovo paganesimo.” L’Osservatore romano 14–15 April 1930. Sighele, Scipion. Eva moderna. Milan: Treves, 1910, 45. Quoted in Jewell, The Art of Enigma, 24 and 205, n. 58. Silva, Umberto. Ideologia e arte del fascismo. Milano: Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, 1975. Silver, Kenneth E., ed. Chaos & Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936. Exhibition catalog, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2011. Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), quoted in Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 37. Simongini, F. “Scipione pittore di Roma” (inteview with Antonietta Raphael), Vita, 20 ­November 1971, 20. Quoted in Bindi, “Scipione: Poeta e pittore,” 148. Sinisgalli, Leonardo. ‘Ricordo di Scipione.’ L’Italia letteraria, 16 February 1935, 5. Sinisgalli, Leonardo. “Scipione.” Il Frontespizio 8, no. 5 (May 1936): 6. Sinisgalli, Leonardo. “Scipione.” Aretusa 2, no. 13 (1945): 8. Sironi, Mario, et al. “Manifesto della pittura murale.” La Colonna (December, 1933). Reprinted and translated as Mario Sironi et al., “Manifesto of Mural Painting” (1933). In Art in Theory: 1900–1990 edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 407–409. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993. Sironi, Mario. “Pittura murale.” Arca 3, no, 1 (1932). Quoted in Barocchi, Storia moderna dell’arte in Italia, 131. Smith, Terry. Contemporary Art: World Currents. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2011. Soffici, Ardengo to Carlo Carrà, January 1920. Quoted and translated in Jennifer Mundy, “The Daughters of Lot 1919.” In Cowling and Mundy, On Classic Ground, 56. Soffici, Ardengo. “Opinioni sull’arte fascista.” Critica fascista 4, no. 20 (1926): 383–385. Spiteri, Raymond. “The Blood of a Poet: Cocteau, Surrealism and the Politics of the Vulgar.” In Regarding the Popular: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture, edited by Sascha Bru et al., 227–239. Berlin: De Gruyer, 2012. Sprovieri, Giuseppe. “Depero… Ricordando.” In Passamani, Fortunato Depero: 1892–1960, LV–LXIII. Steininger, Rolf. South Tyrol. A Minority Conflict of the Twentieth Century. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Sternhell, Zeev. “The Crisis of Fin De Siècle Thought.” In International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus, edited by Roger Griffin, 169–174. London: Arnold, 1998. Stoffella, G. “Un principe del colore.” La Liberta (Trento), 19 July 1922 [Dep.8.1.4.34]. Stone, Marla Susan. The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy. Princeton: ­Princeton University Press, 1998. Stone, Marla. “Staging Fascism: The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution.” Journal of Contemporary History, no. 28 (1993): 215–243. Storm, Eric. The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalisation of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860–1914). Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2016. Tamberi, Flaminio. “La mostra dell’Impero: Quasi un riassunto.” La Provincia di Como, 30 June 1937, 6. Taviani, Ferdinando. “Cose dell’altro mondo: l’arte figurativa che fa teatro in Mauri.” In Fabio Mauri: Opere e Azioni 1954–1994, 37–42. Exhibition catalog, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Roma, Rome. Milan: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, 1994. Tello, Veronica. Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. Tempesti, Fernando. Arte dell’Italia fascista. Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 1976. Terragni, Giuseppe. “La costruzione della Casa del Fascio di Como.” Quadrante, nos. 35–36 (October 1936): 5–27.

Bibliography  183 Terragni, Giuseppe. Letter to P. M. Bardi, August 14, 1936, quoted in Mario Radice: ­1898–1987 retrospettiva, Palazzo del Broletto and Casa del Fascio, Como. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2002, 38. Thompson, Mark. The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919. New York: Basic Books, 2009. Tiffany, Daniel. Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric. Berkeley: University of ­California Press, 2000. Tiffany, Grace. Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Jonson, and Comic A ­ ndrogyny. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995. Tinti, Mario. “Arte d’avanguardia.” Il nuovo giornale, August 1918 [Dep.8.1.1.36]. Tinti, Mario. “Orientazioni: Scultura e pittura nell’architettura moderna.” Casabella 4, no. 6 (1931): 53. Tinti, Mario. Giornale di Genova, 16 April 1935. Tomasella, Giuliana. Avanguardia in crisi nel dibattito artistico fra le due guerre. Padova: Cleup, 1995. Tomlinson, John. The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy. London: Sage, 2007. Tonning, Erik. “Introduction.” In Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse, edited by Erik Tonning, Matthew Feldman, and David Addyman, 1–25. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Tonning, Erik. Modernism and Christianity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Troy, Nancy J. Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Ungaretti, Giuseppe. “Intervista con F. Camon.” In Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo: Saggi e interventi, edited by Mario Diacono and Luciano Rebay, 835–841. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974. Ungaretti, Giuseppe. “Sentimento del tempo.” In Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo: Tutte le poesie, edited by Leone Piccioni, 532–533. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974. Vaccari, Walter. “Balli plastici.” Il Secolo XX (1918) [Dep.8.1.1.108]. Vahrenkamp, Richard. “Motorization and Autobahn Projects in Germany and Europe in the Interbellum—Working Paper in the History of Mobility, No. 15” (2009). Accessed 10 April 2010. www.vahrenkamp.org/WP15_Autobahn_Interbellum.pdf Valentinelli, “La Mostra d’Arte della Venezia Tridentina.” September 1922 [Dep.8.1.1.194]. Valentini, Davide. “La Casa di Rieducazione Professionale per mutilati ed invalidi di guerra di Bologna.” pamphlet, Museo Civico del Risorgimento di Bologna, n.d. Accessed 8 May 2014. http://memoriadibologna.comune.bologna.it/casa-di-rieducazione-professionaleper-mutilati-e--1679-luogo. Vannutelli, Vincenzo. La prigionia del P. Vincenzo Vannutelli: episodio della invasione garibaldina del 1867. Appunti storici estratti dal suo giornale. Rome: Coi tipi del Salviucci, 1869. Venturi, Lionello. “Venezia XVII.” Belvedere, nos. 5–6 (May–June) 1930. Quoted in Scipione 1904–1933, 1985, 159. Vernizzi, Nathalie. Razionalismo lirico: Ricerca sulla pittura astratta in Italia. Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro di Vanni Scheiwiller, 1994. Vetta, Pierpaolo. “La tecnologia del cartone: Invenzione futurista di ambienti spettacolo.” Rassegna 4, no. 10 (1982): 28–33. Vincent, Andrew. Modern Political Ideologies, 3rd edition. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2010. Virilio, Paul. Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology. Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2006. Vitali, Lamberto. “Scipione Bonichi.” Domus 8, no. 90 (June 1935): 21–23, 62. von Henneberg, Krystyna. “Monuments, Public Space, and the Memory of Empire in Modern Italy.” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 16, no. 1 (Spring–­ Summer 2004): 37–85.

184 Bibliography von Kleist, Heinrich. Über das Marionettentheater: Zur Poetik. Reinbek bei Hamburg: ­Rowohlt, 1964. Warburg, Aby. “Pagan-Antique Prophesy in Words and Images in the Age of Luther” (1920). In Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, translated by David Britt, 597–697. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program, 1999. Warren, Sarah. Mikhail Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late Imperial Russia. Farnham: Ashley Publishing, 2013. Wildt, Adolfo, et al. “Relazione della Giuria per l’assegnazione del Premio della Gioventù” unpublished manuscript, April 1930. Quoted in Bindi. “Scipione poeta e pittore,” 164. Zanzi, Emilio. “Pitture e disegni di Scipione Bonichi.” La gazzetta del’popolo, 16 February 1935. Zoccoli, Franca. “The Applied Arts and Photography: Rosetta Depero, Gigia Corona, Bruna Somenzi, Luce and Elica Balla, Wanda Wulz.” In The Women Artists of Italian Futurism – Almost Lost to History, edited by Mirella Bentivoglio and Franca Zoccoli, 139–149. New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1997.

Index

1915 manifesto Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe 20, 24, 49 abstract art 74, 113–15, 121, 122, 124–6, 140, 150, 152, 161 abstraction 3, 4, 16, 24, 41, 114–16, 118–22, 125, 133, 137–9, 143, 144, 150, 160 abstractionism 118 academicism 5 actualism 15 Adam 97, 104 Adorno, Theodor 148 Affile 150 Africa 43, 44, 138, 145, 149, 150 African primitiveness 43 Agamben Giorgio 102 Albers, Josef 118, 119, 121 Alto Adige/Südtirol 42 Amadori, Rosetta 21 Andersen, Hans Christian 29 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 90 Antliff, Mark 3, 9, 10, 25, 159 Appella, Giuseppe 76 archaism 69, 73 Archipittura exhibition (Como Pinacoteca) 149 Arch of Constantine (Rome) 79 Arch of Peace (Milan) 145 Arco 98 Arezzo 120 Argan, Giulio Carlo 92, 151 Argentina 116 Aristotle, Kallis 81 Arlecchino 50 Art Deco 24 Arthurs, Joshua 161 Asia 44 Augustus 80 Austin Linda, M. 35 Austria 25, 31, 42 Austria-Hungary 41 Austro-Hungarian empire 32, 42 Avanti (newspaper) 27

Bach, Johann Sebastian 121 Baldacci, Paolo 102 Balla, Giacomo 20, 28, 29, 31, 49 Ballets, Russes 25, 29, 38, 43, 44 Ballo, Guido 116 Bardi, Pietro Maria 87, 119 Barnes, Albert 12 baroque 11, 87, 100 Barrès, Maurice 88, 89 Bartorelli, Guido 46 Bauckham, Richard 101 Baudelaire, Charles 80 Bauhaus 29, 46, 48, 51, 52 Baxa, Paul 81, 95, 96 Belli, Carlo 37, 53, 121, 122 Belli, Giuseppe 102 Bellonci, Goffredo 92, 102 Ben-Ghiat, Ruth 7 Benjamin, Walter 14 Benzi, Fabio 71, 161 Berghaus, Günther 7, 57 Bergson, Henri 90 Berlin 87 Berlusconi, Silvio 4 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 80, 87, 91, 98, 99 Bern, Kunsthalle 160 Bertelli, Renato 150 Bertoldi, Guido 44 Bethke, Jennifer Ruth 10 Bindi, Gaia 100, 101 Biro, Matthew 36 Bloch, Ernst 144 Bloom, Harold 12 Boccioni, Umberto 21, 43, 134 Böcklin, Arnold 73 Bogliardi, Oreste 120 Bohemia 42 Boiffard, Jacques-André 76, 80 bolshevism 98 Bolzano 46 Bombacci, Nicolò 90 Bontempelli, Massimo 150 Bornewaser (Monsignor) 88

186 Index Bossaglia, Rossana 24, 46 Bottai, Giuseppe 6 Brasini, Armando 20, 84 Braunau 41 Braun, Emily 71, 72 Breker, Arno 13 Breton, Andre 74, 76, 78, 80 Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. 161 Byzantine art 8

Corradini, Enzo 90 Corriere della Sera (newspaper) 147 Di Cosimo, Piero 73 Costantini, Vincenzo 45 Courbet, Gustave 69 Craig, Edward 49 Critica fascista (journal) 73, 122 Croce, Benedetto 13, 87 Cubism 116, 118

Ca’ Corner della Regina (Venice) 158, 160 Caillois, Roger 54 Callari, Francesco 93 Calvino, Italo 105 Camerlata 134, 145, 146 Campidoglio (Rome) 81 Capitoline (Rome) 80 Capri 29, 41–4 Caramel, Luciano 128, 142, 143 Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) 69 Carboni, Massimo 150 Carrà, Carlo 9, 10, 12, 24, 69, 70 Casabella (journal) 122, 141 Casa del fascio (Como) 115, 125, 126, 128, 131–3, 137, 140, 141, 143, 146, 148 CasaPound 27, 161 Castello Sant’Angelo (Rome) 80 Castello Sforzesco (Milan) 145 Catholic Church 86, 88–95 Catholicism 91, 94, 96 Cattaneo, Cesare 115, 133–8, 144, 146 Celant, Germano 160 Celebratory Colonial Exhibition of the Imperial Victory (1937, Como) 138, 139 Ceracchini, Gisberto 68–70 Cézanne, Paul 158 Chagall, Marc 71 China 44 De Chirico, Giorgio 3, 10–13, 44, 48, 69, 74, 76, 80, 87, 113, 117, 123 Christ 85, 96 Christianity 90, 95, 96, 100 Ciociara 41, 42 Ciociaria 46 classicism 6, 8, 73, 121, 122, 125, 161 Clavel, Gilbert 29, 33, 43, 49 Di Cocco, Francesco 71 Cocteau, Jean 74, 78 Colosseum (Rome) 79, 100 Como 113, 115, 116, 122, 124, 125, 132–9, 141, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 160 Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse) 74, 76, 77 conservatism 2, 3 Cook, Alexander 151 Le Corbusier (Charles Jeanneret) 116, 121, 124, 125, 130, 134, 135

Dada 27 Dali, Salvador 74 Dalmatia 43 Daly, Selena 56 Danesi, Silvia 137 Darwin, Charles 90 Davis, Whitney 78 ‘Degenerate art’ exhibition 4, 137, 158 Delacroix, Eugene 102 del Guercio, Antonio 3 Della Francesca, Piero 116, 120, 121 Della Porta, Giacomo 80, 98 Depero, Fortunato 3, 10, 15, 16, 20–5, 27–9, 31–59, 115, 124, 140, 159–61 Desnos, Robert 80 Diaghilev, Sergei 29, 44, 50 Didi-Huberman, George 15, 143 Dix Otto 1 Dosso del Sommo 41 Duchamp, Marcel 160 Durer 11, 15 Eco, Umberto 142, 143, 144 Egypt 44 Eisenman, Peter 141 El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) 72, 88, 89, 92, 94, 97, 105 Elswit, Kate 34 Emporium (magazine) 124 England 49 Eritrea 43 Ethiopia 16, 113, 138, 145 Etruscan art 72, 159 Euclid 116 Euclid’s mathematical formula 117 Europe 1, 3, 13, 22, 24, 25, 33, 43, 44, 46, 54, 79, 120, 122, 125, 146, 158 European continent 160 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution 98 expressionism 3, 4, 16, 68, 71, 74, 94, 118, 160 Falasca-Zamponi Simonetta 55, 132, 140 Falqui, Enrico 97 Fasci di Combattimento 25 Fascism 1, 3–7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 25, 27–9, 48, 57, 71, 81, 84, 90–2, 94, 95, 98,

Index  187 113, 115, 122, 126, 128–30, 139–41, 143, 144, 148, 150, 151, 159–61 Fascist art 3, 6, 7, 104, 113 Fascist art union 6 Fascist Art Union Exhibition (April 1929 Lazio) 68–72, 90 Fascist government 1, 6, 17, 32, 57, 71, 90, 125, 131, 162 Fascist movement 9, 15, 16, 43 Fascist party 57, 132, 148 Fascist propaganda 13, 128 Fascist regime 2, 6, 7, 13, 57, 91, 151, 160 Fascist squadrons 128, 132 Feroldi, Pietro 104 Fiat automobile company 134 Figini, Luigi 125 Fillia (Luigi Colombo) 124 Flipper, Joseph 96 Fondazione Prada (Milan) 158 Fondo 41 Fore, Davin 3, 12 Forgacs, David 115 Foro Mussolini (Foro Italico, Rome) 161 Fossati, Paolo 48 Foster, Hal 83, 158 Foucault, Michel 78, 131 Fourmi, Theathre 27 Fox-Laurier, Jacques 32 Fra Angelico 143 Fracchia, Umberto 33 France 79, 90, 118 Fraquelli, Simonetta 6 French Revolution 96, 158 Freud, Sigmund 35, 36, 78 Fuchs, Georg 49 functionalism 125 Futurism 1, 3, 4, 16, 20, 22, 24, 25, 44, 56, 57, 74, 160 Fyfe, Nicholas 81 Gadamer, Hans Georg 143 Galleria Corsini (Rome) 89 Gardner Troy, Virginia 22 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 91 Gasco, Alessandro 34 Gauguin, Paul 24 Gemelli, Agostino E. 34, 35 Geneva 51 Genoa 124 Gentile, Emilio 91 Gentile, Giovanni 15, 129, 132, 144 geometric abstraction (geometric abstract art) 4, 13, 114, 115, 118–20, 122, 125, 133, 139, 140 German art academy 51 Germany 4, 7, 13, 33, 49, 118, 148, 160 gesamtkunstwerk 49, 52

Ghirardo, Diane 144 Ghiringelli, Virginio ‘Gino’ 117, 120, 124 Ghyka, Matila 116, 121, 130 Giotto 10, 69 God 91, 96, 97, 100–2 Golsan, Richard 6 Goncharova, Natalia 25 Goya, Francisco 73 Grand Palais (Paris) 20 Graziani, Rodolfo 150 Greece 121 Greenberg, Clement 113, 139 Griffin, Roger 3, 7, 9, 10, 25, 94, 95, 115, 159 Grondin, Jean 55 Gropius, Walter 124 Guardia, di finanza 148 Guidi, Virgilio 71 Hausmann, Raoul 36 historicism 139, 158 Hitler, Adolf 7, 114 Hoffman, Ernst Theodor Amadeus 35 Hoffman, Jens 159 iconoclasm 3, 142 Il Milione Gallery (Milan) 114, 116–18, 121, 124, 125 Il popolo d’Italia (newspaper) 144 Il selvaggio (magazine) 79 Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique 69, 116 Innocent X 99 Innsbruck 41 International Biennial Exhibition of Decorative Arts (Monza) 45–7 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (1925 Paris) 48, 20, 22–5, 47, 54–7 Israel 87 L’Italia letteraria (newspaper) 68, 85, 88 Italian Academy 137 Italian Fascist soldiers 150 Italian Fascist state 152 Italian parliament 25, 57, 92 Italy 1, 3–9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 32, 36, 37, 40–4, 46, 48, 49, 55–7, 67, 69, 71–4, 78–80, 84, 88, 90, 91, 95, 103, 113–15, 118, 121–4, 128–30, 132, 136, 138, 140, 142–4, 145, 147–51, 160 Jahier, Piero 41, 42 Jannelli, Guglielmo 24 Japan 25, 44 Jauss, Hans Robert 143 Jeanneret Charles see Le Corbusier Jentsch, Ernst 35 Jesus 93

188 Index Jewell, Keala 78 Jewish Museum (New York) 158 Jones, Owen 43 Jugendstil 46 Julius II 99 Kleist, Heinrich 35 Koss, Juliet 28, 51, 52 Laplanche, Jean 139 Larionov, Mikhail 25 Lasansky, D. Medina 161 Lateran pacts 84, 91, 92, 95, 96, 103 La tribuna (newspaper) 104 Lazzaro, Domenico Maria 70 Leger, Fernand 118, 119, 121 Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) 90 Levi, Carlo 4 Libya 43 Licini, Osvaldo 113 Lingotto plant (Turin) 134 Lista, Giovanni 28, 36 Lithuania 71 Longhi, Roberto 8, 57, 68, 71, 88 Los Angeles County Museum of Art 158 Lubki 25 Lucie-Smith, Edward 113 Lumley, Robert 43 Lüttiken, Sven 159 Lyford, Amy 77 Lyttelton, Adrian 5 Macerata 67 Mafai, Mario 71, 73, 81, 88, 89, 97, 100 Malaparte, Curzio 72 Malvano, Laura 123 Manet, Édouard 158 De Man, Paul 35, 143 Maraini, Antonio 6 Marche 67 Marchiori, Giuseppe 3, 93 March on Rome 129 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 21, 27, 28, 32, 33, 43, 45, 50, 54, 56, 94, 113, 134, 137, 160 Masaccio 1, 69, 103, 121 Maselli, Ercole 93 materialism 7, 88–90, 92 Matteotti (Giacomo) 57 Matté Trucco, Giacomo 134 Mauri, Fabio 150, 151 Mazzacurati, Renato Marino 69, 70, 90 Melotti, Fausto 8, 119, 120–2 Menna, Filiberto 48 Merjian, Ara 28, 161 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 105 Mezio, Alfredo 98, 99

Michelangelo 72, 88, 100 Milan 6, 36, 38, 69, 114, 116, 117, 123–5, 135–7, 140, 144, 145 Milan Exhibition (1926) 27 Milan Triennale of Architecture and Decorative Arts 123–5 Milan Triennial of Decorative Arts, Industrial Design and Modern Architecture 135, 145 Milione Gallery see Il Milione Gallery Miro, Joan 74 Mittendorf 41 modern art (modernist art) 2, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 88, 114, 115, 122, 133, 134, 158, 162 modernism 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 28, 71, 94, 95, 115, 137, 140 modernist architecture 130, 144, 160 Modigliani, Giuseppe Emanuele 90 Mondrian, Piet 118 Montale, Eugenio 104, 105 Monza 45–7 Moor Fountain (Rome) 80 Morris, William 46 Mucci, Renato 38 Mundy, Jennifer 12 Munich 49, 137 Muñoz, Antonio 84 Museo, di Roma 84 Museum of Contemporary Art (Rovereto) 148 Mussolini, Benito 1, 4–8, 13, 16, 17, 20, 25, 32, 55, 57, 69, 70, 79–81, 84, 90–2, 95, 98, 100, 102, 104, 113–15, 122, 126, 128–32, 138–40, 142, 145, 147–51, 160, 161 Muzio, Giovanni 123 Nachleben-survival 15 Nagel, Alexander 13 Naples 44 Napoleon Bonaparte 145 National Gallery of Modern Art (Rome) 27 National Socialism 148 neoclassicism 5, 73, 78, 97, 158 neofascist movements 5 Neppi, Alberto 87, 94 Nietzsche, Friedrich 49, 90 Nizzoli, Marcello 131 Nolde, Emil 9 Nouvelle Revue Francaise (journal) 78 novecento group see novecento movement novecento movement 6, 69–71 Oceanic art 9 Oppo, Cipriano Efisio 33, 34, 38, 43, 81, 87, 93, 98, 104 L’Osservatore Romano (newspaper) 88, 90, 91 Ovid 76 Ozenfant, Amédée 116, 121, 125, 130

Index  189 paganism 89, 90, 97 Pagano, Giuseppe 141 Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome) 68, 98 Palazzo Venezia (Rome) 38 Palestine 92 Pantheon (Rome) 80, 81 Papal states 96 Papini, Giovanni 46 Papini, Roberto 50, 124 Paris 20, 23–5, 27, 46–8, 50, 54–6, 71, 73, 80, 87 Parker, Grant 10 Parthenon 120 passatismo 55 Pavolini, Corrado 70 Peking 47 Persico, Edoardo 118 Piazza Colonna (Rome) 81 Piazza, Corsica 134, 135 Piazza del Popolo (Rome) 33 Piazza Navona (Rome) 79, 98, 99 Picasso, Pablo 1, 3, 9, 24 Pieri, Giuliana 150 Pinacoteca (Como) 149 Pius X 96 Pius XI 96 Place de Pantheon (Paris) 80 Place Maubert (Paris) 80 Plato 76 Poggi, Christine 27, 40 Pollard, John 95 Pollini, Gino 125 Pollock, Jackson 143 Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand 139 Ponte Sant’Angelo (Rome) 79 Pontiggia, Elena 15 Pope 84, 87, 88, 91–3, 95–7, 99 Porte Saint Denis (Paris) 80 postmodernism 13, 158 Pound, Ezra 94 Prampolini, Enrico 20 Pratella, Francesco Balilla 56 Pre-Raphaelite historicism 158 primitivism 8, 9, 24, 95 La Provincia di Como (newspaper) 139, 145, 146 Puvis de Chavannes Pierre 124 Quadrante (journal) 121, 125, 128 Quadriennale exhibition (Rome) 87, 98 Quadriennale of National Art (Rome) 114 Quadrivio (magazine) 87, 93, 94 radicalism 3 Radice, Barbara 142 Radice, Mario 3, 10, 13, 16, 17, 113, 115–19, 121, 122, 124–6, 128–40, 142–51, 159–61

Radice, Rosetta (maiden name: Rosetta Martini) 117 Radiguet, Raymond 78 Ramey, Joshua 36 Raphael 11–13 Raphael, Antonietta 68, 71, 73, 100 rationalism 89, 92, 124, 125, 139 rationalist architecture 116, 125, 126, 139 Ravenna 22 Ravetto, Kris 14 Reggiani, Mauro 118, 120 religious spiritualism 139 Re, Lucia 28, 43 Renaissance 1, 11, 13, 72, 80, 89, 93, 97, 116, 120, 121, 139, 159, 161 Renoir 11 Republic (of Italy) 140 Rho, Manlio 115, 138, 139, 146, 149, 150 Rivosecchi, Valerio 103 Roberts, David 49 Rodowick, D. N. 115 Roman Empire 101, 113 Roman School 71 Rome 1, 11, 16, 25, 27, 29, 33, 36, 38, 41, 42, 53, 66, 68–72, 79–81, 83–5, 87–9, 91–3, 95, 96, 98–103, 114, 129, 134 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 50, 51, 53, 73 Rovereto 21, 36–9, 41, 46, 47, 51, 53, 148 Rubens, Peter Paul 11 Russia 44, 118 Russolo, Luigi 27 Sabatino, Michelangelo 24, 42, 46 Saint, Peter 85, 91, 93 St. John 85 St. Peter’s basilica (Rome) 79, 84, 91, 92 Santa Maria in Trastevere (Rome) 38 Sant’Elia, Antonio 134 Sarfatti, Margherita 20, 24, 38, 39, 46, 69, 72, 87 Sartori, s Alberto 121, 125 Savinio, Alberto (Andrea Francesco Alberto de Chirico) 74, 76–8 Schlemmer, Oskar 28, 51 Schnapp, Jeffrey 6, 43 School of Paris 71 Scipione (Gino Bonichi) 1–3, 10, 16, 17, 66–74, 76–81, 83–5, 87–94, 96–105, 115, 140, 159, 161 Scudiero, Maurizio 37 Scuola Reale Elisabettiana (Rovereto) 46 secularisation 7 Selvafolta, Ornella 137 Sempione Park (Milan) 136 Serrada (Trento) 40–2, 44 Settimelli, Enrico 34 Severini, Gino 69, 117, 123, 124

190 Index Severino, Colombo 147 Silva, Umberto 4 Simmel, Georg 135 Sinisgalli, Leonardo 74, 80, 94, 102 Sironi, Mario 4, 8, 13, 71, 72, 98, 123, 124 S. Maria di Loreto (Rome) 82 Socrate, Carlo 68, 69 Soffici, Ardengo 7, 9 Soldati, Atanasio 117, 120 Sorel, Georges 90 Soutine, Chaim 71 Spain 88, 89 Spencer, Catherine 158 Sprovieri, Giuseppe 33 SS. Nome di Maria (Rome) 82 Staeger, Ferdinand 9 Sternhell, Zeev 90 stoicism 128, 129, 132 Stone, Marla 7 Stravinsky, Igor 29, 35 Studio, Exnext 147 Sturzo, Don Luigi 90 Sudan 43 suprematism 118 surrealism 72–4, 76, 80, 85 Switzerland 116, 136 symbolism 1, 83, 87 Tamberi, Flaminio 139 Tarantella (dance) 41, 42 Teatro dei Piccoli (Rome) 29 Tempesti, Fernando 6, 97 Tempio di Ercole Vincitore (Rome) 38 Terragni, Attilio 147 Terragni, Giuseppe 115, 122, 125, 126, 128–32, 138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 148 Theater of Marcellus (Rome) 80 Tibet 43 Tiffany, Daniel 32 Tinti, Mario 34, 122 Tintoretto 72 Titian 72, 73 Tomasella, Giuliana 8 Tomlinson, John 135 Tonning, Erik 95 totalitarian administrations 13 totalitarianism 74, 161 traditionalism 3 Trajan’s Forum (Rome) 79, 81, 82, 83

Treaty of Saint Germain 42 Trentino 20, 23, 24, 32, 40–4, 46, 98, 161 Trento 31, 39 Trieste 31 Tripoli 43 Trombadori, Antonello 103 Tuileries (Paris) 80 Turin 134 Tuscany 44 Uccello, Paolo 120 ultranationalism 9 Ungaretti, Giuseppe 74, 99, 100–2, 104 Urbino 12, 120 Vaccari, Walter 33 Vahrenkamp, Richard 135, 145 Vannutelli, Vincenzo (Cardinal) 86, 88, 91, 94 Varese 135 Vatican 79, 85, 88, 90–3 Venice 57, 87, 114, 160 Venice, Biennale 57, 87, 114 Venturi, Lionello 8, 87 Vernizzi, Nathalie 139 Vetta, Pierpaolo 47, 50 Via Appia (Rome) 79 Via della Conciliazione (Rome) 84 Via del Mare (Rome) 81 Viareggio 42 Vietnam 43 Villa Borghese (Rome) 11 Villa Olmo (Como) 138 Villa Savoye (Poissy) 134 Vincent, Andrew 9 Virilio, Paul 145 De Vlaminck, Maurice 71 Voisin automobile 135 Von Henneberg, Krystyna 151 Wagner, Richard 49 Warburg, Aby 15, 92 Winckelmann, Johann 78 Winnicott, D. W. 35 Wood, Chris 13 World War I 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 25, 27, 29, 31–6, 39–42, 44, 56, 79, 90, 100, 116, 145 World War II 4, 5, 13, 16, 17, 32, 115, 116, 140, 142, 143, 158