Design and the modern world - exhibition, Wolfsonian Museum, Miami, FL

One of the great strengths of the Wolfsonian's collection is its Italian holdings, and the propagandistic and militaristic uses of modern art and design are dealt with most effectively in the exhibition through reference to Italian works. In this regard, some of the contributors may have approached Italian art of the period with too great a sense of innocence. Dennis Doordan's essay doesn't fall into this trap, however, and his discussion of the development of the Fascist artistic program in Italy provides an interesting analysis of three popular Fascist icons: the faces (the ancient Roman axe-wrapped-in-rods that symbolized statist authority), the dagger (an image associated with the elite World War I Arditi commando unit - and its phallicism, which Doordan hints at with somewhat Freudian language but regrettably doesn't go on to analyze in more explicit terms), and the image of Benito Mussolini. Doordan, who is associate professor of architecture at Notre Dame, deals with Mussolini in terms of a cult of personality. He notes the sexual radiance of this man, who had himself idealized, inter alia, as a bare-chested farmhand harvesting wheat. Yet one wishes again that the author had dared to reach further into the evidence to test our understanding of this particularly hoary mis-sublimation of testosterone into a modern propaganda cult of the BIG MAN.

Doordan's insightful capsulation of the intertwined relationship between Fascism and Futurism and of Fascism's more predictable relationship with a racialized classicism provides the strongest part of his essay. As he points out in his conclusion: "As the material under review here demonstrates, any authoritative historical analysis of political design must begin by recognizing the complex and multiple design strategies at work in the political culture of Fascism" (p. 251). Among the conclusions that the Wolfsonian exhibition and catalogue, and indeed the collection itself, ensemble, make plain is that any style lends itself to propaganda and that propaganda is a system of hiding ugly truths behind seductive, lovely, familiar, or even beloved images.

As admirable as both the exhibition and the catalogue are, a few small complaints may be made. When I couldn't easily relocate an interesting reference to the work of scholar George Mosse, I wished the endnotes had been included in the index. There was no example of the definitive Futurist "paper architecture" of Antonio Sant'Elia in either the show or the collection. But these criticisms are picayune in the context of the outstanding accomplishment represented by the inaugural exhibition of this wonderful new museum.

Notes

1. Mitchell Wolfson has given the objects in the inaugural exhibition to the Wolfsonian. The remainder of the collection is on long-term loan to the institution, as is the building.

2. The Miami facility is paired with the Wolfsonian's European branch in Genoa, where the spectacular, early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts Castello MacKenzie houses part of the collection.