Expressionism as fascist aesthetic

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 273-292

  Braun, Emily ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 50349099871     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002200949603100204     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Emily Braun, 'Political Rhetoric and Poetic Irony: The Uses of Classicism in the Art of Fascist Italy' in Elizabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy (eds), On Classic Ground (London 1990), 345-58
2. Luciano Canfora, Ideologic del classicismo (Turin 1980)
3. Richard Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890-1940 (Cambridge, MA and London 1991), 391-438
4. Laura Malvano, Fascismo e politico dell'immagine (Turin 1988)
5. Georg Lukács, 'Expressionism: Its Significance and Decline' reprinted in Rodney Livingstone (ed.), Essays on Realism, trans. David Fernbach (Cambridge, MA 1980). Though Lukács was primarily addressing the literary and not artistic manifestations of Expressionism, his analysis of the creative method and world view is pertinent to both. The essay was first published in Internationale Literatur, 1, 1934, 153-73, one month before the First Soviet Writers' Congress, in which Social Realism became official policy
6. Lukács' own aesthetic and political preferences lay in late-nineteenthcentury Naturalism, which he believed 'genuinely sought to portray the hopeless entanglement of the petty bourgeois in the capitalist mechanism' (Lukács, 'Expressionism', 104). The debate over Expressionism that ensued from Lukács' indictment of the movement took place primarily in the German periodical Das Wort in 1937-8. The main issues and translations of the principal participants are republished in Ronald Taylor (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London 1977). Ernest Bloch's 'Discussing Expressionism', 16-27 (see also 'Presentation I', 9-15) is considered the chief response to Lukács; he retorted that Lukács lacked knowledge of the Expressionist movement in painting, and defended the latent humanism of the movement through a demonstration of its interest and sources in popular and folk art. He also rejected Lukács' view of an objective totality of capitalism, arguing that Expressionism accurately reflected the fragmentary character of modern society
7. Lukács, 'Expressionism', 91-2
8. Russell A. Berman, 'German Primitivism/Primitive Germany. The Case of Emil Nolde' in Richard J. Golson (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture (Hanover and London 1992), 56-66. Berman's article also includes an assessment of Nolde's primitivism and its relationship to colonialism, specifically positions of domination and violence that later manifested themselves as part of totalitarian aesthetics. Berman (p. 66) ends with a qualification (implicitly criticizing Lukács' black or white perception) that not all critiques of reason resulting from discontent with modernity ('alienated labor, the loss of community, the domination of nature') can be considered fascist
9. Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Idea, 178-81, summarizes the debate among the Marxists and gives an account of Expressionist sympathizers who later became champions of the right
10. On Sironi's political cartoons see Emily Braun, 'Illustrations of Propaganda: The Political Drawings of Mario Sironi', The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 3, Winter 1987, 84-107
11. See, for example, Costantini, Pittura italiana contemporanea. Dalla fine dell '800 ad oggi (Milan 1934), 267, and Ugo Nebbia, 'Artisti d'oggi: Mario Sironi', Emporium, vol. 79, January 1934, 4
12. In addition to the Quadriennale, several critics also addressed Sironi's concurrent one-man exhibition at the Galleria Milano in Milan, which contained several of his most Expressionist works. See Ugo Ojetti, 'La prima Quadriennale Romana - paragone dell'arte nostra', Corriere della Sera, 6 January 1931, quoted in Bossaglia, Il 'Novecento italiano': Storia, documenti, iconografia (Milan 1979), 42
13. Virgilio Guzzi, Pittura italiana contemporanea: Origini e aspetti (Milan and Rome 1931), 51-2
14. Guido Ruberti, 'Servitù e grandezza dell'arte contemporanea', Rassegna della Istruzione Artistica, 2, February 1931, 89
15. Marziano Bernardi, 'La Quadriennale d'Arte Nazionale: Le nuove vie della pittura italiana', La Stampa, 6 January 1931
16. Arturo Lancellotti, La Prima Quadriennale d'Arte Nazionale (Rome 1931), 98-100
17. and Nino Bertocchi's somewhat favourable, and more discerning, review, 'Alla Quadriennale: Sironi, Ferrazzi e Tosi', L'Italia Letteraria, 21 March 1931, 4
18. This criticism is implicit in Sironi's review of the syndicate exhibitions and in 'La III Mostra del Sindacato fascista di Lombardia', Il Popolo d'Italia, 14 February 1932, reprinted in Sironi, Scritti, 118-19. His most glaring attacks on easel painting follow in the 1930s when he was promoting his ideal of mural painting, for example, 'Arte ignorata', La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d'ltalia, March 1934, in Scritti, 158, 161
19. Mario Sironi, 'Gusti borghese' in Sironi, Scritti, 291. The date of the unpublished fragment is tentatively put at 1935 by Camesasca on the basis of an analysis of the style of Sironi's sketches on the same sheet
20. Mario Sironi, 'La II Mostra del Sindacato fascista Belle Arti della Lombardia', Il Popolo d'Italia, 23 November 1929, reprinted in Mario Sironi, Scritti editi e inediti, ed. Ettore Camesasca (Milan 1980), 46
21. R. Freda, 'Artisti del tempo fascista: Sironi', Il Popolo di Lombardia, 17 March 1934, 3
22. L'immagine del socialismo, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome 1982)
23. 'Alla Galleria Milano: Mario Sironi', Rassegna della Istruzione Artistica, 120
24. 'La copertina di Sironi', Augustea, June 1933, 341
25. Costantini, Pittura italiana contemporanea, 272
26. Nino Bertocchi, 'Alla Quadriennale - Sironi, Ferrazzi e Tosi', L'Italia Letteraria, 21 March 1931, 4
27. Scheiwiller, Mario Sironi (Milan 1930)
28. Ugo Nebbia, La XVI Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia (Milan 1928), 44
29. M.C., 'Idee di Mario Sironi', Augustea, 25 April 1933, 207-8
30. Mussolini drew parallels between the artist and the politician in his speeches opening the exhibitions of the Novecento in 1923 and 1926: 'Alla Mostra del Novecento. Parole di Mussolini sull'arte e sul governo', Il Popolo d'Italia, 27 March 1923; 'Discorso di Mussolini per l'inaugurazione della prima mostra del Novecento italiano', Il Popolo d'Italia, 16 February 1926 (reprinted in Bossaglia, Il 'Novecento italiano', 83-4 and 96-8)
31. P.M. Bardi, 'La "Scuola" di Milano alla Prima Quadriennale', Rassegna della Istruzione Artistica, 2, February 1931, 35
32. See 'La polemica con "Il Regime fascista'" in Bossaglia, Il 'Novecento italiano', 42-8
33. Ugo Ojetti, 'June 29, 1933', Taccuini (Florence 1954), 413-14
34. Ugo Nebbia, 'Artisti d'oggi: Mario Sironi', 4
35. Yvon De Begnac, Taccuini mussoliniani, ed. Francesco Perfetti (Bologna 1990). Many times during his conversations with De Begnac (begun in 1934), Mussolini asserted his respect for Sironi, and his admiration for his art, see 348, 395, 403-4, and 590
36. Mario De Micheli, 'L'ispirazione tragica di Sironi' in Sironi: Mostra antologica (Rome 1962), n.p.; Guido Armellini, 'Fascismo e cultura italiana', Paragone, 285 (1972), 51-2
37. See, for example, the description of Sironi's workers by R. Freda, 'Artisti del tempo fascista: Sironi', Il Popolo di Lombardia, 17 March 1934, 3
38. Giovanni Gentile, 'Discorso inaugurale dell'istituto nazionale fascista di cultura', Fascismo e cultura (Milan 1928), 44-69, especially 48: Creano i miti, suscitano consensi e adesioni cieche, globali, mettono in moto le forze del sentimento e della volontà, rendendo possibili quei grandi fasci d'uomini, che rovesciano posizioni storiche secolari, strumenti animati dal pensiero, che si annida e vive in pochi spiriti guidatori, anzi in uno, che è il Duce
39. Gianni Vattimo in 'Myth Rediscovered', The Transparent Society (Baltimore 1992), 28-44, addresses the lack of contemporary satisfactory theories of myth, which he attributes to the crises in the philosophy of history. Vattimo analyses three different approaches to myth, all of which oppose themselves to the supposed certainty and superiority of science. The contemporary view that progress is itself a constructed myth, and the acknowledgement that neither mythic nor scientific thought are absolute forms of knowledge, mark, for Vattimo, the transition from the modern to the post-modern
40. Georges Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence, quoted and translated in Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Ascheri, trans. David Maisel (Princeton 1994), 62