The richly illustrated monograph by Anna Vyazemtseva is the second book in a series on the art of totalitarian regimes, which is published by the RIP-Holding publishing house. The first was Yuri Markin's volume about the Third Reich in 2011, but the theme of German culture in the 1930s was repeatedly raised in domestic science, while the Italian art of Mussolini's time remained behind the scenes. The exceptions were generalizing works on totalitarian culture, where Italy found itself among other countries, and the book by Lazar Rempel on fascist architecture published back in 1935 - the first such publication, in principle, appeared outside the Apennine Peninsula.
Presenting the domestic reader with art of striking diversity is an important task in itself, especially given the depth and breadth of coverage available to the author of the book, a researcher based in Rome for many years who teaches at various Italian universities, including the Polytechnic University of Milan. However, it is no less important that Anna Vyazemtseva's monograph makes it clear how the artistic searches of the interwar period determined the development of Italian art and architecture after World War II, and also allows us to look differently at global processes, including our days.
The peculiarity of the Italian art "production" of the interwar years, which is best known, is its comparative liberality against the background of Germany and the USSR. Futurists were among the first supporters of Benito Mussolini and therefore could work as they wished, rationalist architects close to the international modern movement also received government orders. Adherents of metaphysical painting, "Novecento", etc. were adjacent to them. For a long time, there was no talk at all about the official style, and there was always a varied private order. However, it should be remembered that rationalists emphasized their connection with tradition, which was unimaginable for most foreign modernists of those years, and futurism after the First World War changed significantly, changing the "composition of participants" and becoming less radical and ready to create according to the demands of the time. Time called for "return to order" throughout Europe. But it was in Italy that this appeal to tradition, reality, history acquired distinct features of "construction", which can be compared with postmodern experiments, up to the irony, which the author notes, for example, in the architecture and arts and crafts of Gio Ponti. But even quite serious painters and sculptors, who claimed a unique sense of taste, form, beauty inherent only to Italians, and reminded of the achievements of the masters of the Renaissance, eventually created conglomerates, where it is clearly read: the time of the "classics" has irrevocably gone already in the 1920s … Mothers and beauties, intellectuals and heroes (the first of whom is, of course, Duce) refer to the great Italian art of the past, but each time you look at these statues and canvases, one does not leave a feeling of the artificiality of this play of forms (s), postmodern "modernization" of the classics. And here the perspective is clear further - to post-war, often more lively and honest experiments, for example, architectural ones: Milan's "Torre Velasca" in its serf image is a clear example of postmodernism before its "official beginning", but, as it becomes obvious when reading the book by Anna Vyazemtseva is not the first such example in Italy.
The fine arts were not limited to "pseudo-classical": there were also quite energetic modernist models. Likewise, there was a "futuristic" line in architecture, which manifested itself most vividly in the new cities that Mussolini built in Italy and in her overseas possessions. At the same time, the official “Littorio style” that emerged in the 1930s, which is primarily associated with this time - a combination of simple geometric shapes with classical allusions, modern layouts and structures - with finishing with expensive materials - gave rise to a very popular trend, representatives of which can be find today not only in Italy, but in many other European countries, including Russia. You can even remember Alvar Aalto: he was very interested at the end of his career in Mussolini's building heritage, published it in the magazine Arkkitehti headed by him and responded to it in his own administrative buildings and the Finland Palace in Helsinki.
An extremely important part of the monograph is devoted to the scheme of interaction between the state and the artist: it is she, and not at all the style, that separates totalitarian art from any other. This is especially evident in the example of Italy, where spectacular constructivist forms, for example, were used in 1932 to decorate a Roman exhibition dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the fascist revolution. It is quite possible to assume that such an explicit, transparent interaction between the masters of culture and power, the willingness to adjust this system of relations from both sides, as well as a certain artificiality, falsity of the created product, recognized (of course, after the fact) by the participants in the process, is also a phenomenon. postmodern, not the legacy of thousands of years of patronage of rulers and religious institutions.
Of particular interest is the story about the urban planning of the interwar period, equipped with an equally curious background - about the development of the cities of the young Italian state at the end of the 19th century. In this area, as in the Soviet Union of those years, Italy in the 1920s - 1930s relied on the experience of the previous century, with its combination of ceremonial planning and elements of a “city-museum”, which was especially important for Rome.
In conclusion, Anna Vyazemtseva outlines the fate of artists and architects, buildings and cities of the Mussolini era after the end of the fascist regime, that is, in fact, the fate of the cultural heritage of totalitarianism. It is impossible to imagine a more complicated problem, and in this Italy is again close to the USSR. And there, and there, the legacy of the middle of the century, associated with well-defined political regimes, has already grown into the flesh of cities, becoming a familiar part of the landscape, but at the same time, its uncritical perception, the absence of any commentary on such structures or objects of monumental art normalizes ideas, normalizes which is infinitely dangerous - and quite real.
