Visibility, public space, social modernization and aesthetic rationalization were the key features of the debate on the arts in Italy during the dictatorship, but architecture encompassed all of these at once, thereby gaining a privileged position in the competition to become the official State Art. Taking the debates on architecture and the national struggles for the hegemony of architectural movements and styles over others, most notably the dispute which pitted the proponents of rationalism against those of monumentalism, we argue that architecture functioned as a tightly-organised system of theory and practice, and thus as a point of reference for many forms of artistic expression, and most notably for the national novel in its attempt both at reformulating the dialectics between subjectivity and objectivity and at reconstructing the real.
Between Theory and Construction: The Dialectics of Architecture. Debates in the field of architecture were crucial for the artistic and political life of the regime. These debates revolved around the definition of some key expressions, such as 'Fascist architecture', 'modern architecture', and 'arte di Stato'. However, they chiefly centred on the idea of the total work of art that all forms of artistic expression had to aspire to be. The total work of art had not only to account for the change in the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity, but also to represent the sacralisation of the New Man through the arts as well as through urban reality. Moreover, it had to function as an expression of how the New Man participated in the political modernity of the dictatorship and its drive to modernize the social sphere, while at the same time formulating on the terms of the artist's legitimation. Because of its aesthetic, social and political profile, the architectural experiment, whether in its rationalist or monumental form, embodied all of these features, but it could not function in isolation.
Our main hypothesis as far as architecture within the Fascist system of the arts is concerned is that it functioned as a catalyst and point of reference for many other forms of artistic expression.
In Italy from 1928 until 1935, battle raged between rationalist and functionalist architects: intellectually speaking, it was won by the former, politically by the latter. From 1932 onwards, architecture became more and more prominent within the debate on State Art. As far as architecture was concerned, l'arte di Stato up until the mid-Thirties privileged simplified construction, intended to eliminate any excess in order to rationalize the experiences of the daily life for Italians. This can be seen in such buildings as Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio (Como), 1928-36 Pier Luigi Nervi, Stadio Giovanni Berta, (later renamed Stadio Artemio Franchi), 1929-33, or Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini (+ Libera, Frette, Bottoni), Casa Elettrica, 1930.The New Man had to live in a space, which was rational in public and constructive in private. From 1935 onwards, Piacentini would become the leading architect in Italy, spelling the end for rationalist architecture, whose experimental drive, as he saw it, had removed it from the social problem which, with the collapse of consensus, the regime needed to tackle. The value placed on architecture throughout the twenty years of Fascist rule, however, lay in its social impact. The debate on the novel emphasised similar aspects: social significance, collective ethos, construction over fragmentation of narrative structure. To a certain extent, both forms constituted social experiments in so far as they were committed to the idea of radically changing the daily lives of Italians and in doing so of becoming l'arte di Stato, an overarching superior aesthetic and political order. Both projects aesthetically called for a return to simplicity of execution and an emphasis on the sharing of collective spaces, as Pietro Maria Bardi wrote on 4 August 1932 in his praise both of Mussolini's collective revolution and of how this political system had changed the lives of Italian citizens in their daily habits and spaces of action. In both cases, lucidity, clarity and direct contact with the materiality of reality were to be priorities– whether in writing or in public buildings, as seen in the corporativist cities.
This project of construction was based on the idea of the narratological rationalization of forms: in architecture, it is exemplified by Giovanni Muzio's Milanese Ca' Brutta (1922), delineating a clear moment of transition from Novecentismo to rationalism through the use of streamlined geometry. The equivalent in literature ensued with Alberto Moravia's landmark of unadorned stylistic precision, Gli indifferenti (1929). This notion of narratological rationalization combines the principles of architectural theory which regarded construction as the rationalization of forms, upheld for example in Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio (Como), 1928-36, with those governing the novel, which combined morality with a new understanding of the relationship between the subjectivity of the character and the materiality of external reality (Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei tartari, 1940, or Massimo Bontempelli's magic realism). In his writings on twentieth-century literature later collected in L'avventura novecentista, Bontempelli theorized and advocated an anti-rhetorical, anti-subjective, and anti-decadent literature, committed to the 'construction' of objects and the creation of new myths of modernity, a project he explicitly compared to architecture. In Quadrante (Milan, 1933-36), these theorizations were reprised and elaborated upon: the first issue opened with Bardi's statement on the need for a 'united front of aesthetics', followed by Bontempelli's 'principles' to achieve the 'unity of space and time' which is the highest aim of the arts. These founding principles of narratological reconstruction had a much wider application, which went beyond architecture and crossed over into the novelistic realm.
Streets are the dwelling place of the collective. The collective is an eternally wakeful, eternally agitated being that – in the space between the building fronts lives, experiences, understands, and invents as much as individuals do within the privacy of their own four walls. [d°, 1]. (Benjamin, 879).
Visibility, public space, social modernization and aesthetic rationalization were the key features of the debate on the arts in Italy during the dictatorship, but architecture encompassed all of these at once, thereby gaining a privileged position in the competition to become the official State Art. Owing to its public presence in particular, architecture was considered the ‘highest art’ and the one most likely to embody the political and aesthetic ethos of the State and thus bring forth the total work of art. Taking the debates on architecture and the national struggles for the hegemony of architectural movements and styles over others, most notably the dispute which pitted the proponents of rationalism against those of monumentalism, we argue that architecture functioned as a tightly-organised system of theory and practice, and thus as a point of reference for many forms of artistic expression, and most notably for the national novel in its attempt both at reformulating the dialectics between subjectivity and objectivity and at reconstructing the real (see Hypothesis 1). Because of its public visibility, architecture was the artistic expression, which best encapsulated the cardinal points of the developing arte di Stato and therefore, occupied a central position within the Fascist system of the arts.
900, Architettura, L’arte della rivoluzione fascista, La fiera letteraria, Critica fascista, Il Convegno, Domus, Il Saggiatore, Solaria, Orpheus, Occidente, Quadrante.
Debates in the field of architecture were crucial for the artistic and political life of the regime. Despite revolving around the definition of some key expressions, such as ‘Fascist architecture’, ‘modern architecture’, and ‘arte di Stato', these arguments chiefly centred on the idea of the Total Work of Art that all forms of artistic expression had to aspire to be. The total work of art needed not only to account for the change in the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity, but also to represent the sacralisation of the New Man through the arts as well as through urban reality (Hypotheses 3, 4). It also had to function as an expression of how the New Man participated in the political modernity of the dictatorship and in its drive to modernize the social sphere, while at the same time formulating on the terms of the artist’s legitimation. Because of its aesthetic, social and political profile, the architectural experiment, whether in its rationalist or monumental form, embodied all of these features, but it could not function in isolation. And, just like the novel, architecture too was synonymous with construction, for it was able to fuse theory with empirical, lived reality to build spaces for the individual made collective. By considering all of these principles, but especially the relationship between architecture and urban reality as well as the theory and practice of construction, and by testing them on a set of artworks, we will illustrate how the visual arts and the novel intersected with architectural theorizations, insofar as they all strived towards aesthetic rationalization and adopted a realist mode of expression to engage with the social reality of the country.
Our main hypothesis as far as architecture within the Fascist system of the arts is concerned is that it functioned as a catalyst and point of reference for many other forms of artistic expression. The regime supported it because it was the result of theorization and practice, and because it had the potential to achieve the full embodiment of the total work of art and be highly visible. Furthermore, it presented itself as an international phenomenon, which could put Italy on the same level as the other key players in the struggle for political leadership. In a similar vein to architectural construction, writers, intellectuals and, crucially, publishers linked the new Italian novel to a rationalized narrative construction, which had to renounce the passéist ‘prosa d’arte’ in order to embrace a realist form of story telling. In the 1930s in particular, the debate on the Italian novel addressed the same issues as the debate on architecture: chiefly the need both to move away from modernist introspection and to use prose writing to build a collective space for the new individual. Both architecture and the novel were narratological projects which converged theoretically and structurally around the notion of the construction of a collective space: for the novel it was a collective form of subjectivity and for architecture a collective and modernised social space that needed to be conceptualized and put into practice. For both, it was essential to adopt a rationalizing aesthetic paradigm. Within the debate on State Art, modernity and modernization, the novel and architecture, despite their manifest differences, could both contribute towards producing the total work of art: a form of creation which would be modern, rational, constructivist and socially aware. In short, the novel and architecture were spaces, spaces to be designed and shaped to accommodate the New Man.
Our analysis seeks to consider the relationship between aesthetics and politics not only as dialectically interactive systems but also as performative ones. Architecture under the Fascist regime has been the subject of extensive scholarly work. Its importance both aesthetically and politically has never been questioned and critics have agreed on its utmost significance in artistic life throughout the Ventennio. Of course, thorny issues remain, in particular concerning the collaborations between the regime and its architects, (Angiolo Mazzoni, Marcello Piacentini), architecture’s attempts to establish itself as the official arte di Stato (Filippo Marinetti) and the battles fought between rationalists, functionalists and monumentalists (Giuseppe Terragni, Adalberto Libera, the BBPR, Enrico Del Debbio, Marcello Piacentini to name just a few). The novel has received no less critical attention, but has never been considered in conjunction with other forms of artistic expression. The novel lived a life of seclusion, so to speak, and although it was revived by publishers’ attempts at turning it into a means of engaging the growing reading public via literary prizes, it never aspired to become the official arte di Stato. Translations filled the gap left open by the national novel but were necessarily excluded from the national system of the arts. The connections between these two phenomena, however, and their aesthetic and political significance in particular, have not yet been analysed in explicit terms.
The cultural system under the regime often functioned as a spectacle. Intellectual and artistic communities shared certain aesthetic principles, which were also part of the attempted formulation of State Art by the regime. Architecture was perhaps the field were innovation could correspond most closely to the idea of the arte di Stato prevailing during the Fascist years. If the novel was not expected to become as visible an artefact as painting and architecture, it was nonetheless expected to support the moral discursive space of the regime. In other words, just as architecture was supposed to create the physical symbolic space for the regime’s New Man, the novel acted largely at the symbolic level of paving the moral path towards totalitarianism, given that it never attained high levels of production and circulation. The common basis of the two disciplines was their constructive effort, which would be achieved through the rationalization of forms (a ‘return to the simplicity and essentiality of expressive means’), an adherence to the real, and the use of anti-subjective, anti-romantic aesthetic codes, which would enable the transformation of individual subjectivity into a collective experience. Both the novel and architecture were part of the discourse on modernity as a civic religion, which was both sociologically and anthropologically inflected. The shared objectives of the aesthetic and political discourse on architecture and on the novel was the consolidation of a modern cultural infrastructure upon which to base a process of modernization of the public sphere. This process would be centred on the principles of the rationalization of aesthetic expression of the real (Hypothesis 1). Due to their contact with the real, both for the novel and for architecture and to a certain extent for the visual arts (sculpture), true morality in art had to come into contact with the anxiety of everyday existence, that is to say the everyday existence of the New Fascist Man.
In Italy from 1928 until 1935, battle raged between rationalist and functionalist architects: intellectually speaking, it was won by the former, politically by the latter. From 1932 onwards, architecture became more and more prominent within the debate on State Art. As far as architecture was concerned, the arte di Stato up until the mid-Thirties privileged simplified construction, intended to eliminate any excess in order to rationalize the experiences of the daily life for Italians. This can be seen in such buildings as Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio (Como), 1928-36 Pier Luigi Nervi, Stadio Giovanni Berta, (later renamed Stadio Artemio Franchi), 1929-33, or Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini (+ Libera, Frette, Bottoni), Casa Elettrica, 1930. The New Man had to live in a space, which was rational in public and constructive in private. From 1935 onwards, Piacentini would become the leading architect in Italy, spelling the end for rationalist architecture, whose experimental drive, as he saw it, had removed it from the social problem which, with the collapse of consensus, the regime needed to tackle. The value placed on architecture throughout the twenty years of Fascist rule, however, lay in its social impact. The debate on the novel emphasised similar aspects: social significance, collective ethos, construction over fragmentation of narrative structure. To a certain extent, both forms constituted social experiments in so far as they were committed to the idea of radically changing the daily lives of Italians and in doing so of becoming l’arte di Stato, an overarching superior aesthetic and political order. Both projects aesthetically called for a return to simplicity of execution and an emphasis on the sharing of collective spaces, as Pietro Maria Bardi wrote on 4 August 1932 in his praise both of Mussolini’s collective revolution and of how this political system had changed the lives of Italian citizens in their daily habits and spaces of action. Among the buildings exemplifying this trend were Angiolo Mazzoni and the Gruppo Toscano, Stazione di Firenze Santa Maria Novella, 1929-1935 and Angiolo Mazzoni, Stazione ferroviaria (Siena), 1931-36.[^1] Echoing the debates on the novel, the avant-gardist ‘Bolshevik’ Vinicio Paladini responded to Bardi that rationalist architecture ran the risk of becoming bourgeois, if it were to follow in the footsteps of Piacentini and welcome traditional monumentalism without innovation.[^2] In both cases, lucidity, clarity and direct contact with the materiality of reality were to be priorities– whether in writing or in public buildings, as seen in the corporativist cities. This had to be translated politically into a new rationalized dimension of the relationship between the citizen and the State.
This project of construction was based on the idea of the narratological rationalization of forms: in architecture, it is exemplified by Giovanni Muzio’s Milanese Ca’ Brutta (1922), delineating a clear moment of transition from Novecentismo to rationalism through the use of streamlined geometry. The equivalent in literature ensued with Alberto Moravia’s landmark of unadorned stylistic precision, Gli indifferenti (1929). This notion of narratological rationalization combines the principles of architectural theory which regarded construction as the rationalization of forms, upheld for example in Giuseppe Terragni, Casa del Fascio (Como), 1928-36, with those governing the novel, which combined morality with a new understanding of the relationship between the subjectivity of the character and the materiality of external reality (Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei tartari, 1940, or Massimo Bontempelli’s magic realism). In his writings on twentieth-century literature later collected in L’avventura novecentista, Bontempelli theorized and advocated an anti-rhetorical, anti-subjective, and anti-decadent literature, committed to the ‘construction’ of objects and the creation of new myths of modernity, a project he explicitly compared to architecture. In Quadrante (Milan, 1933-36), these theorizations were reprised and elaborated upon: the first issue opened with Bardi’s statement on the need for a ‘united front of aesthetics’, followed by Bontempelli’s ‘principles’ to achieve the ‘unity of space and time’ which is the highest aim of the arts. These founding principles of narratological reconstruction had a much wider application, which went beyond architecture and crossed over into the novelistic realm.
[^1]: P. M. Bardi, ‘La Rivoluzione “Consegna” di Mussolini’, Quadrante, 4 Aug. 1932, p. 1. [^2]: ‘Imborghesimento del razionalismo’, Quadrante, 3 July 1932, p. 36.