Totalitarian Art: The Visual Arts, Fascism(s) and Mass-society

Abstract

This collection of essays brings together interdisciplinary perspectives that shed light on the complex relationship between totalitarian regimes, mass media, and the visual arts, starting from Fascism to its various modern and contemporary declinations and appropriations. The choice of the title explicit the editors' dual goal: on the one hand, the editors wish to " [highlight] the relationship between totalitarianisms and the visual arts" (IV); on the other hand, the ironic reference to Pop Art suggests how the common goal of totalitarian regimes is to reduce the participatory element to the minimum, canalizing citizens' creative energies towards the agenda of propaganda or-as in contemporary totalitarianisms-an anaesthetizing consumerism.The visual arts are present in the broadest sense of the term. In addition to painting, sculpture, and cinema, authors incorporate in the range of analysis "performance" and "plastic arts," such as "architecture, urban planning and the shaping and control of spaces, especially public ones" (XVII). This deliberately broad point of observation has the merit of favouring a multi-faceted perspective, ranging from several media, historical periods, and cultural spaces. The collection winds through six consistent sections, whose purpose is to show the diachronic evolution of the relationship between media, totalitarianisms, and individuals from historical Fascism to the global contemporary movements of the extreme right.Between these two chronological extremes, a disciplinary challenge of methodological interest opens up: at one extreme, bringing Fascism studies into conversation with those related to contemporary totalitarianisms; at the other extreme, gathering scholars from different disciplines and specializations. Italianists would be interested especially in the first two sections of the book: the first, "Totalitarian Environment: Spaces and Images," consists of four essays that investigate the relationship between propaganda and the visual arts during "historical" Fascism. Alessandra Minervino focuses on a case study of "politicization of religion," specifically that of the double biography of Mussolini and San Francesco, published in 1926 by the Franciscan father Paolo Ardali. Pierluigi Erbaggio focuses on an innovative aspect of the protean phenomenon of the Duce's representations between the wars, namely Mussolini's depiction in Fox and Hearst newsreels. It is