Fascist Modernism in Italy: Arts and Regimes

Between 1917 to 1975 Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Soviet Union, and Spain shifted from liberal parliamentary democracies to authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships, seeking total control, mass consensus, and the constitution of a 'new man/woman' as the foundation of a modern collective social identity. As they did so these regimes uniformly adopted what we would call a modernist aesthetic – huge-scale experiments in modernism were funded and supported by fascist and totalitarian dictators. Famous examples include Mussolini's New Rome at EUR, or the Stalinist apartment blocks built in urban Russia. Focusing largely on Mussolini's Italy, Francesca Billiani argues that modernity was intertwined irrecoverably with fascism – that too often modernist buildings, art and writings are seen as a purely cultural output, when in fact the principles of modernist aesthetics constitute and are constituted by the principles of fascism. The obsession with the creation of the 'new man' in art and in reality shows this synergy at work. This book is a key contribution to the field of twentieth century history – particularly in the study of fascism, while also appealing to students of art history and philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Prologue Parode 1: Realism and Fascist State Art 2: The Fascist New Man/Woman and the Bourgeois Ulysses 3: Architecture and the Arts in the Public Domain 4: Art and Construction: Aesthetics and Politics in the Age of Totalitarianisms 5: Aerofuturism: Journeys and Explorations Exodus Index

About the Author :
Francesca Billiani is Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester where she teaches contemporary Italian literature and culture. Her research focuses on the Fascist period, censorship, literary journals, modernism, history of publishing, and intellectual history. She is the author of a monograph on the politics of translation in Italy (1903-1943), co-author of a monograph on architecture and the novel during the Fascist regime, editor of a collection of essays on translations and censorship, and co-editor of a volume on the Italian Gothic and Fantastic and of three special issues of scholarly journals. More resources relating to Francesca Billiani's research can be found here: http://dialecticsofmodernity.manchester.ac.uk/

Review :
Francesca Billiani invites us to push the boundaries of a monolithic and simplistic view of State art to embrace the complexities of the relationship between arts and power with a courageous interdisciplinary approach. […] the author convincingly demonstrates how the arts have contributed to the shaping of authoritarian practices […], arguing for literature, visual arts, sculpture and architecture to be read not as distinctive and separate fields rather as parts of a complex cultural system. Fascist Modernism in Italy is an impressive critical tour-de-force across numerous and varied objects of study: from journals, newsreels, public and private buildings, to paintings and even flying war machines. It will appeal not only to scholars interested in the osmosis between the arts and totalitarian power but also to anyone who seeks to enrich their knowledge of Italian 1930s visual art, literature and the debates informing them. Meaningful in its contents and insightful in its analyses. Fascist Modernism narrates a paradoxical story in which innovative expressive potentials and censorship, art for the masses and underground and elite culture can coexist. A book to be read both for cultural enrichment and for pleasure. Neither autonomous nor heteronomous to fascism, the arts functioned as myth-making machines and styled the regime as modern. In this remarkably cross-disciplinary research, by analysing literature, painting, sculpture and architecture in fascist Italy, Billiani untangles the knot between artistic production, totalitarian regimes and aesthetics, ultimately demonstrating how the arts shaped the very identity of the fascist regime. Billiani assembled a holistic framework in which the price of exhibition tickets and the finer points of aesthetic theory appear as complementary facets of an emerging political order. The result is an impressive tour de force, a dialectical kaleidoscope that is both dazzling and informative. A must read for anyone interested in the mutual construction of art and authoritarian power, and the dynamics underpinning their re-negotiation.