<<

Nationalism and

in

the Art of

1907-1938

HELEN MARAH DUDLEY

A thesis submitted to the Department of

in conformity with the requirernents for

the degree of Master of Arts

Queen's University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

September, 1998

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This thesis will examine the pre and post World War One cultural politics and anistic output of the Florentine artist, , and author Ardengo Soffici ( 1879-1 96.0.

Soffici is perhaps best known for his cubist inspired art and contact with the avant-garde circle of and . Indeed, in the pre-war period Soffici was a pivotal figure in both Parisian and Florentine avant-garde circles, spending seven years in

Paris and contributing substantially to the Florentine joumals Leonardo(l903-l907), Lu

Voce( 1908- 19 16), and Lucerbu ( 19 13- 15). In the pst-war era he became a devoted follower of Mussolini and a preeminent aesthetic theorkt for the regime. In both cases Sofici's cultural politics are well documente4 providing a cohesive body of literature relating to his selfdeclared cultural mission, a carnpaign of national rejuvenation for Itaiy that was closely bound to his own artistic production. In bief, this project was envisioned by Sofici in terms of a cultural and aesthetic revolution that was to create a new Great through moral renewal. From an art historical standpoint, the fundarnentally nationalist character of Soffici's work has in large part been ovenhadowed by his illustrious Parisian connections. In facf when considered for his aesthetics, Sofici's art is narrowly classified as a denvative of French or as cubo- . Such formulations take into account only a minute fragment of Soffici's aesthetic, a period spaming less than five years. Thus, through a thematic, as opposed to stylistic, analysis of Sofici's artistic output, I will attempt to redress this art historical imbalance by situating Soffici in the context of broader debates concerning the emergence of ultra-nationalism in Italy. AC.KNOWEDGMENTS

I would tint like to thank rny supervisor, Mark Antliff whose advice,

encouragement, and optimism greatly facilitated the writing of this thesis and whose

impeccable scholarship will continue to provide inspiration for my career. Among the

numerous professors in the art department who have contributed to my art historical

formation, I must particularly thank: Lynda Jessup, for her insightfuf comments regarding

my thesis, and more importantly for her friendship and support throughout my graduate

studies; and Pat Leighten, for her clarifications of the cornplex cultural politics of avant- guerre Europe.

Over the past eight years 1 have eagerly pursued rny love of Italian culture and in the process gained countless friends and contacts. I am gratefûl to the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Italy and the Ministem degli Affuri Esteri in Rome for granting me a scholarship in the summer of 1998 îhat allowed for a retum research trip to . 1 owe a special thanks to my gracious hosts in Rome, Enna and Pietro Cavanna, as well as their extended family al1 over Italy, whose generosity and willingness to include me as part of their family enriched my experience of Italy enormously. Most importantly, 1 thank Virgilio, who has unselfishly provided me with support in every area of my life, academically and emotionally, and whose , , and compassion will remain integral to my outlook on life.

In venturing into the world of academia I was continuously fortifed by rny fiiendships at Queen's University. 1 would like to particulary thank Ihor Junyk for his optimism and early encouragement, and my dearest fiends Andrea Cherniack, Caroline Walkinshaw, and Holly Simpson, for their humor, ambitio and strength.

Finally, 1 owe a heartfelt thanks to my famiiy for their immeasurable kindnesses and unwavering support. To my parents, I extend my deepest gratitude for encouragirtg me to pursue my graduate studies and for allowing me the freedom to follow my dreams and passions. TABLE OF CONTENTS

.. ABS~CT...... ii ... ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iii

CFL4PTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Review of Literature...... 1

1 -2 The Myth of Nationai Regeneration ...... 10

1.3 The Risorgimento: Italy's Faifed Spiritual Unification...... 16

CHAPTER 2: SOFFICI'S PRE-WAR CULTURAL OUTPUT

2.1 Parisian Experience and Retm to Tuscany ...... 24

2.2 La Voce...... -33

2.3 Tuscan Landscape and Peasant Imagery ...... 38

2.4 Literary Contributions to La Voce...... 47

2.5 ...... ,, ...... 49

CHAPTER 3: SOFFICI'S POST-WAR CULTURAL OUTPUT

3.1 and the Retum to Order...... 54

3.2 Art Criticism and Theoretical Writing ...... -60

3.3 Modemist Cfassicism: The Tuscan Peasant Re.visited ...... -72

3.4 CONCLUSION ...... ,...... -82

ILLUSTRATIONS...... 85

BBLIOGRAPHY...... 113

VTTA ...... 123 CHAPTER 1: iNTRODUCTION

1.1 Review of Literature

Even the most cursory examination of Ardengo Softici's artistic output reveals that the landscape and peasantry of Tuscany figure prorninently as the central subject matter throughout much of his career. In two distinct periods of his oeuvre, Soffici rendered the local landscape and peasantry of his "rnotherland," Tuscany, in idyllic and sentimental terms, a nostaigic vision that incorpurated a naive artistic style with folk subject matter, and promoted the purity of the Tuscan character and the authenticity of traditional agricuitura1 ways of life. These two analogous thematic phases, the first marked by his retum to Florence in 1907 fiom , continuing until 1912 (when his art was directed more towards the concerns of the Parisian-avant-garde, in particular that of the cubists); and the second marked by the end of the First Wortd War and continuing throughout the fascist regïme, will be the central focus of this thesis.

Beginning with the premise that Italian fascisrn endeavored to define itself as a secular , supporting this ideal with an elaborate aesthetic system, and considering principles recently linked to nationalist movements such as the role of myth and tradition, this thesis will isolate the theoretical motivations informing Soffki's own version of modemist nationalism.' In particular, 1 will examine theories of palingenesis,

'For a discussion ofthe concept of a sdarr&gious system supporteci by aesthetics see Emilio Gentile, II Cdro del Litiorio: La Sacrafizzzione della poIitica nell ' Iiaiia Fascista. Roma: Editori Lat- 1993. Gentile ammarks these ideas in his article "Fascisrn as Politicai Religion," Joumai of Contemporary History 25 (May-June 1990). 229-5 1. He argues htfascism utilited an extensive system of myths, rituds, symbols and rites to mobii Itaiiam to make saaifices in order to transfonn the nation of Itaiy. or in other words the myth of national regeneration, that played a crucial role in Italian

political and cultural history fiom the Ri~orgimentountil the Fise of fascism. Roger

Grifin, in his fundamental work The iVrrrure qfF~sczs~has theorized the concept of

palingenesis, suggesting that when combined with populist ultra-nationalism it foms

fascism's permanent mythic core.' The tem itself is used generically to denote the vision

of a radically new kgiming that follows a period of perceived or

destru~tion.~National regeneration can be seen as an important principle in the

formulation of Italian nationalism and the major preoccupation of the new generation of

avant-garde intellectuals that aime to maturity in the period fiom 1900-19 14. In tracing

themes of regionalism and nationalism in Soffici's art throughout the various

permutations of his career, 1 will establish the continuity of Soffci's palingenetic cultural

mission. Many of the tenets of Soffici's cultural quest came to hition under fascism;

thus, 1 will continue rny thematic analysis of his art in the climate of the post-war "rehim

to order," locating Soffici's consemative artistic output within the ofien contradictory

aesthetic theories of the fascist regime. Soffici's traditionalist and regionalist aesthetic at

times appears antithetical to many of fascism's airns; however, it is precisely the current

'The term pahgenesis is derived 60m Mn-anew, a@n and geriesis-creation, birth, and refers to the sense of a new start or of regeneration after a phase of crisis or dedine. It cm be associateci with bath mystical and secular realities. For an in depth analysis of the concept of palingenesis in relation to fascist movements see Chapters 1,2,7 of Roger Griffi% ;Ine Nature of Fascism, London: Pinter Pubiishers, 1991. in addition to Griffin's study, the concept of pahgenesis has been utilized by Itafian scholars E-Gentileand G. Lazzari in their studies of the origins of Italian fascisrn See E. Gentile, Le origiiti dell'ideologiajascista. Bari:Laterza, 1975; G. hzai, ''Lingrraggiu. ideologrogr4poIitica culturale akl fascismo 'h Movimento Operaio e Socialistra, vol. 7, no. 1, 1984. Most recently, Gentile has continueci his examination of thwne~of decay and rebirth in relationship to Italian fisckm in his article "The Myth of National Regeneratiort," in Fascist Pïsions.-Art and Ideology in France andlraiy. Matthew Afion and Mark Antliff eds,: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Arrrliffand monagree that the terrn bas been widely adopted as specifjhg a key concept of fkxhideology. See note 14 of their introduction to Fascid Visions, 20. 3~ogerGriffin, Ine Nancre of Fax:&, bndon: Pinter Publishers, 199 1,33. of palingenesis prevalent in Soffici's work that appealed to fascism's ultra-nationalist

ideological make-u p.

Numerous studies have investigated the role of Italian modernist movements in

the dissemination of political ideology and nationalist rhetoric, yet the specific and

concrete artistic formulas employed by Italian artists to communicate their political

enthusiasms have received liale attention4 The Milanese futurists, led by F-T Marinetti,

have received the majority of scholarly attention largely as a result of their cosrnopolitan

orientation, their bellicose political beliefs, and their eventual support of the fascist

regime.' However, recent attempts on the part of Walter Adamson6 and Emilio Gentile7

to locate sources of fascism in the pre-war Italian cultural avant-garde have generated

substantial scholarly debate on another important Italian modemist movement, the

'Of the studies examining the relationship between Itaiian modernist movernents and Italian political currents, Walter Adamson's articles were most helpfiil to rny research See Adamson's: "The Language of Opposition in Early Twentieth-Century Ttaly: Rhetorical Continuities between Prewar Florentine Avant- gardism and Mussolini's Fascism," Jorm~alof Modenr History 64 (1992): 22-5 1; "Modemisni and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903-1922," Americmr Historic(1I Review 95 (1990): 359-390; "Fascisrn and Culture: Avant-gardes and Secular Religion in the Italian Case," JmimI of CoriremporaryHistoty 24 (1 989): 4 1 143 S. ALso Emiiio Gentile's analysis of Fascist cuitural policies in:"Fascism as Poiitical Religion.," Jmral of Cotztempormy His~ory25 (May-June IWO), 229-5 1 ;Other important sources include George Mosse, "The Political Culture of ltalian Futurism: A Generd Perspective." Jourrd of Contemprmy Hisiozy 25 (1990):253-268. Renzo De Felice, ed., Fuhrrinno. Cr~ltwue Politica. Turin: Agneili, 1988; Richard Gosian, ed. FMism. Aesrhetics and Culture- Hannover. University Press of New Engiand, 1992, ' Many studies have been devoted to the branch of fiiturism based in Milan see Marianne Martin, Futu& Art and Zbeory 1909-19 12 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968; Claudia Salaris, II Frrturisno e la Pubblicità del/ ' medl 'me della PtcblicitO, Milan: Lughetti, 1986; L. De Maria. La Narcira &II 'clwntt-gumdia: saggrggr strlfictt~n'smoitaIimro. Venice: Marsilio, 1986. Maria Drudi Gambio, and Teresa Fiori, Archivi del frrl~~rismo.Rome: De Luca, 1958. 6For the most thorough anaiysis of the cultural and political influence of pre-war Florentine jouds in the formation of fascist ideology and a detailed account of Soffici's involvement in the Lu Voce circle, se: Walter Adamson, Avant-Gurde Florence: From Mdentism to F~lscim.Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. For an examination of Soffici'sart criticism see Adamson's ment artide =Adengo Soffici and the Religion of Art" in: Matthew monand Mark Antliffeds. Fascist Visions: Art andl&oIogy in Frme artdl~cr&~PxïncetonN. J:Pnnceton University Press, 1997. 'Emilio Gentile, La Voce e I 'eta' giolittiam- Mih: Pan, 1972 and MuswIini e La Voae. Milan; Sansoni, 1976. 4 florentine group centered around Lu Voce. This Idealisf politically non-partisan journal aîtempted to promote a spiritual renewal of Italy through an undeatanding of the reality of the Italian national situation. Gentile's and Adamson's comprehensive discussions avoid the tendency to treat Lu Voce simply as a pre-war phenornenon and actively explore the connections benveen it and pst-war fascism. Lu Vuce's influence cannot be underestimated as the journal called upon palingenetic myth in order to mobilize Italy's citizenry into a force for national rejuvenation. However, Lu Voce S aesthetic motivations are in need of further investigation and Sofici's contributions as art critic and theorist provide an ideal stariing point.

Italian scholarship, reluctant to delve into the darker chaptee of its own history, has only recently salvaged Sofici from his pst World War 11 obscurity, initiating a process of resuscitation designed to fiee the Tuscan artist from the taint of fascism. As a result, numerous exhibition catalogues have been devoted to Sofici; however, in general

Italian scholanhip tends to downplay culrural politics in order to promote the 'essential"

Italian character of Soffici's aesthetic, in effect co-opting his art into conternporary discourses that seek to valorize previously marginalized ltalian artists. Soffici's redemption has been facilitated by the seemingly innocuous nature of his art; his picturesque Tuscan iandscapes and genre scenes offer a carefiee veneer, in no way hinting at the turbulent political upheavals of his time.

In light of this, the body of critical literature relating to Soffici is small; of the catalogues dedicated to SolTici only the most recent, curated by Omella Casaaa and Luigi Cavallo, introduces the cultural politics that inform Sofici's arts Cavallo's lmmagini e documenti 1879-1964.a chronological compilation of archival documents, sketches, and correspondence relating to Soffici, and the intellectuals with whom he interacted, is an ideal research tool, offering a wealth of essential inf~rmation.~Various comprehensive studies have been devoted to Soffici's literary output, most notably those by Eraldo Bellini" and Mario Richter." Richter's comprehensive study of Soffici's

French formation, investigates the extent of Soffici's relationship with the French cultural avant-garde, bringing to light the complexity and quality of this exchange.

Shirley Vinall, in her Phd dissertation entitled Itolian Avant-Gurde Attitudes to French culture: Marinetti. Soffici. Papini and Prezzolini 1897-1915, builds on Richter's study, demonstrating how such figures endeavored to bring Italian culture to an international and cosmopolitan context against the background of growing political nationalism. '* The correspondence between Sofici and compiled by Richter in Cilrteggio.

1. 1903-1908: Da1 "Leonordo" a '*LuVoce " is perhaps the richest source of evidence relating to Soffici 's early atternpts at theorizing his notions of Italiandà artisz ica (artistic

'Of Italian exhibition catalogues Ornelia Casazza and Lui@ Cavallo's &on: Ar&ngo SoBci: Arte e Siona. Mazzotta: Rignano Sull'arno, 1994; dais most consistently with Soffici's art in conjunction with historid events and to some degree the cultural politics of the perioâ. Also see: Lui@ Cavallo, Ardertgo &@ici: Un Percorso dearte.Poggio A Caiano, Maaotta, 1994. Cavallo has curated numerous one-man exhibits of Sofici's work: Ardengo &@?ci: Giome di Pitt~~ra,BoIogna: Galleria Matescaichi, 1987; Arderrgo &$ici: Moma Anroiogica. Commune di Macerata, Pinacoteca Communaie, 1986; Ardengo So@ici: Lavon per Aflesco. Radda in Chianti: Casteiio Volpaia, 1982; Lui@ Cavallo and Giuseppe Raimondi. Ardetrgo Sofici 1879- 1964: Mosaa Anrologica Comune di Maceraiu: Macerata: Comune, Pinacoteca cornunale, 1988. Luigi Cavaho, Immagini e documenti 1879-19#-Florence: Vallechi Editore, 1986. 'O Eraldo Bellini, Srudi su Ardengo Soflci. Milan: Vie Pensiero, 1987. " Mario Richter, La fonnazionefiancese a? A.rdmgo -ci, i9Oû-19f*Milan: Vie Pemiero, 1969. 12 Shirley ViItalian Amt-Garde Attimrtes îo French culture: Marinetti, Soflci. Pcrpini and Predini 1897-19 15. University of Reading: PhD Dissertation, 1975. Italianness) and Tosccinità (Tuscanness). l3 These letters demonstrate the strength of his convictions regarding the promotion of an aesthetic, moral, spiritual, and philosophical renewal in his beloved Tuscany and eventually al1 of Italy.

By far the most important and comprehensive study relating to the Tuscan cultural milieu is Walter Adamson's Avunt-Gurde Florence: From to

Fucisrn, an extensive analysis of the Florentine avant-garde from the tum of the century until the emergence of fascism. '' Most recently, Adamson has initiated a discussion on the meaning and importance of art in Soffici's estimation, in his article "Ardengo Soffici and the Religion of ~rt.""Through an examination of Soffici's art criticism Adamson provides a loose chronology of Soffici's artistic activities*affiliations, and allegiances throughout the First World War ers! He correctly isolates modem art as the most important instrument in Soffici's pre-war project for cultural renewal; however,

Adamson fails to address how Soffici's own art funciions in this quest for modemity.

Absent from al1 these evaluations is an extensive analysis of Soffici's art in relation to his cultural politics, especially in ternis of his dependence on the myth of and renewal. Soffici's artistic output clearly demonstrates the centrality of palingenetic myths in the Italian dialectic of ultra-nationalism and avant-gardism; thus, my task wili be to isolate the precise aesthetic paradigms that Soffici utilized to transform his political

13GioMnni Papini and Ardengo Soffici, Carfeggîo, 1. I9OM908: Dai "Leowdo" a " La t'oce- " Mario Richter ed. Rome: Ediaoni di Storia e Letteratura, 199 1. "Walter Adamson, Avant-Gara2 FIorence: Frm Mdrnism to Fasciian. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. 'Walter Adamson, "Ardengo Soffici and the Religion of Art" in: Matthew monand Mark Antliff eds. Fizsrist Yisiom: An and Ideolugy in France andltaly.Princeton N.J:P~cetonUniversity Press, 1997. l6 See Adamson's chapter in Fascist I/isiom, ABlion and AntliEeds. beliefs into a didactic tool to aid in the moral transformation of Italy.

Chapter one will first consider theoretical issues arising from the intersection of

palingenetic myth and secular religious principles. Drawing on the work of Gentile,

Adamson, Benedict Andenon, Eric Hobsbawm, and nurnerous pst-colonial theorists

concemed with national culture and its products, 1 will attempt to pinpc.int the temporal

and spatial ambiguities relating to modemist nationalism, information vital to an

undentanding of Soffici's regionalist aesthetic. " Essentiai to Soffici's formulation is an

accord between modemity and tradition; his embrace of a traditionalist aesthetic is motivated by a desire to protect the continuity linking the modem era with the past, to guarantee that Italy's rich artistic traditions remain integral to a modem Italian art.

Secondly, 1 will investigate the historical effects of the Risorgimento (considered a failed spiritual revolution by Soffici) on the next generation of Italian intellectuals. The post-

Risorgimento era was viewed as a phase of decline and degeneration, that would inspire a vision of a revolutionary new order in much of the intellechial class, a vision that both fueled and nourished an ideal that would eventually be irnplemented by the fascist regime.

Chapter two will examine Soffici's pre-war artistic output: his early cultural formation in Parisian avant-garde circles; his subsequent return to Florence; and final 1y

"~achof these scholars has aiggencd ways to remncile an ideaihion of and nostalgia for the paq with a forward looking modenùst inclination. See Beriedict Anderson, Imugined Commiities. London: Verso, 1983; Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Imnlion of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ùi pdcuiar the chapter by Eric Hobsbawrn,"Mass producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1 9 14." Also of interest is the work of Nicos Poulantzas, Sfate. Power, SbciaIim. London: Verso, 1980. On the subject of myth and its role in poütics see Stephen Sharkey and Robert S. Dombroski, "Revolution, Myth and Mythicd Politics: The Fut& Solution," JoumrzI of bropean Hisfov6,110.23 (1 W6), 23 147. his involvernent in the triad of avant-guerre joumals instrumental in establishing the legitirnacy of anti-liberal, anti-mialist and ultra-nationalist ideas in Italy, Leonardo, La

Chcc and Locerbu. The three main figures, who each contnbuted substantially to the formation of these joumals, Giovanni Papini, and Ardengo Soffici, were brought together in the hope of tuming their cbculturaI-philosophicalvisions into a ne\, collectively shared faith, a Sorelian myth that would integrate Italy spiritually and prornote the formation of a vigorous new political elite."" Soffici's art is characterized at this t ime by his sel f-styled regionalism or Toscmità and by his notion of ItaIiunitt5 urlisricu, tsvo fundamental concepts that remain integral to his art production for the rnajority of his career. Sofici's cornmitment to Lacerba confi~rmshis desire to renew

Italian culture from withir. despite his close ties with the French cultural scene. With the approach of the First World War, Soffici's feelings of solidarity with France were subordinated to his own particular Italian nationalism.

Chapter three shifts fiom the avant-garde climate of pre-\var Italy to the pst-war environment of fascism and the "" to investigate the , , and retro-guard tendencies evident in SoEci's art. Two objectives that remained constant to Sofici's research and faith were modemity and classicism; however, his was a highly personal version of classicism that drew on numerous artistic models from Italy7s rich cultural heritage. To Soffici, modemity represented the ciramatic and difficult absorption of the present in its disorder and in its chaos, while classicism guaranteed the salvation of western civilization in its inunutable idealism. Soffici's

damso son, "Modernism and Fascian: the Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903- 1922." 378. version ofclassicism was specifically ItaIian and he equated this notion more and more

insistently with Ituiianil& In rejecting his avant-garde affiliations, especially his French connections, Sofici's ultra-nationalist concems are unquestionably esposed and the

paradigm he chooses to employ is once again the regionalkt theme of landscape and peasantry. In essence, this thesis will dernonstrate that common to al1 phases of Soffci's career was his cultural mission of rejuvenation, a palingenetic motivation that manifests itself in the guise of a return to tradition and provincial values. 1 -2 The Mvth of National Regeneration

Recent scholanhip relating to nationalisrn has isolated the elernent of myth, especially theories of palingenetic myth, in the rise of ultra-nationalist movements. As previously note4 studies attempting to formulate a generic definition of fascisrn have identified the concept of paiingenesis as a constituent of Eàscist movements, forming fascisrn's mythic core when synthesized with populist ultra-nationalism. The core of an ideology can be conceived as the fundamental political myth which mobilizes its activists and supporters, whereas the term 'rnythic' denotes the inspirational, revolutionary power that an ideology can exert. Thus, the expression palingenetic myth cornes to signify the vision of a revolutionary new order which supplies the affective power of an ide~logy.'~

The divergent foundations of the myth of decadence and renewal, a myth

"... cultivated in geographically dispersed circles in a number of diverse non-political or apolitical 'discounes,' namely religion, spirituality, rnorality and culture,"contrïbuted greatly to its dissemination and its rnobilization towards political endst0 In fact, the myth of regeneration has been the focus of numerous studies in the disciplines of sociology, psychology, philosophy and politics. The notion that ancien? psychological mechanisrns continue to operate in the consciousness of modem society is an idea that has been investigated in fiindamental twentieth-century shidies by such scholars as Erich

Fromm, CG Jung, Emile Durkheim, Arthur Koestler. However, the belief that these mythopeiac mechanisrns are responsible for supplying the vitality and dynam ics of al1 11

political cultures is a more recent idea that has been advanced through amplification of

these indispensable theorists. Grifin proposes a psycho-historical scheme to account for

the fint appearance of fascism "in its embryonic pre-19 14 forms, pnmarily in terms of

perennial psychological predispositions in conjunction with a particular cultural

climate." He draws on psychoanalysis and psychology, in orde: to demonstrate that the

structural precondi tion for the ernergence of was "the coexistence of

both populist nationalism and a myth of decadence as idiorns within the sarne culture that

could be fused into a new political ideology through the agency of the perennial human

propensity to palingenetic myth.""

Grifin's conclusion is derived in part from Durkheim's investigation of modem society, which focused on the unsustainability of individual hurnan existence without collective myths and goals, and the purely subjective, and hence mythic, role of religion in creating a sense of solidarity and social cohesion. In addition, he draws on Fromm's theory that explores humanity's 'fear of freedom' or built in dread of isolation and a corresponding need for a sense of belonging: 'The 'natural' sense of being part of a greater whole created in traditional societies has been progressively sapped by the rise of , a concomitant of the , the Reformation, industrialization and capitalism."* Thus, it is psychologically vital that people find dace in the illusion of a higher order of reality "in which they are relieved of king themselves in a mythless,

2' GlifEn, 204. P~mileDurkheim, Suicriti: A S~àyin ~ioIqgyogyNew York: ïhe Free Press of Glencoe, 195 1. For an analysis of Durkheim's tIieory see GdEq 19 1. " Erkh Fromm, The Feur of Freeubm. London: Routelege and Keagiin P41%O. private time."24

Mircea Eliade proposes that secular and sacred religions both satisfy an

impulse to battle "rnythless, and hence meaningless time, 'the terror of history."

Eliade's work, The Myth of the Eternol Return or Co.vrnos and Hisrory. investigates the essential role of cosmological myths of cyclic decay, decline, and rebirth, in overcoming despondency and a sense of absurdity in times of ad~ersity.~~This reliance on cyclical myth seems to have been isolated to societies sharing the notion of irrevenible linear time; it is these societies that tend to develop myths locating the momentous events of their culture within a limitless design of decadence and renewaLZ7Eliade's snidy psi& that ritual and cosmological myth in traditional societies function to promote a metaphysical sense of the world's meaning and purpose. Such all-encompassing cosmology and social ritual allows for the repeated shared experience of sacred time and space. The erosion of the capacity to transcend "the terror of history" is seen as a threat to "modem man," who is then forced to escape to the inadequate pockets of space offered in modem society in which linear personal time can be overtumed and transcendence achieved Griffin has discussed the implication of Eliade's theories for modem political science, suggesting that:

The perennid human craving to find release hmpain and despair through mythopeia and ritual makes it inevitable that 'modem man' too will continue to create havens fiom the terror of history in cyciic myths of renewal and in their conesponding ceremonials, both of which have the firnction of abolishg profane tirne. Each new crisis dlthus tekase

" See Griffin, 191. %ee . ihe Myfh of the Etenzul Remar Caanar ami Histoty. Princeton:Princeton Univenity Press, 197 1. Also his earlier texts: The Sacred adrhe Profane, New York: Harcourt, 1959 and Myrh and Realify, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964. 'd Grifbl,l90. " Eliade, 1 18. currents of energy potentiany availabte for channe6ng into palingrnetic rnythss

According to Grifin, the pluralistic and seculanzed character of modem society contributes to the appearance of new myths, ofien in the form of socio-political

ideologies and theories of revolution, which seek empirical basis in historical events.

However, it is precisely these societal characteristics that i mpede any eflect ive channeling of cultural energies into ritual culture. Without the support of a system of universal cosmology and ritual, these modem myths fail to become relevant to entire societies and tend to generate mythic expectations incompatible with modem reality. "

Such theories, posited on the assumption of a homogenous communal sub-conscious and dependent on general psyc hological pnnci ples in order to describe speci fic historical events, have been justifiably criticized for their inability to incorporate ideological formulations and intellectual history hmthe period in question However, Griffin's study is useful in so far as it allows for the introduction of concepts beyond political science into the debate surrounding the rise of ultra-nationalist movements.

In -ng to Benedict Anderson's definition of the nation- "It is an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign with finite boundarïes"- we are reminded that "the nations to which nation States give political expression, always loom out of an immemorial past and glide into a limitless fiit~re."~

Furthemore, being etemal, they offer the same possibilities as paradise. Such a conflation of nationalist and religious language, , and ritual is a key element of

~~~90. '9 Ibid., 191 .. Benedict Andersan, Irnagined Commnities. Londonr Verso, 1983, p. 6. myth making and the invention of tradition. However, Timothy Breman notes that ''the

phrase 'myths of the nation' is ambiguous in a calculated way. It does not refer only to the more or less unsurprising idea that nations are mythical ...The phrase is also not limited to the consequences of this artificiality in conternporaiy political life - namely the way that various govemments invent traditions to give permanence and solidity to a transient political fom." " One inclusive definition of myth, that can be applied to modem political culture, suggested by Brennan, after Malinowski's, is

myth acts as a charter for the presentday social order, it supplies a retrospective pattern of mord values, sociological order, and magical belief, the fùnction of which is to strengthen tradition and endow it with a greater value and prestige by tracing it back to a higher, better, more supernatural reality of initial events."

Intense scholarly activity in postcolonial studies by such leading academics as

Homi K. Bhabha, Chidi Arnuda, Paxtha Chatiergee, Franz Fanon, and Timothy Brennan has generated new evaiuations of nationalisrn's relationship to colonialisrn. 33 These efforts in theorizing the nation and nationalism have proven extremely valuable, not only in relation to postcolonial societies, but in understanding the cultural impetus for nationalism in the European case as well- Franz Fanon offen a definition of nationai culture as: "the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to descnbe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence..."Y Such a formulation, which recognizes the impact of culture in nationalist thought, privileges the nation's cultural products, and thus art, literature,

"hothy Brennan, " The National Longing For Form," in Homi K. Bhabha ed. Ndion and Nmation. London: RouteIedge, 1990,45-74. " ibid.. 45. Quoted in Peter Worsley, The =rd WorM Chicago; Univmity of Chicago Press, 1964, p.5. o or an introduction to the works of these vital theorists in pst-colonial discourse see The Posl-coio~iial Studies Reader, Büi Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and HeIen T'in eds., London: Routiedge, 1995. Y Franz Fanon, "National CuIturen m 17re Pod Cdonial SidesReader, 155. music, folklore and most importantly, mythology take on new significance.

Homi K. Bhabha, in his study of nationalism in post~olonialsocieties has initiated a discussion on the concept of 'nation as narration,' focusing on the disjunctive time of the nation's modernity:

The problematic boundaries ofrnodenùty are enacted in these ambivalent temporalities of the nation-space. The language of culture and community is poised on the fissures of the present becoming the rhetorical figures of a national pst. Historians translixed on the event and origins of the nation never ask, and political theorists possessed of the 'modem' totalities of the nation[ ...]never pose the awkward question of the disjunctive representation of the social, in this double time of the nation."

Bhabha questions: "How do we plot the narrative of the nation that must mediate between the teleology of progress tipping over into the timeless discoune of irrationality?" The complexity of his theoretical response suggests that this is not an easy msk. in the pas& theorists have attempted to circumvent the ideological ambiguity of nationalism, effectively avoiding what Bhabha describes as the issue of "the ambivalent and chiasmatic intersections of time and place that constirute the problematic 'modem' experience of the western nati~n."'~However, scholarly consensus suggests that spatial- temporal ambiguities relating to nationalism are in need of theorization: "To write the story of the nation demands that we articulate that archaic ambivalence that idomis m~dernity."~'The CO-ordinatesof such a spatial-temporal model, time and place, can be equated with history and temtory, both of which share a mythic dimension when superimposed on the concept of nation. In investigating the construct of 'nation', it becomes clear that the creation of a national history and national traditions depends on

35HorniK. Bhabha, " DissemiNation: tirne, narrative, and the masgins of the modern nation." in Nafion und Nartafion: London: Routeledge, 1990, p.29. %id., 28. " ibid. 16 mythic sources.

Each of these scholan has identified the spatial-temporal dimension as a vital commonality in myth making and nationalist palingenesis. Brennan points to the connection between ritual repetition, the ritualization of memory, celebration, cornmernoration, and the desire to deht the irreversibility of ti~ne,)~or as Anderson puts it ^an awareness of being imbedded in secular, serial time, with al1 the implications of continuity, yet of forgetting the experience of this continuity." It is this cognizance which

"engenders the need for a narrative of 'identity." 39 Such a narrative of identity, derived fiom an innate apprehension of time, often reveals itself in the form of incongruities and apparent inconsistencies behveen an acceptance of tradition and an impulse towards modemity. Central to a reading of Ardengo Soffici's art is the need to organize the spatial-temporal ambivalence of modemity through an investigation of the traditiodmodemity dichotomy.

1.3 The Risorgimento: Italv's Failed Spirihial Unification

The creation of the Italian state in 186 1 was accompanied by the intellectuai movement of the Risorgimento, rneaning "resurgence," terminology indicating that palingenetic myth is operative in its ideology. This independence movement had endeavored to create an active society with a genuine civic culture premised on the sanctity of the nation-state. Through the Risorgimento the modem Italian state acquired

Brennan, 5 1. 39 Anderson, 205. i ts founding fathers, Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, and its poli tical ideals Liberalism,

Nationalism, and Republicanism." The term also describes a number of transformations in Italian society: the developrnent of a parliamentary system; the breakdown of traditional rural society and the birth of modem, urban life; the transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy; and the attempted replacement of local and regional identities by a single national culture.'" Mazzini, the philosopher of the Risorgimento, promulgated the doctrines of popular sovereignty and national selfdetermination and endorsed the necessity of popular insurrection to establish liberty and national unity. His blend of popular and official nationalism remained the inspiration for diverse groups of intellectual and middle-class nationalists until . The vociani in Florence, for example, shared above al1 Mazzini's faith in the concept of a secularized religion of spiritualized nationalism, as well as his understanding of the sanctity of the nation, and his aim to apped to the youth of Italy to bring about moral redemptionJZ

Unified through diplornatic maneuvering and manipulations on the part of the ruling elite, the new nation of Italy faced enorrnous problems. in the political realm there was an absence of political elites experienced in self-government and a lack of established civic culture. In the social sphere there were high levels of illiteracy, low levels of technical knowtedge, and histonc territorial divisions and regional antagonisms.

Economically, an archaic agicultural system, pronounced difierences in development between north and south, and limited natural resources, al1 served to exacerbate the

'9ucy EWi, Ihe IfdianRisorgimenm: State. Society md Natiotml Uttif;cofion,Landon: Routledge, 1. "lbid. Adamwn, The Fiorentitre Awnt-gar&, 22. 18

country's massive debt The practice of trarfomismo, or of cwpting the oppositional

dites into the governing majority through various fonns of comption, was perceived as

the foundational principle of liberal politics and secured economic control for a small

moup of northern industrialists, effectively stifling any serious debate surrounding the CI

nations problems. SJ

Regionalism and the problem of the Me-lgiorno (the south of Italy) were

constant issues of political debate in liberal Italy. Two approaches to government existed

after unification: a strategy of centralized state based on the French model, that was

intended to firmly cernent national unity; or the view that unity shodd be builf fiom

below, on the strength of regional diversities, in fui1 acknowledgrnent of the great ciifferences among the component parts of Italy. 45 Intellectuals and politicians set on

national unification were careN to suppress regionalist movements while attempting to stimulate regional consciousness in the south and to use regionalism as a means to strengthen Italian national unit^.^^

Linguistic heterogeneity was also an impediment to national unity: there was a standard Italian language based on the Florentine dialect, but few spoke it and it was viewed as an artificial or second language. In addition to the countless local dialects,

French was widely used in Turin, Latin in Rome, and Castillian and Catalan in the southem capitals." Linguistic unification was addressed though the educational system;

Adamson, "Modeniisrn and Fascism: The Politics ofculture in My, 1903-1922," 367. Ibid., 368. '%fichael Keating, Sme and RegimI Natiodism: Temitorid PoIitics and the Europm Sîate, New York: Harvester Whea- 1988, p. 44. 'Keating 1 13. " ibid., 41. 19 however, non-Italian speaking Italians in the border areas maintained their linguistic distinctions, and local dialects continued in daily use." Regionalist ideologies in the early stages of unification were often subsumed by nationalist rhetoric, for example the late nineteenth century Mezzogiorno produced large quantities of intellectuals and witers without producing a real southem literature. The myths, folk-tales, and Iiterature that supplied the citizenry of the Me=ogtorno with its self-image were such as to discourage regional self-assertion, as the great southem writers tended to be Italian men of the Risorgimento who larnented the failure of the south to integrate with the north and fulfill the dream of Italian ~nity.''~

Maninian Dentocrats had offered a program of heroic myths to the Italian public;

Italians were portnyed as the unfortunate victims of domestic and foreign oppression to be liberated and empowered through a revolutionary war of national resurgence.

Ironically, a pervasive sense of failure and regret was instead transferred to united Italy after 1860 as nostalgia for the hypothesized giories of the Risorgimento characterized the political debate. As elated expectations were replaced by the sobering realities of independence, the inability to 'resurge' becarne the dominant concem for an entire generation of intellectuals and politicians.

The fact remained that a unified Italian peninsula had not materialized due to an upsurge of Italian nationalist sentiment or mas ~auggle.~Political unification had succeeded, yet without moral reform it appeared an empty victory. The new liberal era in Italian politics was viewed as overly materialist and superficial and the representatives of that system were hence regarded as lacking in spintual value^.^' Consequently, Italy remained a mere "geographic expression" in the eyes of many. The challenge of former

Piemontese prime minister Massimo D'Azeglio that, after having made Italy the problem was to "make Italians" resounded stronply amongst intellectuals." Their inability to produce an intelligible political alternative, a new respectable national culture, led invariably to f~ationand despair.

In their investigations of the cultural roots and origins of nationalism, scholars, such as Benedict Anderson, Ernst Gellner, and Eric Hobsbawm have pointed to the

European crisis of religious faith as a principle factor in the spread of nationalist fervor.

Anderson notes that 'me dawn of nationalism coincides with the dusk of religious modes of thought and dynastic systems of power." lt is not that nationalism was produced by the erosion of religious certainties, nor that nationalism supercedes religion; "nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which-as well as against which-it came into being."" In European society concepts of religion became hamessed towards different ends, a process that required ''a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, and wntingency into rneaning-"" The disappearance of the "ancient social cernent," the ordering systems of Church and Monarchy, led to a need for a new civic religion, a religion which needed to be constnicted through the invention of tradition,

damso son, "Modernism and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903-1 922," 367. '' Cited in Christopher Seton-Watso~Itcr&firom LiOeraIism to Fem.1870-1 925. London: 1967, 13. s3 Anderson, 11-12. Ibid. myth, ntual, ceremony." Thus, the nineteenth-century European crisis of moral and

religious faith produced an intellectual quest for secular beliefs and practices. In Italy,

intellectuals attempted to fill the spiritual void of modemity with a nationalist secular

religion; however, that country lacked a strongly institutionalized tradition of nationalist

rnyths and rituals 56 Indeed the lack of a prier tradition rnay have made the need more

strongly felt. Without a prior mode1 of a cohesive unitary state, nationalism became

conflated with rituals and ceremonies that had been entrenched for centuries by the

.

Studies promoting a broadly cultural approach to the issue of nationalist politics

have Iinked the issue of national regeneration to secular religious principles, highlighting

nationalism's dependence on religious modes of thought in the ltalian case, Emilio

Gentile, in particular, has examined the manner in which "political ideologies a&pt

religious rituais to political ends, elaborating their own system of beliefs, myths, rites7

and syrnbols by which they intended to interpret the meaning of life and the ultimate goal

of e~istence."~The myth of cultural renewal also represents a crucial manifestation of

the phenomenon of the sacrdization of Italian politics and the politicization of Italian

modemism. ln an era of mas political rnovements, politics aimed at a total revolution of human life without distinction between the personal and the public/political. This

phenomenon was paralleled in cultural movements such as the rnodemist avant-garde,

"~ricHobsbawm, "Mas producing Traditions: Europe, 18704914." in Enc Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger eds. The Inwrrrion of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 , 269. 56 Adamson, "Fascism and Culme: Avant-gardes and Secular Religion in the Italian Case;" 4 16. n~milioGentile, "The Myth oFNatiod Regexteration," in F&st Visio~ts:Art und Ideol~in Frme and Iraly. Matthew monand Uark AntlifF eds: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. P. 27. 22 that proposed a spiritual revolution bas& on art or philosophy affecting a11 areas of life, including politics. '%s Gentile notes: The encounter between two revol utions, the political and the cultural, under the banner of the myth of national regeneration, represented the most radical fom ~Fsyrnbiosisbetween culture and politics ..."s9

The incomplete Risorgimento may have fostered a political revolt against decadence; however, equally important were the nebulous social anxieties induced by rapid industrialization and urbanization in a country dominated by a sense of continuous history reaching back over nvo thousand yearsM A society with such strong historical sensibilitia was particularly receptive to theories of rebirth and decay, and the many sources for pst-Rzsorgtmento disillusion offered fertile ground for the formation of a potent modemist avant-garde:cLfiomliterary cntic Francesca de Sanctis's cal1 for

'intellectual and moral redemption' in 1872, to the nostalgie patriotism in the poetry of

Giosuè Carducci, to the incessant antiGiollitian vituperations of nearly the entire intelligentsia in the immediate pre-war years, there had been a persistent cal1 for a cultural complement to the Risorgimento, a Risorgimento morale." 6' The very lack of a spintual and moral concomitant to the Risorgimento was experienced as a continuing national crisis.

It is from ths cultural climate that a generation of Italian intellectuais (including

Ardengo Soffici, Giovanni Papini, Giuseppe Prenolini, and ) emerged, contributing to an influential pre-war cultural avant-garde concemed above al1 with

" Gentile, ''The Myth of National Rqeneration," 27. 59 ïbid., 27. Griffin, 204. Adamson, -Fascism and Culture: Avant-gardes and Secular Reiïgion in the ItaCian Case", 425. national regeneration Central to palingenetic political myth is the belief that:

.. .conternpo~es are living through or about to Iive through a 'sea-change, a 'water- shed' or 'tuming-point' in the historical process. The perceived corruption. anarchy, oppressiveness, inequities or decadence of the present, rather king seen as immutable and thus to be endured indefinitely with stoic courage or bIeak pessimism, are perceived as having reached their peak and interpreted as the sure sign that one era is nearing its end and a new order ïs about to merge-62 Certainly, the energies of the intellectual class at the begiming of the twentieth century were devoted to transfomihg Italian society, overcoming the mediocrity of the Liberal era, and challenging national weaknesses. In harnessing the optimism of youth to banish decadence and to restore harmony and order, Italian intellectuals saw themselves initiating the begi~ingof an exciting new era of heroism and national greatness. CHAPTER 2: SOFFICI'S PIE-WAR CULTURAI, OUTPUT

2.1 Parisian Ex~erienceand Return To Tuscanv

From 1900 to 1907 Sofici was immersed in Parisian avant-garde circles where

his artistic formation was influenced by such literary and artîstic figures as Pablo

Picasso, Georges Braque, Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, and othen, a circle of

intellectuals whose cerebral and reflective approach was inspired by the need to

reinvigorate modemity with a sense of the mythic and primitive." In Paris, Soffici

searched for modernity in the writings of , , and Henri

Bergson, and yet clung to his Italianness, to the tradition and classicism that he

associated with his native land; concepts which to him seemed to secure order in the

tmoil of Paris. Upon his arriva1 in Paris, the hventy-one year old Soffici faced great

difficulties and humiliations as a poor provincial Italian transplanted to the glonous

French capital." Both Richter and Adamson have argued thai, towards the end of his

Parisian sojoum, Soffici undenvent a spiritual crisis and even contemplated suicide as a

result of the loneliness and disappointment he felt in Park and the lack of contact with

his beloved Tuscany? Despite lis early disillusionment with Paris and his desire to

return to the Tuscan countryside, Soffici did establish important contacts within the

Pansian avant-garde, and would continue to correspond with figures such as Picasso and

Apollinaire throughout the pre-war period, often returning to Paris to follow up on the

a AdaTIlSOn, "Modernkm and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Itaiy, 1903- 1922," 3 86. Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici. Carteggio cdal "Leonarcdo" a Vme " 1903-1908. 9. See page 3 1 of Richter. and page 9 1 of Adamson's Awnt-GarCiio Flmence. aesthetic developments of his French friends. In retrospect, Soffici viewed his Parisian experience as a necessary component of his relationship with the voc;ani circle: it had allowed him to follow the vociuni 's mission of action and renewal, and aeration of

Italian culture and art, a project which paralleled the action conducted by his French cornrades for the aesthetic and artistic renewal of that nation?

In the summer of 1903 Sofici met Giovanni Papini, a young intellectuai from

Florence who would eventually become Sofici's closest fnend and partner in spiritual and cultural rej uvenation. This meeting and first exposure to the ideals of Leonurdo inspired Soffici, confiirming that in Florence the current of renewal existed and encouraging him that I~aIiunitàcould sustain his modernity and provide his Parisian experience with relevance." 7 a chapter of Ricordi di vitu artisricu e letferaria dedicated to Papini, Sofici in referring to their fint meeting, discusses the profound origins of their fiïendship: "Our relationship began in fact by a current which stabilized between us, starting fiom a common essence, active in us both, that can be called ItaIiunità and having met him in 1903 it ms this base of a comrnon sentiment and concept of ltuliunitù that stabitized our fiiendship." Soffici sensed in Papini a deep and sincere attachent to the land, people, an, and history of Tuscany and together they embraced the rnyth of the

"new man" who derives strength from his soi1 and race." In this meeting Sofici also discovered that Papini offered a literary "style" that expressed the most "genuine,

66 Richter, p.2 note 4. Richter, 50. " In Opre, vol. VI, 109-1 1 1. 69 PapiM and So ffici, Curteggio ckrl Leonarab al Lu Vtxe NO%lgO8. 7. 26

concrete, robust and authentic ~talianess."~~While Papini's ideas excited him, what

filled his sou1 with great hope was the mannx that he announced them, the style of his

speech. This style was viewed by Soffici as that of "un ttaliano per eccellenza," one that

linked tradition with mociemity."

The component of Ituliunitù urrisiica can be seen as early a.. 1903 in So ffici's

French journal contributions, especially in his continuing commentary for Lu Plume,

entitled Notes If~iiemes.The idea of artistic ltalianism became an important theme in

Soffici's art and literary criticism; however, it \vas a concept that remained dificult for

him to define, no doubt as a result of the inherent dificulties in eiucidating the

particularities of national styles and essences, or in other words, the ideological

maneuvers through which "imapined communities" are given essentialist identities. In

discussing the notion of national stereotype in terms of a system of coding and decoding,

Frederic Jameson asserts that prior to World War I, thanks to the "objective existence of

nation-states," it was still possibIe to construct a novelistic narrative within "an

essentially allegoncal mode of representation, in which the individual characters figure

those more abstract national characteristics which are read as their imer essence."" Ln

part, Itali~nifàurtistica involved the premise that France must serve as the stimulus for

modemity and provide an aesthetic mode1 for Italy. Such a proposal would soon

transform into Soffici's vital campaign and would be inserted into the formulations and

aims of both La Voce and Lacerba

* In Opere, vol. VI, 1 10. ibid. Qmed in Andmu Hewitt, F-ist M&mim. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993,%. Soffci envisioned his role in the cultural mission to transfomi Italy as one of an

aesthetic theorist and artist who through his art had the capacity to effect change on the

Italian pupolo: "Only art, in its most ample rneaning can transfomi the spirit, the ~oul."'~

Papini shared this vision and together with Soffici exchanged ideas on the role the

intellectual should play in shaping society:

I want to becorne, I can now confide in you, the spiritual guide of the young, very young and fbture Itaiy- of this poor Itaiy that has no one to descend to fier people, to bnng out by force or prophetic violence the secrets of her land- no one to give her a sou1 a liale more complicated, a Memore grand and thoughtfil and Michelangetesco than what it has. I want therefore to be the spintual re-organiser of this ancient race[ ...] That is why 1 am so happy to End a sou1 such as yours that is Italian but at the sarne time dissatisfied with this superficial Itaiian life.''

In a letter dated December 1905, Soffici thanks Papini "in the name of Italy" for

providing the stimulus and the spirit necessary to animate her. He continues stating that

"In painting as well, there is everything to be done and 1 hope to be able to be your

cornpanion in this field In any case al1 of my energies will be directed towards this

Richter notes that Soffici's correspondence with Papini just prior to his retuni to

Florence confims that the Tuscan artid was strongly preoccupied with the problem of

Italianità and that this concern prompted his retum to PoMo a Caiano, his rupture with the Parisian avant-garde, and a detachment frorn his decadent-symbol ia concerns. 76

From his position in Paris, Soffici had watched the burgeoning cultural renaissance in

Florence and followed it directly for periods at a time. Thus, in 1907, Soffici, having

Carteggio &/ Leonardo al La Voce NO3-f9O8, 12. '' Carieggio, 78. Mer fiom Papini to Soffic 9 Sept. 1905. 75 Quoted in Richter 67. 76 Richter, 44. found sufficient motivation to begin his great project to found a modem Italian art, renounced his Parisian lifestyle in a 1907 Leonurdo article entitled "Ultima Lettcra rrgli umrci." " Upon retuming to his home town of Poggio a Caiano in the countryside outside

Florence, Soffici claims to have been ovenvhelmed by an intense emotional outpouring, understanding that the divine secret of his own art lay in his native region, and hence announced his project to record his blessed land with simplicity." Soffici's remto the soi1 wvas accompanied by a rejection of traditional religious beliefs and Catholicism, to be replaced with an increasingly exclusive faith in the power of art? To Soffici, art was the most important human endeavor, "the true and supreme anchor of salvation" that he positions above al1 other human activities: "art is the lone, unique depository on earth of the divine secret, that is, of ru th."^'

The imagexy of Don Chisciotte in Toscana (fig. 1) that Sofici provided for the cover of the August 1906 issue of Leonardo, indicates a definite shift in his aesthetic concems. The woodcut depicts a road winding through a typical Tuscan panorama of hills lined with cypress trees. A figure on honeback, that of a Tuscan Don Quixote, the lone crusader guiding the uneducated masses, is secondary to the landscape, underhing the importance of the primitive force Soffici associates with the land and its products.

The symbolic significance of the scene cannot be missed: Tuscany figures prominently while France does not enter into discussion, signifying Soffici's newfound and decisive orientation to problems and effects linked to his Tuscan origins. In addition, the scene 29 becornes an appropriate illustration of the sentiments linking Soffci and Papini, of their new heroic reconsideration of the Tuscan countryside, and their attempts to promote

Tuscany's rich artistic and literary past. nie decadence and immorality of Pans had ken acutely disturbing to Soffici and had fostered a reevaluation of his concems. It was the serenity md peace of the countryside, and the strength and dignity of the Tuscan people that provided the remedy for Soffici's malaise, forming the basis of his newfound aesthetic ideal of Toscuni~ù.As Sofici declared in 1908 in a letter to Papini: "This land has baptized me Tuscan and Italian and has made me reexpenence the good and sincere things that we have (or rather that 1 have) neglected for so long."*'

Upon his retum to Florence, Soffici began to contrhute to the cultural project initiated by Prenolini and Papini with Leonurdo, a journal that aspired to remake the world through the impact of culture and intellectualism, that bemoaned the impotence and incornpetence of academia, and that understood war and violence in regenerative ternis. In calling upon such theones as Pareto's elitism, Nietzche7simmoralism, and

Weininger's cultural masculinism, Leonordo attempted to overcome the provincialisrn of

Itaiian cultural li fe and to offer a new fom of spintual idealism and moralism. Leomrdo established a conceptual link between its philosophical and political activities by following Pareto's conception that major political movements were analogous with religions and in order to combat existing political foms one needed to mount an essentially religious alternative, a secular religion." The ne& to create a new aristocracy,

'' Cizrtegio, lener 185 f rom Soffici to Papini may 17, 1908,229-230. 'Z Adamson, Avant-garde Florence: From Mdernism &O Fmism, 86. a "party of intellectuals" to lead the unthinking herd, to reshape and enlarge souls, to

transform spirits was integral to Pareto's formulation and became theoretically

indispensable to Leunurdo7sagenda.

Perhaps most appealing to Softici was Leonurdu '.Y regionaiist outlook and

attempts to reassert the cultural potency of Jtaly's regions against state centrali~ation.~

Soffici's regionalism was vital to his cultural mission as it provided the comection

between his art and his collectivist impulse for cultural renewal. Two principles guided

Sofici's concept of rnodernity: the idea of Toscunki or the promotion of Tuscan

regional values; and a belief in a 'Yeligion of art" a response to the quest for a new

secular system of values that would re-auratize modem art and hamess its transfomative

power for the cultural reawakening of Italy. It is important to note that Sofici's

regionalism was not promoted as an alternative to nationalism. He believed that Italy

needed to draw on regional diversity in order to address the lack of rnorality and culture

in Italian society: "The idea that Italy was in need of a spiritual revolution, one that

would use the domant sensibilities and energies of its regional, peasant-based cultures to

overthrow the false and hypocntical culture that had recently become encrusted over them ... was a staple of Florentine avant-garde thinking."" Sofici's Toscnniid was also

combined with a desire to isolate an essential Italian artistic current, and while his self- styled regionalism was vital to his cultural project and spiritual quest, it was conflated with his greater nationalist goals. In fact, Soffici felt that regional differences should be

" Ibid,, 8 1. sa Adamson, A ml-garde Florence: Fmm Mordernism to F(~scrSm,16 1. hamessed towards national ends in order to celebrate the plurality of ltalian culture. Rial1

suggests that for Italian elites, 'nationalism' was often a euphemism for 'regionalism';

their sense of Patria could also be defined in local terms." The issue of Toscanifù,the

major source of inspiration for Soffici's artistic creativity and his spintual sustename,

and the concrete foudation of his personal religion, is linked to theones of palingenetic

myth as it indicates a desire to bring about a substantially new order of society and a

spiritual transformation of the Italian people, based on an archetype derived from Tuscan

regional values.

Soffici's dislocation fiorn Paris and remto Tuscany reflected his new

acceptance of nature and concem for simplicity and sobriety of style, factors that were

encouraged by his embrace of Cézanne-As an artist who had rejected the Parisian art

world in favor of his native region of Aix-en-Provence and whose aesthetic represented

an exploration of regionalist and provincial themes, Cézanne was greatly influential to

Sofici, who would initiate a similar investigation of provincialism upon his remto

Florence. In an 1908 article on Cézanne, Soffici argued that the French artist had

transcended through the recovery of reiigious feeling and that his art was

in hamony wi th the essential character of the great Italian primitives. Through

Cézanne's lesson Soffici hoped to arrive at a new, modem, Italian art. In this article he

" Ria& 74. "~rdengoSoffici, 'Paul Cézanne," Yiro D 'me- June 1908,320-3 1. Reprintad in Papini and Soffici, CarteggïO, 467-73, and in Sotfici, Trenta arlisti moderni itaiiani e etmiefi. Florence: Vallechi, 1950,354- 62. AIso reprinted in the recent Italian exhibition catalogue Chrute, Fa~torie il '900 in Itaiia Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori, Livorno, 1997, 172-174. This catalogue discusses Cézanne's impact on Italian modernist artists in the eariy twentieth century includmg Soffi4 CarIo Carraarra,Giorgi0 Morandi, Ottone Rosai and ottiers. reiterates ideas that were originally surnmarized in his 1907 article on Egyptian art, in

particular his understanding of art as a tool to integrate al1 aspects of li fe and to

eventually effect a transformation of Italy.

Soffici's reçionaiist and spiritualist concems were no doubt inspired by the larger modernist project that consistently aimed at the transformation of the whole of civilization within a revolutionary vision inspired by art" The strategy of the rnodemists depended fint on their reaiization that civilization had distorted what is most basic to human experience, hence the importance of returning to what was most fundamental, to the mythic, legendq, or prïmd: "nie modernist movement endeavored to reconnect with a past in which the poetic was intimately in touch with the sacramental, personal, and natura! forces that together made up the ntual of living."" It is important to recall that these avant-garde movernents were not opposed to the notion of modemization but to the positivism that was its cultural contingent. They opposed the view that the imagination could be replaced by a rationalist or utilitarian view of life, yet this approach did not involve a simple retum to nature, as with the romantic movement, nor was it envisioned in terms of a simple retum to the pstRather the avant-garde "exalted artifice and the artistic imagination in hopes of shaping a new secular religious frarnework that integrated elements fiom religious tradition, poetic tradition, and

17 For a general dialogue on the concept ofavant-garde modernist culture see Peter Burgtx, Theory of The A vmt-Gmde. bfimeapoiis:University of Mmesota, 1984; Dominick LaCapra, and Steven L. Kaplan, eds. Modern Europem InteIIectual History. Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1982. For a usefiil analysis of modeniism's and the avant-garde's rehtionship to Fascisrn see Andrew Hewitt, Fascist Modemism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. " Adam~on,~Modemisrnand Fascim: the Politics of Cultwe in Italy, 1903-1922," 366. contemporary philosophy and art."a9 Cornmon to all modernist art was an emphasis on

creativity and the central role of art in cultural regeneration, that would in tum establish a

pattern of faith and the sym bolism of communal li fe. The avant-garde project sought a

heroic rejuvenation in which technological, industrial and national power would be made

to coexist with spiritual value^.^ This strategy also includes a strict denial of any

normative boundary behveen the arts and society and a central role for intellectuals in the

creation and organization of a regenerated culture. Thus the modemist agenda can be

viewed as a project of palingenesis through the secular-religious quest for new values.

2.2 LA VOCE

La Voce, whose total of 263 issues appeared weekly from 20 December, 1908 to the end of 1916, was not a great success in terms of circulation, but in terms of cultural

influence numerous scholars have argued thaî it was second to n~ne.~'Building on ideals established in Leonardo, Giuseppe Prezzolini founded and edited the journal in close

contact with Papini and Sofici. La Voce preached a multifaceted prograrn of aesthetic politics which drew on such currents of ad-matenalist thought as the Sorelian myth of regenerative violence and cult of action, the pragrnatism of James, Nietzsche's particular blend of despair and hope that reinforcd the need for the artist to face the death of god with the creation of new values, Bergsonian vitalism, Crocean idealism, and a conservative nostalgia for strong unitary state. Furthemore, the vociuni promoted the

"9 ibid. 90 ibid. 9' ibid., 381. cult of rejuvenation and sought to revitalize the national Italian spirit in order to bring about the creation of the active, modem ltalian citizen. The central ambivalence of this goal should be noted, for these intellectuals were both highly critical of Ita1y7scultural and political situation and profoundly nationali~tic.~'

According to Prezzol ini in 19 1 1, the journal's aim was to challenge the "meager

influence exercised by cultural circles over the development of national politics," to surmount the "'strict separation prevalent in Italy between politics and culture," without strong to any one political Party, and without acting simply as a literary-critical journal." As further evidence of the impact of La Voce 's rhetoric, Mussolini himself welcomed its modernist agenda of cultural renewal and saw that journal's aims as compatible with his own. In a letter of 1909 Mussolini wrote to Prezzolini:

La Vme 3 latest initiative is excellent: make Italy known to Italians. Besides political unity, which is slowiy but progressively becoming consolidatecl, it is necessary to forge the spirituai unity of the Itaiians. This is difficuit wok given our history and temperament, but it is not impossible. To create the 'Italian' soui is a superb mission.* At a later date, in 1925 Prezzolini was to even suggest that "Mussolini is realinng many of the things that I wanted when 1 founded and directed Lu Voce. Mussolini is one of ours. Mussolini is a vo~iano."~*

Gentile and Adamson have argued that the Horentine avant-garde, in particular the Lu Voce circle was a breeding ground for fascist thought and that much of its rhetoric can be considered proto-fascist. In attempting to amve at a standard definition for proto-

" Adamson, "Modernism and Fhsrn: the Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903-1922," 388. "Giuwppe RepoLini, "La politica della 'Voce,'" now in Angelo Romano', ed.. Lu CuhraliaIiuna attrmrso le re\fisteavol, ïü: La Voce ,1908-1 9 14. Turin: E'idi, 1960,393 -94. %iuseppe Prezzolini. L '~taiianoimitile. Fiorence: Vdechi, 1960,240. " Cited in Remo De Felice, InfefIehralidifronte ai fasci~ano.Rome: Bonnaci, 1985, 103. fascism Griffin notes that proto-fascist groups generally share fascism's palingenetic

ultra-nationalist core and formulate a comparable rhetorÎc of the rebom nation? They tend to reject liberalism in theory, but yet are too elitist or utopian to create a genuinely

new order, or insufficiently radical in their populism to destroy traditional ruling elites.

Hence the representatives of proto-fascism never place themselves in the position to translate their visionary words into revolutionary deeds? The specific case of the Lu

Voce circle poses other dificulties, in that these ideologues explore visions of a nen. society whose rnythic core is demonsîrably that of palingenetic ultra-nationalism and yet they make no attempts to become activists to implement their ideas. Griffin tems the agents of this phenomenon "literary fascists" because their witing was often used to legitirnate fascist activism ûnd to provide Mussolini's rhetoric ideological credence.

Many of these proto-fascist tendencies are evident in the ideology of La Voce. most notably in their reliance on theories of national regeneration. The vocianz viewed the pst-Risorgirnen~oas an era of progressive decadence, of decline, of decomposition, and deadness; consequently, they saw themselves as initiating the beginning of a new cycle of history, the dawn of a new epock Further substantiation of La Voce 'S proto- fascist inclination can be seen in the emphasis on palingenetic myth in the content of their journals. Words suggesting rebirth were an integral part of the rhetoric of both

Leonurdo and Ln Voce: to restore a nation that is resurrected, that regenerates itself in order to bring about the palingenesis of the fatherland To 'revalue', 'renovate', 'renew', 36

'heal', 'reconquer', 'rernold' the nation of Italy and its citizens. In addition, the titles of

Lu Vocc 's articles, for example "Italy is rebom" or "Campaign for the Forced

Reawakening of Italy" suggest that palingenetic myth can be viewed as the central theme of its early publicist campaign.

Additional corroboration of the centraiity of pali ngenetic theories to the vociuni is evident in the strong currents of traditionalism (passatismo)and regionalisrn - the assertion of traditional Italian regional values- found in the rhetoric of the Florentine avant-garde. In cornparison with the Milanese futurists, the voctmzi were more moralist and tradi tional, although they shared many enthusiasms and became increasingly intercomected as a result of their respective interventionist campaigns with the approach of the First World War. Adamson reiterates that the vociuni differed in one important regard from the futunsts: "The vociani were united in their rejection of the futurist view that the Italian cultural tradition was an obstacle to the creation of a modem ItaIian culture, and held instead that tradition should be regarded as a storehouse of cultural and political elements to be utilized in precisely this proje~t-"~'Gentile, in his examination of the connections between the hturists, the vociani, the Nationalist., and the syndicalists, and the development of Mussolini's politics, has concluded that the pre-war

Italian cultural and political avant-gardes were actually open to tradition or in common

Italian terminology to 'passaiismo' and that the hiturist rejection ofpassutismo must be regarded as e~ceptional.~~

w~damson,"Fascism and Culture: AvantGardes and SdarRetigion in the Italian Case," 42 1 99 bid,420. 37

Furthemore, George Mosse proposes that two foms of nationalism existed in

Italy: "One that apparently siowed down change and restrained the onslaught of

rnodemity" by "condemning al1 that was rootless and that refused to pay respect to

ancient and medieval traditions7' and "another kind of nationalism exemplified by the

futurists in their acceptance of modemity."'* Futurism, in its rejection of the pst, glorification of violence and embrace of technology as "the vital symbol of renewed national energies," directly contrasted the immutable force of twentieth-century nationalisms as the repositories of etemal and unchanging tnith. In Mosse's estimation there were two divergent aesthetic motivations in pre-and pst-war Itaiy, one dynamic and accepting of technology, the other more traditional in its desire to anchor nationalism in organicist and auratic aestheticisrn. 'O' Affron and Antliff further emphasize this point in relation to fascism's cultural polarity: "...though resolutely modem in its aim to create a new society, nevertheless [fascism] subsumed the auratic vestiges of past traditions within its aesthetic. In this manner the organic and dynamic codd coexist within a political aesthetic premised on regeneration."'"

The focus on traditionalism which these scholars point to, suggests a Volkisch tinge to Lo Voce S rhetoric, as in the celebration of Toscanità Again, such a focus must be related back to the ambiguïty of the nation's position within a spatial-temporal continuum, as Bhabha notes

... the politicai unity of the nation consists in a continual displacement of its irredeemably

ImGeorge Mosse, "The Political Culture of Futurism: A Gaierd PerSpective,"in Coï#onting the Natiot~: Jewish and Western Natrom!imt Hanover: University Press of New Engiand, 1993,9 1- 105. 'O' For furthes disais9on see monand Antliff eds, Fascist Visionr, 13. 'CQ *on and AntIifS 13- M. plural modern space, bounded by different, even hostile nations, into a signifying space that is archaic and mythical, paradoxicdly representing the nation's modem territoriality, in the patriotic, atavistic temporaiity of Traditiondism. Quite simpiy, the difference of space retums as the Samens of time. tuming Territory into Tradition, turning the People into One. The lirninal point of this ideological displacement is the turning of the différentiateci spatial boundary. the 'outside'. into the unified temporal tdtory of Tradition. 'O'

While it is possible to sense the ambivalence and the interna1 tension between apprehension of and attraction to impending modemity in Soffici's formulations, the traditionalist thmt of its ideology must be viewed in relation to a cornplex spiritual vision. In this attack on decadent aspects of modemity, one would expect a rejection of technology as a concomitant of the rejection of danlife. OAen technology, as an anti- traditional element, is seen as incompatible with the traditionalist impulse within fascistic thought; however, technology is central to the myth of renewal as a result of its potential for economic transformation. According to Soffici 'a nation before dreaming about its artistic glories rnust conquer its economic well-king, Italy today is on that path."LwFor Sofici, whose ovenidin3 concem was the transfomative power of in cultural renewal and the retrievai of the most authentic Italian heritage, the societal implications of his promotion of a regionalist aesthetic were lirnited to their spiritual value.

2.3 Tuscan Landscaw and Peasant Image? 190% 19 12

From 1907 until his embrace of the cubist aesthetic beginning in 19 1 1- 12, Sofici consistently depicted pesant themes and Tuscan landscapes in an easily accessible

Bhabha, 300. 'O1 Richter, 28.

40

townscape, and a small fragment of the top to the mountain range and skyline. Thus,

these works do not represent pristine views of Tuscan nature; there is an underlying sense of human involvement in the seasons and farming. It is the continuous process of change and harmonized renewal of nature that becomes the focus of Sofici's explorations of the

landscape and vegetation of Tuscany in various seasons.

Along with this accentuation of the fertility of his native lan4 typically the fecundity of the peasant is highlighted through Soffici's depiction of robust and hardy figures. The solid and monumental forms of the peasant become iconic figures rather than individualized people, as in Contudini Toscuni (fig.7) of 1907. In this case, three vigorous peasant farmen are featured in a bucolic, highiy idealized country scene.

Vibrant greens, yellows and blues, typical of the Tuscan sumrner, in combination with the brightly colored garments of the figures lend the scene an air joyous serenity. The figures themselves are statuesque, rnonumentally proportioned fonns, simply conceived perhaps as a reflection of the perceived simplicity of their lifestyles. Their faces are concentrated and steady, calmly accepting the hard labor of their vocation. There is a sense of a hushed and gradua1 movement through daily rituals and routines established centuries earlier. The central figure, a formidable woman with an unwavering gaze, who carries a healthy blond baby in one arm and a water vesse1 in the other, assumes a pose reminiscent of the Madoma and Child imagery so vital to the artistic herïtage of

Tuscany. Soffici in effect comtructs an ennobled peasant figure, through art historical conventions and stylistic rneans, as the representative of self-perpetuating, unwavering, spiritual values which he wishes to communicate to the general population of My. 41

Writing to Papini in 1908, Soffici discusses his lifestyle in Poggio a Caiano and contrasts urban dwellen with peasants: "I'rn happy that you have seen how august the peasants are and that they have embraced you with simplicity. 1 am also understwd and loved here and that makes me love the country immensely. People who live in the city and Eéed off of books, off subtleties, and off lucubrations, will never understand what is the light of the world and the fiuidity of life."'05

On numerous occasions Soffici turned his art to an e.uamination of the agricultural customs of the peasantry, devoting an entire sketchbook to figures and landscapes sketched enplein-air (fig8), and numerous canvases to themes such as: the grape harvest- Vendemmio (fig. 9) of 1907; olive tree pruning-La P ofutura( fig. 10) of

1907; the gleaners-Mietitori (fig. 1 1) of 1908: and the olive harvest-Lu Roccoh delle

Olive(fig.1 2) of 1908. ui al1 of these works peasants are depicted, again, as hard- working, uncomplaining, and proudly accepting of their difficult lot in life. In contrast to

I Contadini Toscani. where the central woman directly engages the viewer, the peasants are absorbed in their work and do not look up. Thus, their faces are concealed, their features are obscured, and their individuality is effectively erased. These figures become types as opposed to human beings, their anonymity is conspicuous and serves to translate their dignified acceptance into acquiescence and cornpliance. it appears that Soffici7s desire to promote the regional values of the peasantry conceals a secondary, underlying motivation to legitimate the social hierarchy as it stands, hence ensuring the subjugation of the peasant classes.

los Cmteggio, Letta 180 fiom Soffici to Pape circa May 8, 1908,220- Lcr RcccoZtu delle Olive of 1908, depicts peasant famers harvesting olives,

dernonstrating not only Soffici's interest in the agricultural and social practices of the

Tuscan populo but his adherence to principles derived fiom the Italian artistic heritage.

These voluminous forms are simple in conception, without geat attention to modeling,

anatomical correctness or facial features, indicating Soffici's dependence on the painting

techniques of trecenio and quuttrocenlo Tuscan primitives. In many instances Softici

worked directly from early renaissance models, such as his 1907 study of the fiesco cycle

from the church of St-Peterat Jolo (fig. 13), copying the figures simplified anatomy,

taking their massive forms and transposing them into his own work. Io addition, the

primitives' limited use of spatial depth and wnsciousness of the flatness of the picture

plane were of compositional interest to Sofici. The value of such models to Soffici can

be related to his own personal religion of art: these artists understood the most

fundamental notions of art, its awatic value, its mysticism and religiosity.

The embrace of traditional fomis and models from the great epochs of Italian art

was consistently a concem for Sofici in both his pre-war and pst-war oeuvre. In his

article "Le Due Prospettive " of 19 10, Soffici advocates retuming to the primitive masters

of the trecento in order to capturean aesthetic spirituality that he associated with their

art. In particular, Soffici admires the primitive's use of psychological, as opposed to

scientific perspective. In discussing laws of scientific perspective Sofici argues that:

"The tnrth is that the ancient artistfeit, as the modem artists knows, that science has nothing to do with art, and it is enough to reproduce the impression, to render alive and 43 real the image of that which is depicted."lo6For example, in depicting a bird larger than a bush, or a man larger than a house, these artists were making a conscious decision to disregard the laws of science and to instead offer a judgernent regarding the object's spiritual value. Sofficicites Bergson as having contributed to the idea that it is not empirical and practical experiences that determine proportions: "It is necessary to live - said Bergson in one of the most beautiful pages that he had written about art- It is necessary to live, and life requires that we perceive things in relation to our own needs."'" Accordingly, as an artist Soffici must reject scientifically ordered compositions that define relationships between objects in a manner that is actually mutable and inconstant, and instead view the world filtered throu& spiritual values that are immutable and etcrnal. 'O8

Such a notion relates to the Bergsonian idea that reason and intellect are not the only means to anive at the tnrth. It is not necessary to follow Iaws of perspective and geometry as scientific analysis of paintings is not the tme means to arrive at naturalisrn.

These methods may produce a superficially realistic image but may not be tnithfbl as they may ignore the vitai spiritual dimension. Soffici was opposed to the notion that religion could be based on reason and felt that art was ideally suited to replace institutionalized reiigion as it could easily bridge the cultural and political realms.

In his examination of the peasantry and landscape of Tuscany, certain re- occming themw seemed to be of particular interest to Soffici. For example, the theme of

-- --

106 S~ffici," Diyc~gazioneSull'Arie: Le Due Prospetîiw," La Voce (22 Sept. 1910) now in Ope1.3 18. '07 ibid. '- ibid., 3 19. charity was depicted by Soffici at numerous occasions throughout his career. In general,

Soffici considers the theme of begging in order to draw attention to the altnustic nature of the Tuscan peasant. in I Mendicunri -the Beggan (fig. 14) of 190647, two migrant barefoot beggan, an elderly couple carrying their possessions, arrive on the doontep of a country farm house. A woman, most likely in charge of the household, offers the pair a loaf of bread as a little girl bearing a basket of hitobserves the scene. The message here is twofold: first the viewer is provided with a rnorality lesson and character appraisai; the compassionate peasant woman, although struggiing herself was able to find a small offering for those less fortunate. Secondly, the inclusion of the smal1 child indicates that this lesson is meant to be transferred through family values to the nea generation.

Hence, the entire scene becomes an ediQing lesson and allows Sofici to reveal his faith in the rnorality and value system of the peasant class.

The peasantry of Tuscany, in its close relationship with nature and in its pre- industrial labor patterns, can be seen as representing temporal patterns that are cyclical and repetitive. Soffici's seasonal landscapes, such as Campi Ar& (fig. 15) of 19 10, offer a traditionalist conception of a temporality that is unchanging and timeless, in apparent opposition to change and the forces of civilization. Soffici's reaction io an unprecedented speeding up of the rhythm of time is to create new myths capable of sustaining a sense of continuity with the past As previously argued, myth allows individuals to make sense of history during times of crisis:

Any sudden disintegration of the established order, whether through revoIution or economic coilapse, breeds the need for a new understanding of man's phce in the worid and for new ways of going about the ordiibusiness of We, and this need is dsfied by the introduction of new myths and new rimals. in the myths, the nation's past is dramatited in such a way to deits future d-y apparent; and, m the rituals, obsolete 45

aidoms are replaad by genures which main the solidarity of the people-'0D

It 1s in the dnunatization of the past, whether in a retum to an ancient utopia or Golden

Age, or in a simple embrace of traditional culture and its associated values, that the path towards understanding the present and Future becomes visible. Steven Spender offen an insighthil description of the pan-European avant-pde that treats modemism as a sensibility of style and fom that develops as a result of an unprecedented modem situation in which life memory is threatened with de~truction."~To restore life-memory avant-garde artists retumed to the pst, but because they sought revolutionary transformation, their approach was never one of simple retrieval but rather of sifting the past for rernnants of the prima1 -especially myhc- elements of culture. 'IL Sofici's desire to guarantee the continuity of pst and present, and through a process of transformation effect change in the future, relates to his mythic conception of tradition For Soffici, the

Tuscan peasant (although in actuality a contemporary) provides the tangible evidence of a link to the past in a world being transformed so rapidly that the distinction between future and present is tenuous and blurred and likewise the comection to the past is viewed as threatened,

Soffici associates certain values with the peasantry; they are viewed as rwted, incomptible, and timeless. And yet, his formulations ignore the social realities facing the Italian peasantry. Aithough raised in the country side, Soffici actually belonged to a class of fami manages and was educated in Florence and Paris, far removed from the

'O9 H. Tudor. Poli~icaiMjdh,London: Pd Mali, 1972,30. ''O Stephen Spender- 7he Sbuggle of the Mdm,London: Hamish Hamilton, 1963,71. "' ibid., 209,259. 46 hardship of peasant li fe. An inherent and instinctual distrust of nrt only the upper classes and the aristocracy ,but also intel lectuals, had tradi tionally characterized the attitude of the peasant masses of Tuscany. Adamson points to the myth of the happy peasant as a trope designed to conceal underlying social disorder beneath apparent surface calm.

Indeed, it appears that the vociuni's celebration of the life of the cornmon people was

.. --coupied with a subteranean fear and contempt for them."LL2In addition, Adamson notes that the emptiness of the myth is indisputably revealed by the explosion of peasant support for the fascists, most notably the squadrisri of the Tuscan countryside in the

1920's. Such a myth, that posits the peasant as fundamental to the fabric of Italian life while maintaining their subjugation and submissiveness to the hierarchical social order, wis in need of constant naturatization. It is unclear to what extent Sofici, who was aware of peasant discontent and yet accepted and promoted the myth himself, viewed the peasant classes as vehicles to eventuaily confirm the supremacy of the intellectual class.

Certainly, Soffci's art represents a dismissal of class inequities and cm be considerd a means to legitimate his elitist views.

The plurality of Soffici's position as intermediary between spheres of high culture, cosmopolitanism, and modemism, on the one hand, and regionalism, traditionalism, and mllife, on the other, was perfectly in keeping with the plurdity of fascistic cultural policies. Antliff and monemphasize that "fascism's palingenetic, totalitarian aspirations ailowed it to incorporate pst cultural traditions into a program for a "new civilizatiod7that combined the constructive and the destructive, the revolutionary 47

and conservative. Fascism 's 'polarity mac hine' al lowed this ideology to address both the

past and present and the future by proclaiming the present to be decadent, and thus in

need of regenerative cultural renewal." ' l-'

2.4 Literarv Contributions to Lu Coce

In his selfdeclared role as cultural commentator, and intermediary between

French and Italian culture, Soffici contrïbuted primarily articles on French artists and art

movements to LQ Voce, the aim of which was to infom Italian readers, to enable them to

make more mature judgements and thus advance Italian culture. He constantly pointed

out how Italian art could leam and benefit from the lessons provided by French artists

and used French developments as points of reference fiom which to criticite Italian

attitudes. Soffici's interest in French culture was intimately bound up with the feeling

that Italian culture was iderior to that of other European cultures and hence in need of

reinvigoration. As Adamson notes: "The idea that French culture was the world's most

advanced and 'revo1ution;ily' rernained a given among the vociani themselves..." "'

Vina11 has suggested that for various mernbers of the Italian avant-garde a tension existed

between openness to outside influences and national pride, or in other words a desire to appear cosrnopolitan while promoting a form of nationalist art.'" For the members of Lo

Voce, a qualified cosmopolitanisrn which accepted some foreign influences deemed beneficial to the national tradition could CO-existwith a political attitude based on

Antlii and mon, Fmcist Visiom Art and ldeoiogy in Fmce and Ira&, 1II. "'Adamson, Awnt-garde Florence: From M&rnism îo Faxism, 120. "'Shiriey ViPhd Dissertation, University of Reading, 1975, 1. national self-interest. It is my view that Soffici promoted a highly flexible theory of

Italiunità urtisticu and that this specifically Italian art fom was dependant on Italy's rich anistic heritage, combining tradition with an infusion of French modemity.

In the complex dialectic of nationalism and avant-gardism, Soffici's culhd politics are somewhat of an anomaly. Unlike members of the futurists, such as Umberto

Boccioni, who positioned thernselves in diarnetnc opposition to the French cubists, consciously cultivating an atmosphere of antagonism and open hostility, and promoting an art theory based on racial purity removed from foreign influences, Soffici, beginning in 19 11, felt confident in using cubism as a model for his own brand of Italian art Ln his writings from 1909- 19 1 1, Soffici investigates the di ficult accord between modeniity

(that is French modemity) and tradition (as embodied by the Italian example). A notable change accornpanies this investigation: Sofici no longer discwes the two realrns as separate, with France providing a mode1 for Italy to follow, as he did in his earlier

Parisian studies, but instead examines the tradition/modemity dichotomy in terms of a synthesis between French and Italian currents. II6 Thus, the groundwork was set for

Sofficito begin translating theoretical concepts derived from the cubists into a practical aesthetic often termed cubo-fûtunsm. In 19 12 Soffici demonstrates his aesthetic embrace of the cubist model by adopting the cubist technique and style for his own artistic output

Soffici continued to depict Italian themes associated with daily life in the countryside,

1'6Soffici's involvment in both French and Itaiian avant-garde circles, combimd with his reliance on Fr& aesthetic models, contrasts with the position of members of both the cubist and hmrist movemerirs, who ofken prornulgated strict nationalist distinctions and classification of art based on racial essences-For fiirther discussion see Mark Antiiq "Cubisrn, Celtism ,and the Body Poiitic," The AH Bulletin ( Dec 1992) 655- 658. 49

concentrating on still-life and landscape, but employed the cubist conventions of

geometric abstraction, fragmentation, and multiple views in order to transfomi his

imagery according to the principles of the most radically modem of hss

times. Il7 Sonici 'S avant-garde association with the cubists led him to create such

experirnental landscapes as Siniesi pzitorica di un paesaggio d Oufunno (fig. 16) of 19 12-

13 and MUSCepiant di unpuese (fig. 17) of 1913. Following Picasso and Braque,

Soffici explored new techniques and materials using the medium of collage in 1914-1 5,

wïth works suc h as Natura Morta "Tepwa"( fig. 1 8) and Composizione con bottigiiu

(fig. 19)."8 These aesthetic investigations put Soffici at the forefront of avant-garde

extremism, offenng a forceful challenge to accepted beliefs and academism in art.

2.5 LACERBA

Differences in attitude and approach between Prezzolini, on the one hancl, and

Sofici and Papini on the other, had led to a schism at La Voce. The conservaiive

Prenolini had always ken restrictive in regards to aesthetics and literature: however, it

was his devotion to rationally defended argument and reasoned analyses of Italy's

political and cultural problems that was intolerable to Papini and Soffici. Thus, in

founding Lacerbu, without Prezzolini, Soffici and Papini created a new more

experirnental forum, embracing the rnost advanced currents of modernism, both Ital ian

"'For a good study of Soffici's cubist peridsee Leopoldo Paciscopi, Ardengo &@ci e if Cubofut~rim~~ 1911- NiS. Fiorence: Galleria Michaud, 1%7. '"For a discussion of Soffici's arbisî coilages and the exchange of ideas relating to collage between Picasso and Soffici see Christine Po& In Defiunce ofPuinring: Cubism, Fu~trism,and the lmntion of Collage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, esp 187- 19 1. and French, in order to create a newly invigorated, militaristic Italy. With the outbreak of the war Lucerba committed much of its energies to the interventionist campaign, advocating that Italy abandon its neutrality in the war and the triple alliance with

Germany and AWO-Hungary in order to intervene on the side of Engiand and France.

In his writings for Lacerbat Soffici once again promotes the view that art should not be subservient to reason and uses the journal as an organ to espouse the values of irrationalism and individualism. As a fundamental principle Lacerbu demands total freedom for the creative artist who is destined to bring about the cultural transformation of Italy. In essence, Soffici's ideal rote for the artist is one that relates to his elitist views.

He describes artistic genius as the ability to perceive a new truth in reality and to subsume it, wvith expressive power, in a work of art. The vital, active creativity of an artist is stified by societal restrictions, but paradoxically the artist has a duty to act as the moral guide for his own society. Il9

It appears that along with the increase in Italian national prïde in the years prior to the outbreak of the fint world war there was also a tendency to deny or outright reject foreign aesdietic influences. By 19 13 Soffici's views were bringing him in closer contact with members of the futurist circle. Thus, by the sixth issue of Lncerbo of March 19 13 an alliance had been established between the futurists and the lacerbiani, reflecting

Soffici's and Papini's desire to achieve artistic pre-eminence for My."O Futurism had

lL9 See Ardengo Soffici's articles "Cubismo e oh?,"originally printed in Lacerbu now in Opere 1, 633655 and "Futurismo" now ia Opere 1. 656-675. '20 For an analysis of Florentine fiiturisrn sec Gloria, Manghetti, ed Fuhrrismo a Firem 1910-1920. Verona: Bi & GI, 1984 and Mmhetti e il Futur-ismoQ Firem Qui non si canta ai modo delle Rane- Bibiüoteca Nazionale Cencrale di F'uenze: De Luca, 1994. 51

managed to make an impact in Paris and therein lay its appeal to Soffici, as he clarifies in

a Lo Voce article: 'Who takes it [the art of the futurist movement] seriousiy? No one.

But, stiil, it did manage to shatter the Iegend-tmth OC an Italy dead and buried under the

stupidity of its conservatism and its a~aderny."~"Accordingly, Softici appears intrigued

by the idea of ways to move beyond cubism. The article "Cubsimo e ohe" represents

SoEci's attempt to position futurism in a position of prominence in relation to the

French avant-garde. 12' He emphasizes cubism's balance and solidity of form and equates

this with traditional painting, notably that of the . Arguing that art

must take as its starting point the artist's response to nature and then employ a cubist

synthesis of foms from many angles, Sofici concludes that cubism must be taken

further in order to express the inner forces of an object, a typically f'uturist ides? Soffici

ends the article stating that cubism, which is in its essence Italian, since it is linked to the

Italian cultural heritage, in particdar that of the Renaissance, must find its logical and

fertile development in Ital~.'~~Thus, the first signs of tnily firturist rhetoric begin to permeate Sofici's writings. Sofici continues this iine of reasoning in his subsequent articles on hturisrn stating that having drawn on impressionism and cubism, futurism is the style of absolute modernity-the avant-garde style "per ec~elenm"'*~

At the time that Soffici saw futurism as surpassing cubism a new sense of competitiveness with France begins to color debates surrounding aesthetics as a result of

"' Ardengo Soffici, "Ancota del ttturismo," La Vie(1 1 Juiy 19 12). '" Ardengo Soffici,"Cubhimo e oltre. "onginaliy printed in Lucerba now in Opre 1 633-655- ibid.,655. ibid. '% Ardengo Soffici, "Futurisrnon now in Opere i. 656-675. his contact with the highty contentious fiitunsts. Soffici certainly exhibits the futurist tendency to downplay French cultural achievements by asserting the Italian origin of

French developments, by declaring the suprernacy of the Italian tradition, and by attempting to position the Italian avant-garde above that of France. The French response to futurism was one of general disapproval and condescension, or worse of complete dismissal, with the French regarding the Italian avant-garde in generai as less advanced and provincial, and the futurists as bellicose publicists. "'All of which are points of view that Sofici had at one point agreed with and promoted; but, fmally, he accepted firturism as "excellent in its essence as a movement of renewal."'" In the Lacerba years SoEci was more sympathetic to the futurists tactics as they offered violent challenge to accepted beliefs in accordance with the irrationalist mandate of Locerba.

The members of Lu Voce and Lacerba had aimed at establishing a rejuvenated, national culture from their position as an intellectual class aiming to lead a second Italy.

While these groups were able to present their aims as a set of self-evident imperatives and their programs as the embodiment of liberty and progress, they never clarified what their second Italy entailed at the tangible level of institutions, policies, and programs.

Without any specific political orientation, they had failed to make alliances with Italy's major political parties, the right-wing Nationalists or the le&-wing Socialists, and thus their work remained in the sphere of culture and intellechüils. However, from their

For a discussion of French avant-garde attitudes to ltalian cuiture see chapter 2 of Adamson, Avwit-grude Fforence, Also see Guillaume Apollinaire's art aiticisrn and reviews of fttturist &'bits in Leroy C. Breunig, ApolIinuire on Art-- Essays mdReviews. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988, For examptes of Italian artist's feelings of competitiveness with France and French cultural movements see 's treatise on Futurist art, Pifiura e Scuttura Futurista 6rst piblished in 19 14 and reprinted in 1977 by Vdecchi. ln Ardengo Sofici, "Ancota del fimuismo," Lu Vme (1 1 July 191 2). 53 perspective the ultimate palingenetic myth had ken initiated with World War One:

"National regeneration is ofien messianic, assuming an apocalyptic character when the myth is conceptualized as a collective sacrificial experience, through a palingenetic catastrophe-war or revo 1ution-destroyi ng the old world and the "old man", and creating the new world and the "new man."''s

During and after the war, the modernist avant-garde did become politicized, moving away from the assumption that art and writing themselves have the power to change human beings and social life. Prezzolini turned more to the philosophy of

Benedetto Croce and becarne more political, while Papini and Soffici turned their literary energies and artistic output to a more constructive re-appropriation of tradition than to avant-garde creative efforts. Unable to translate his particular vision into any tangible social system, Sofici instead embraced the leadership of Mussolini, who in the 1920's succeeded in politicizing modernist myth making in conjunction with mass politics.

Mussolini as ruler was to become the focus of people's unity, the symbolic representative of the country's greatness and glory, of its entire past and continuity with a changing present. Sofici's world view and aesthetic formulations, that sought to restore harmonious existence in unison with nature and çociety, primarity through an anti- rational rejection of liberalism, approximated the ideal cultivated by fascism hence facilitating Soffici's transformation into an aesthetic theorist for the regime.

'nGemtfie, "The Myth of National Regenemtion," 27. CHAPTER 3: SOFFICI'S POST-WAR CUtTURAL OUTPUT

3. I Fascism and the Return to Order

There can be linle doubt that the expenence of the First World War left a profound and lasting imprint on the collective memory of an entire generation of Italian artists and intellectuals. In the pst-war era, a sense of political cnsis combined with a fear of socialism and Bolshevism had created an atrnosphere laden with the expectation of an impending upheaval of the political system. By 1922 the much awaited revolution had arrive4 marked by Benito Mussolini's rnarch on Rome and seinne of power, which would initiate the fascist era in Italy. Enormous transformations had already taken place in the art world, most notably in the almost complete dissolution of the avant-garde and in a new communal desire to restore harmony and balance to a shattered pst-war society. In the cultural realm, Ardengo Soffici was one of the first artists of the immediate pst-war era to actively champion a new aesthetic mode1 whereby

"experimentalism should give way to a communal celebration of heritage and to a restoration of those aesthetic values associated with the great moments of the Italian

P- "129

Sofici embodies many of the contradictions of his era, as demonstrated by the trajectory of his career: his early involvement in the Parisian avant-garde sooh gave way to a spiritual crisis and retum to the sanctity of bis terra materna, Tuscany, followed by his subsequent embrace of the cubist aesthetic, punctuated by the war, and eventually

Iz9 Walter Adamson, "Soffici and the Religion of w"60. leading to the reevaluation of his avant-garde militancy and a new promotion of fascism

from a conservative aesthetic position. In 1920, Soffici clearly outiined the impact of the

war on him and his fellow avant-garde artists:

At the moment when the war took Europe by surprise, 1 found myself , dong with a certain number of the artists from my generation, in a fùll boil of ideas and lyrical enthusiasms, wtiich we tried to express in continually new forms with the audacity of a second youth that is more effervescent than the first one. We aime& then, at the creation in ltaly of a new Iiterary and artistic school that would ùe absoluteîy modem ... This was "the period of uncontrolled Dionysian Liberty.. .th came just before the nom and seemed to contain a presentiment of it ".,.Today it is no longer necessary to estabiish what the results of that revolutionary orgy were. It is enough to say that no principie of tradition, no estabiished rule of taste, no standard was fomd worthy of respect, capable of containing Our rnad dash, and we therefore came to believe - as Rimbaud ha& and perhaps even more than he- that the disorder of our own spirits was sacred.-.But then came the moment of action that we had calleci for, and Liom there rny transformation began[..,.]I began to ask myself if the negation of so many traditional principles, and the proclauning of an intellectual and aesthetic anarchy that I had detighted in, did not in the end represent an enormous risk..That doubt then led to another.. .that to have so noisily discredited and repudiated those principles [of moral and social order] mi@ have beem in essence an act of recklessness, a tremendous mistake, cornmittecl with the best of intentions certainly, but an error owing to a certain Unmaturity of judgement and also somewhat silly desire to appear courageous and extraordinary.

A decisive turning point in Soffici's avant-garde artistic career can be traced to

1920 and the first issues of Rete Meditemea. a journal he singlehandedly founded, directed, and wote. Although the four issues of the journal recalled many of Soffici's

Parisian avant-garde experiences and discussed members of that movement who had contributed to Soffici's pre-war vision, the final message of the text was to promote a more conservative Italian art aesthetic. In retrospect, Somci characterized the avant- guerre cultural movement as "intellechial and aesthetic anarchy" and voiced his belief in

LmSoffici"Dichiarazione preliniinare," Rete Mediterruma (Match 1920), translateci in Adamson, Am- Gard?FZorerzce, 246. a recall to a different artistic and spintual order. This new order involved a return to

classicism, which Sofici associated with a recupemtion of the traditional values of

Italian art and culture, and a retum to the reality of nature. 13'

We have had even bolder expenences than other peoples have had; and they have had to follow us, imitate us. Europe. France. have taken up the fùturist model: they dress themseIves accordiq to our fashion magazines. From this modand practical point of view, we have triumphed. Today, today we can concern ourselves seriously with serious and grand tfrings, without distraction, with our mincis free of petty preoccupations- And we can let others break their necks on the road to the abyss where they have arrived foiiowing us, and where we now see them tumbiing dong their "dadasw,while we have stopped to build our own house. "' In a letter to Prezzolini of the sarne year, Sofici explicitly declares his position as a

'retro-garde ' artist, rejecting his pre-war Cubist aesthetic and his avant-garde

affiliations. 13' He instead calls for an art that celebrated the activities of everyday life in the natural world in order to inspire a social and moral "recall to ~rder."'~The paradox of a comfortably 'retro-garde' So ffici, a once radical and militant avant-gardist and outspoken advocate of extremist aesthetics in the Lacerbu yean, did not go unnoticed by his followen and fnends, prompting Premlini to state in 1922: "Look at Soffici, who thinks he has becorne a disciplined and bourgeois man, even though he cannot find a single review, a single journal, a single group with whom he is in agreement, and who 1s reduced to realizing, as a man, the drearn that was always his as a youth, that of a review that is his al~ne."'~'

In exarnining Soffici's writings and criticism of the approximately twenty years

13' Ibid Ln Soffici, "Apologia del fûtUrisrno,* Rete Medierranm (Sept. 1920). %etter fiom Soffici to Prezzoiini of 27 Nov. 1920 in their Carleggro, Edited by M.E. Rani and M. Richter. 2 vois. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura , 197% 198% 2: 19-20. Adamson, Avanf-Garde Fïorence, 246. U5 G. PrePoluU, Amici. Florence: Vaiiecchi, 1922, 157. 57

he was affiliated with the fascist regime, a unifyng theme ernerges that indeed authorizes

us to discuss his aesthetic in terms of a "retum to order." The anarchic spirit that had

previously characterized the Italian avant-garde was king replaced by a more traditional approach to aesthetics, a phenornenon in keeping with developments throughout Europe, but, as some may argue, more poignantly felt in a country such as Italy where tradition and cultural heritage were, with few exceptions, concomitants to even the most radical artistic output. This chapter will examine issues relating to the dialectic of tradition and modemity in pst-war Italy, a nation that consciously projected an image of itself as ready to face the future but inextricably linked to the past The core of this chapter will be dedicated to an examination of Sofici7spst-war aesthetic and critical writings; however, 1 will attempt to situate Soffici's artistic output within the larger phenornenon of the "return to order" in Italy.

Sofici provides an ideal case study, as both an arîist and critic, and an aesthetic theorist for the regime. His views on art and politics are well-documented, offering the possibility of an examination of his cultural theories in relation to his own art Pia

Vivarelli has noted that the basic difficulty in any analysis of classicism's relation to kalian modernism lies in the ambiguity of the terms 'classicism' and 'classical' in the

1920's and 1930fs, and in the temporal and ideological discrepanc ies "between di fferent types of classicism, between statements on aesthetiq artistic activity and interpretation of the cntical theories of the period"lS Vivarelli nghtly argues that the term classicism

'=Pis Vivarelli, " Classicism and tradition in Italian art of the 1920's" in On Chsic Grounrl, London: Tate Gallery, 1985,371-372. 58

refers not exclusively to the Greco-Roman heritage but invariably included Itaiian art

from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Sofici's own definition of classicism in the

1920's is unique in many ways and stands in contrast to notions of classicism promoted

by the meta-physical painten, the magic realists and the neo-classicists. '" Related to

theories of palingenesis, Soffici's conception of classicism functions to delineate the

form and content of his art in terms of enduring spintual values, values that he associates predominantly with the peasantry and with various epochs of the Italian artistic heritage.

Recently, the concept of an essential "rem to order" in pst-war Italy has been re-examined and greatly cornplicated. The phenornenon is no longer viewed from a monolithic perspective, as an overarching narrative which neatly surnmarizes the artistic climate afier the destruction of the fint world war. Former categorizations of early twentieth century Italian aesthetic movements have proven inadequate and re-evaluations of these movements suggest that the range of motivations guiding their output differ gready . Movements such as futurism, absîractionism and Strucittà (SuperCity), carmot be smoothly integrated into a schema which posits a return to classicism and to classical ideais of order and stability. It is only in light of a greatly expanded discourse surrounding Italian modemism that the subtleties which color the dialogue between tradition and modemity in Italian art have begun to be properly addressed.

A reevaluation of fascism's cultural policies by such scholars such as Emily

Braun, Emilio Gentile, Walter Adamson, Mark Antliff and Matthew Affion has

137For a detailed account of cornpethg notions of cIassicism in inter-war Itaiy see: Pia ViyareUi, " Classicism and tradition in ltalian art of the 1920's" in On CWcGround, Lmdon: Tate Gaiiery, 1985. generated substantial discussion on the concept of fascist culture, recognizing the

existence of fascist art and aesthetic ideology, clarifying issues surrounding fascist

patronage, and dispelling the myth that fascism was totalitarian in its cultural controls. "'

These scholaa have investigated the appeal of the fascist regirne to intel lectuals and

artists, emphasizing the plurality and eclecticism characteristic of the regme's cultural

politics. Many artists embraced fascism in good faith, with hi& expectations for the

transformation of the nation of Italy, and the fascist regirne fed their belief that they were

to be the catalysts for national regeneration. in response to the rnarch on Rome of

October 1922, a group of artis-ts consisting of , Car10 Carrà, Achille Funi,

F.T.Marinetti and other fiiturists who had belonged to the fusci. publicly voiced their

support for Mussolini:

The assumption of governmentd respoosibility by the young Italian Benito Mussolini has My shattered the mediocre mentality that has for so many years suffocated the chief quality of the race: the excellence of its artistic spirÏt, Fascisni, chargeci with ldealistic values, is applauded by dl those who are legitimately able to call themselves Italian poets, novelists and painters. We are sure that in Mussolini we have the Man who d know how to vahe correctly the force of our Art dominating the ~orld.'~' ln the early stages of the regirne a large majority of artists and critics advocated

'*Sec Emily Braun, ed lrcrlian Art of the Twentieth Cenfcry,London: Academy of Art, 1989; "Spealcing Volumes: Giorgio Morandi's Still Lifes and the Culturai Politics of Strapaese." Modernism/Mdeniity2, no.3, 89-1 16. EmilioGentiIe, "The Myth of National Regeneratioq" in Fascist Visiotzs: Art curd Ideology in France mrd ltaly: "Fascism as Political Religioq" Jormtal of Contemp0r.y Hi~lory25 (May-June 1WO), 229-5 1; La Voce e i km' gioliftiamz. Mïian: Pan, 1972; Mussolini e La Voce. Mian; Sansoni, 1976. Walter Adamson "Ardengo Soliici and the Religion of Artn in: Matthew fionand Mark AntiifFeds. Fmcisr Vïsiom: Art and ideology in France and Itu&y. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997; "The Language of Opposition in Early Twentieth-Century Italy: Rhetorical Contimities between Prewar FIorentine Avant-gardism and Mussolini's Fascisrn," Jmrnal of Mdem Hisroty 64 ( 1992); "Modernism and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903- 1922," Amerim Historical Review 95 (1990): 3 59-390; "Fascism and Culture: Avant-gardes and Secuiar Religion in the Italian Case," Jmmai of Contemporq Histoty 24 (1989): 41 1435. Mark AntW, uIntmduction,nFasci~Visions: Art a7nd Ideology in Frmrce and Itafy- Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Ughe statement was fïrsî pubIished in If Prinicipe. (Nov.3 1922) and subsequently reprinted in il Popolo D 'Ifdia. Translateci in Emiiy Braun, "Mario Sironi and a Fascist Arî," in Italimt Art of the Twentieth Centitry, London: Academy of Ac 1989. 176. an art that would parallel the new Italy of fascism. Fascism projected a seductive,

dynamic image of itself and offered statesponsored patronage to diverse groups without

imjmsing restrictions on form or style. Amon and Antliff argue that the fascist aesthetic

can be detined, at a formal level, "through the same characteristic structure of

polarization that infoms Our study of fascist ideolog. That is to Say, fascist aesthetics,

though revolutionary and modemist, wmprised progressive and traditionalizing currents,

and were both elitist and populist in its logic."" Furthemore, the aesthetic theories of

the regime cal led for the integration of Italy's glonous past with a forward loo king,

modem art, a cal1 which resounded deeply with many Italian artists. A reliance on, or

respect for, historical models had been a wmponent of the artistic tradition in Italy for

centuries, and the fascist view of tradition ensured this type of dialogue between part and

present was to remain a concem for generations of Italian artists.

3.2 Art Criticism and Theoretical Writina under Fascism

In tunllng to the substantial body of Soffici's art criticism and writings on cultural

politics, we discover that central to Soffici's conception of fascist politics was the belief

that art and life mwt be integrated In the first issue of Rete Mediterranea of 1920,

SotTici asserts that he is not a political man and that if in his journal there are debates of

a political nature it is to address a wntemporary situation in which the political order is

so tightiy linked with the spiritual and the aesthetic order, that one mut necessarïly consider them together. He therefore agrees to provide politicai commentary, a sacrifice

Matthew fionand Mark An- Fmisi ~~oI~s,17. that he makes willingly, "on the altar of the Spirit and of the ~atria.""" In his view, it is

precisely because fascism is not a political party per se, but 'a movement aimed at total

regeneration, at the clarification of values, and at the restoration of the hierarchies of the

Italian put ri^," that there is a responsibility on its part to elucidate theories relating to a

national art form and to offer a --homogeneousexplanation of al1 the characteristic

energies of our national spirit.""' Soffici, who in the avant-guerre period promoted a

form of naturalist mysticism, relying on the transfomative power of art to bring about

the moral and spiritual regeneration of Italy' understood how fascism's religiosity and

style of politics were fundamental to the regime's appeal and ability to enact change on a

mass scale:

It is no small glory for fksmchat it has brought the religious sense into ceremonies, dong with that picturesque touch of theater which so disgusts our more hereal and Quakerish Itatians. One sees that the teaders of &sm have profoundly understood the spirit of our race, as wel as the usefuhess that every kind ofliturgical pomp can have and has had. Until now, ody Roman Cathoiicism and the army have known how to captivate the hearts and imaginations of the Italian people in th& ftnctions and parades, and thereby blend the souls of the people together in a communion of ardent unity. Fascism, foliowing tradition, renews the miracle of human solidarity around austere and magnificent symbols.'"

The two major areas of concentration in Soffici's pst World War I art criticism can be sumrnarized as follows: firstly, his writings demonstrate a practical need to dari@ the relationship behveen art and politics, to define a "fascist art," and to create structure and organization for artists working within a fascist society. Secondly, his cnticism

refiects a theoretical interest in the characterimion of the canons of art operative in "the remto order."

'" Soffici, "Battaglia fra due VrttoM Rete Medi~errunea1920, now in Opere K 319. LUSoffki,"if Faw:ismo e L 'me, " Gerarchia. 9(25 Sept. 192 1). now in Opere, P7 Vallecc6 F- 195948, 356. 143 Soffici, "Religiosita' Fe"II Popolo d 'Iralia (7 Nov, 1922), now in Opere N, 361. 62

1 propose to examine both of these concepts in order to establish how one artïa was able to rnaneuver within the parameters of the fascist regime, promoting theories that both reflected officia1 fascist rhetoric and that were often incongrnous with the fascist world-view. In so doing, I hope to draw attention to fascism's cultural flexibility and ability to co-opt diverse artistic and cultural movernents into its "polarity machine." Also, an analysis of Sofici7scriticism in relation to his own art offea the potential to cornplicate readings of the "return to order" in light of the set of specifications which

Sofici himself provides and to examine Soffici's particular conception of classicism in direct cornparison with his artistic output in the 1920's and 1930's.

Let us begin by examining Soffici's articulation of the rapport between art and politics. In a 192 1 Gerarchia article entitled "II Fascismo e I 'arte. " printed just prior to the , Sofici considers art fiom an openly fascistic stance. At this early date, Soffici suggests a formula for the ideal rapport that should be established between fascism and culture, a conception that foreshadows later fascist theories. Fascist rhetoric promoted a total integration of politics and life in which artistic output was to be privileged and given new symbolic importance. Soffici begins his article by criticizing political movements whose cultural programs do not include an interpretation of the hction of art in a given society or country. There is an expectation that cultural theorists and propagandists, who typically offer only philosophical and religious justifications of thei r doctrines, must explicitly define the interaction between aesthetics and politics, by 63 promoting an aesthetic that accords with their chosen political aims. '" The article reveals

Soffici's conviction that politics and culture could function in tandem: "[...]for each political principle there must be by necessity a corresponding aesthetic principle[. ..] "" Al1 the great creaton of the t talian artistic hentage, and hence Italy, fiom Dante, Petrarch,

Giotto, and , to Machievel Ii, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Cavour were aware that aesthetic values are of the same nature as ethical and political values. Soffici suggests that the "superior, noble, eurythmie, stable historical reality" that is the Patrza of Italy, in its present and in its past, is a result of the capacity of great men of Mian history to integrate these values of different types, to form "an inseparable unity, a homogeneous

hol le."'^

Thus, the failing of both the liberalconservative parties and the extremist/ revolutionary parties was their inability to develop a syrnbiosis between art and politics: the former, in its elitism refusing to acknowledge the vital role of culture and offerhg nothing but scom for art; and the latter adopting "art foms so much in con- with the presuppositions of their doctrines as to leave the intelligent observer absolutely be~ildered."'~~According to Soffici, fascism presents itself as that ideology which by its nature is able to wed practical facts with spiritual ones, to synthesize philosophy with action; thus, politics and culture are finally in a position where a propitious alliance may

lu Soffci, "'11Fmismo e L 'me, " Gerarchia 9(25 Sept. 1921), now in Opere, VT Vallecchi, Fuenze 1959-68, 353. Ir' 146 %id. &id- Soffici, "Baitagh fi-a due Vittone" Rete Medi~errmea1920 lbid, 363, be formed and an action of mutual compensation may be initiated. I4%ut such a relationship should not lead to a political a& nor to a party or state art, which to Soffici are grotesque and produce in him a feeling of horror. Here, it is possible to sense an escalating contradiction in Soffici's writing; he attempts to mite art and politics in a marner that effectively transfen much control to the state but that will not infringe on individual selfexpression and the dominance of the producer. Perhaps most important to

Sofici ' s understanding of the political/culhiral synthesis was complete artistic autonomy for the artist. For Soffici, an integration of culture and fascism "mut not involve a kind of political control of the free manifestation of the genius who creates bea~ty.""~

Automatically, one questions whether such a policy was indeed conceivable gven the well documented cases of oppression and persecution of communist and anti-fascia artists, intellectuals, and dissidents under Mussolini's regirne. Afier the Matteotti crisis of

1924, many intellectuals- mostly academics - joined the ami-fascist opposition. Mussolini responded with a series of initiatives implemented to mptand naturalize intellectuals into the Partito Ne-zonaIe Fasczsta so that they could be used to legitimate the regirne. '%

Those who resisted were exiled or met untimely deaths at the hands of the .

Certainly any artist with ant-façcist views would not be given the freedorn of expression which Soffici alludes to. Despite his initial, outward openness, Soffici's views do begin to conform to a more restrictive cultural position He continues, stating that the duty of political power should be to exercise a selection process regarding forms of art nonally

lu ibid., 357 la9 Ibid, 357-358. '??hiUip V. Cannistraro, "Fascisrn and Cdture,"in Idian AH of the Twcntieth Centuty, London: Academy ofArt, 1989, 148. sponsored by a govemmental body, with the intent of avoiding supponing or sponsoring

types of art contrary to the moral and civil direction of the nation, and to actually pnvilege

those forrns of Italian art that, wvithout being reactionary or revolutionary, follow a third

way that reunites 'the experience of the past and the promise of the fiit~re."~~'

Obviously, Soffici reserves his version of artistic freedom for those who conform

to the exigence of the fascist state. Fascist fomulations called for the submission of the

individual to the higher pod of the nation in order to bnng about a harmonious

comrnunity and as such Soffici's views can be easily reconciled with the theories of

leading fascist intellectuals, such as Mussolini's first Minister of Education, the

philosopher . Gentile promoted a concept of the ethical state whereby

artists and the intellectual elite would be responsible for "shaping the collective will through myth and image,""2 an idea that appealed to a generation of disillusioned

intellectuals hoping to bring about a moral rehabilitation of the Italian race.

As an artist and art critic, Sofici \vas well suited to the formation of artistic canons for the pst-\var era; his theories were in line with fascist aesthetic policies and received sanction fiom the regime. These ideas, formeci over the entirety of the fascist era, are found in various articles and derive fiom numerous sources; however, they do form a hornogeneous corpus of thought relating to neo-classicism, or rather to classicism, as

Sofici himself preferred to term the pst-war phenornenon. But what then are the specific tenets of Soffici's own personal brand of "the return to order?'in Soffici's

lsL SOffi "Il Fmimto e L 'me, " 3 5 8. '%mily Braun, -Mario Suoni and a Farist Ari," in Itaiim Art of the Twettiieih Cenhrty, London: Academy of Art, 1989.174. estimation, the 'return to order' indicates the supenority of the classical ideal over al1

movements formed in the previous century and a half, including the gothic, the romantic, the decadent movement, and the surrealists. '" It also suggests the necessity of art to break

free from every foreign influence in favor of a recuperation of national traditions.

Classicisrn, with its associated values of traditionalism, balance and order, was directly related to the concept of Latinitù. Sofici too equated classicism and order with Latin values, which are further equated with Roman and Italian values, and saw classicism as the antidote to the aesthetic chaos of the pre-war period In discussing his dear fiend,

Papini's willingness to defend the ideal of a Latin civilization, he States:

Arnongst the inteilectual and poetic carousings of that period, the war presented itself as a formidable rdto reality of things and of me; iike a tem'ble heraid that ordered everyone to reconsider themselves, to take their own place, to meditate upon which values were to be essentiai, the highest things that would form their reason to exist, and once established, to defend and fight for thern[ ...] those values, those sublime, essential things, that reason to exist, was embodied naturally in a certain way of thinking, of expressing oneselfl chat is in a certain type of civilization; and as this civilization, the Latin civilization, Roman, Itaiian, was now threateneci, Papini found himselfspontaneously at his combat podY

The retm to ideals of classical order and traditionalism can be related in part to the historic formulations of a country that was particularly open to palingeneîic theones of rebirth and decay given its sense of unintemipted history.

In a 1920 Rete Mediterraneu article entitled "Pre-Raphaeletismo,* So ffici attempts to clarify the fundamental points of his artistic theory, in particular the relationship of art to the past He begins to differentiate between the various ways to remodel oneself using the past and the various pasts which are open to selection. He 67

warns artists to avoid mere imitation of historical models, as there is the risk of lwking to

the pst to find that the identical problem of style bas already been resolved

magnificently, and thus the conternporary art no longer belongs to that artist nor to this

times. lS5

While undoubtedly a major factor and catalyst for the embrace of classical forms,

the first world war has been appraised in a manner which ignores the large body of

literature in Italy which had called for the re-integration of tradition into modem painting even pior to the outbreak of war. As suggested earlier, in the pre-war period Soffici had ken a major proponent of the use of historical models from Italy's nch artistic heritage.

Car10 Car& as early as 1914 was calling for the refùtation of the typically futurist avant- garde principle of scomposi.ione or decomposition. In a letter to Soffici, Carra' States:

"With regard to scomposi=ione, 1 now find the application of the law of decomposition as we have so far done to be surpassed, Systematic decomposition has become for me, a recipe to negate."lM In 1916 the new Lo Voce was promoting a retum to the pas&to the painting of the trecento and quattrocento to recuperate their lessons in composition, plastic values and spatial order, without excess omamentation 15' These were the finn convictions of both Soffici and Carrà which they fkther promoted in the pst-wa. climate of 'me retum to order."

Debates regarding the convergence of classicism and modemity found expression

"' Sofici, "Pre-hphaeietho. " &te Mediterrama, 1920. '%Quoteci in U Pratesi and G. Uzzani, L 'Ane Itaiiana del Nowcento: fa TOSCCDIO.Marsilio: Venicc 199 1,

164. O 'nOmella Casazza and Luigi Cavallo, Ardengo &@ci: Arte e Storia: Rignano Suii'arno, Maaotta, 1994, 50. in the joumals Vulori Plastici, La Rondo and Ars Nuuvu, beginning in 19 17. These jomals drew upon the aesthetic theories of the Florentine avant-garde, in particular

Soffici's, who had advanced notions relating to the recuperation of tradition from an early date. These reviews addressed the need for a retm to the Italian tradition, which was couched in ternis of a recovery of 'classical art,' and reiterated Soffici's cal1 to integrate

past and present. For example, in Vuhi Plastlci. the critic Roberto Melli deciared: "New art is the retum of the original and eternal plastic sense... that cornplex of plastic values which tries to surpass what is arbitrary and transitory (the signs of the period of bewilderment and smiggie through which we have passed), reaffirming... the continuity of art from the pst to the present age."lS8Sofici was adamant in his belief that artists should not simply recreate past foms; they should instead recall their spirit, a notion he reiterates consistently throughout the fascist era:

The work of the modem artist must recall the antique ody indiredy: it must thus remember their virtue, not their forms, nor their systems[ ...]What I intend by recording the ancients only indirectiy, is to remember their austerity, plentihide and namralness of operation, of conception and rende~gof forms; but that the fomshould be modern and actuai, that is seen and understood with the eye and sentiment of the modem and actual artist.'59 Another of Soffici's practical concems as a cultural theorist for the regime was a definition of fascist art. Soffici, in LLFas~i~rnoe 1 'arte," asks the vital question: "Which type of art should Fascism thus defend and attempt to make triurnph?"lm After excluding art foms which are overly sentimental, theatrical, vtdgar, matenalist, cowardly, or sensual, and forms which derive fiom exotic sources or that are a result of the imitation of foreign rnodels, Soffici concludes that fascism must patronize those art foms that relate

"'Roberto Melli, "Cmd 'Arte. Dichiara=ione. '"VuIori Plasn'ci, November 191 8, 24. '" Soffici,"MescoIo," Grnetta del Popoh.( 24 Aprü, 1942), now in Opre. yl. 467. '60 SOffci, "II F&mo e L 'me," 3 57. to its spiritual essence, that represent the sincere expression of the sou1 of the creator. In

sum, this art form must be reaiistic and in one word, Italian, "as it was in ancient times

and modem times, and as it will be f~rever."'~'In Soffici's final analysis "fascism that

respects, and that can even adore, the pst and antiquity, is not a movement of reaction, or

of regress, and is not the enemy of rn~dernity."~" Integral to this formulation, where the

pst is viewed as intrinsically bound to the present and to modemity, is Soffici's pst-war

rejection of Çuturism. He discredits fiiturisrn as a movement so overtly revolutionary with

its renunciation of the pst and vehement embrace of the fiiture that it actualty

undermines dl principles, al1 recognized valued6-'Accordingly, Soffici considers the

futurist approach antithetical to fascism, which although revolutionary, is not subversive

or extremist, and does not aim for the random toppling of values but for their clarification

As a movement, Soffici believes that fascism does not invite anarchism but calls

for stability, reinforced by law and order. Soffici7srefutation of fiiturisrn in the inter-war

period points to the importance of the temporal dimension to his aesthetic theones.

Sofici reserves his most ardent condemnation for those groups who seek to subvert the continuity uniting past and present, a continuity that Soffki views as inherent to the

Ital ian artistic tradition Consequently, the fhrists, who wish to deny and obliterate

Italy's artistic legacy in a total break from the past, cannot conceivably be integrated into

fascist culture, as the fundamental doctrine of the futurist rnovement undermines the very foundation of tme italian art.

16' Ibid., 359. '" lbid,359. So ffi"II Fascimo e L 'arte., 3 58. In 1926 Sofici offers a comprehensive evaluation of the anistic history of Italy from a nationalist perspective, according to the ideal of Yhe new order." He asserts that al1 art which is decadent, nebulous, disordered, abstract, or romantic, is not Italian. Any art which deviates €rom the natural is not Italian. The pnnciple that has always infonned ltalian art and that always will is . By this he means realism as a "concept of totality, whereby material and spirit are indivisible in each living entity, reality and fantasy complete one another, as do the exterior world and interior world, subject and objecî? " A month later Soffici responded to charges on the part of a cntic fiom

L 'haliano who denounced his reliance on neo-classicism, stating that: "he [the critic] pemiciously confuses two very different, actually opposing things: neo-classicisrn and classicism." Since SoEci had identified classicism with realism, he argues that he cannot possibly be refuted or criticized This underlines Sofici's belief in the equivalence of realism and classicism, which he sees as correlating to modemity and achiality. Thus neo-classicism represents the contraqr impulse, the anti-modern, that of reactionary expression, which is opposed to the actual. Once again, Soffici rejects a movement, neo- classicism, that he feels dismpts the spintual integration of past and present In this case, the restorationist impulse of neo-classicism is viewed by Soffici as a rupture fiom the present, a negation of modernity. He sees it as facilitating an unimaginative recovery of classical models without reverence for the present or future.

The article "Periplo del1 'mie " of 1928 represents Sofici's last major attempt to formulate his cultural politics and aesthetic. Here Soffici reiterates many of his standard

'a Soffici, "Assiorni Italianrï Rivi~lllSetiimanaie della gente Fasczsta, (14 Jan, 1926). 71 concerns, condemning, what he calls, the "progressive decline of Europe" and bemoaning

Italy's role in the '2otal barbarization7'which looms in the distance. Once again he advocates the embrace of Italian tradition: artists must retum to the great masters of the

Italian Renaissance for inspiration, and once again he insists on realism in art. To protect against an influences from non-Latin nations, especially Germanic elements, artists must look to the folkways of their native countryside; they must reject the materialism of cities to ward off the forces of international commerce and urbanization. '65 He sees Italian art as dominated by two groups, the futurists with their revolutionary extremism, and the self-

sty led neo-classicists, who compte in "stupidity, vanity and dishonesty ."

Soffici is correct in his observation that Italian art was divided into two camps. By the thirties it is possible to isolate the various artistic currents accepted or çanctioned by the regirne, movements that can be divided according to their avant-garde or retro-garde approaches. In the avant-garde wnpthere were those artists who continued to operate under the title of futuism and applied the formal innovations of modemism, most notably cubism, to subject matter of interest to the regime: technology, the cult of youth and dynamism. There were also the northem abstractioniists of Milan and Como who promoted pure geometric abstraction in order to reflect the fascist ideals of order and discipline. '66 TWOmanifestations of a retro-guard tendency, academic realism and a return to naniralism were equally endoned by the fascist regirne. nie former, in its overtly propagandistic imagery remained relatively unimportant, while the latter represents the

16' 16' Adamsors 64-65. Braun, "Mario Sironi and a Fascia Art," 174 72

predominant trend in pst-war aesthetics, ofien combining classicizing elements with

irnpressionistic bnûh strokes, typical of the "retum to order.-3 167

3.3 Modemist Classicism: The Tuscan Peasant Re-visited

Soffici's own art cm be siniated within this return to naturalism. In style, Soffici's post-war aesthetic appean stnkingly retrograde in cornparison with his radical experimentations in analytic cubisrn and collage just prior to the outbreak of the war.

Consequently, Sofici can be easily located within the wave of art& attempting to redress the modenùa imperatives of their earlier work after WorId War One. Sofici7s reliance on an impressionist rnodei in bmh stroke and color scheme in his landscapes, such as Novembre (fig.20) of 1928, suggests a rejection of his pre-war avant-garde loyalties and departure from the major tenets of cubist abstraction. In subject matter,

Sofici revives his earlier interest in the landscape of Tuscany and the peasant population of that region in an attempt to create a "modem and sincere, healthy, wise and serene art"'" Without question the majority of Soffici's artistic output is devoted to the rural

Tuscan counûyside, such as Colle Toscano (fig. 21) and Paesaggio (Struda) (fig.22)both of 1925 in which typical pmoramic views of hilisides, vineyards, cypress trees, and olive groves are punchiated with precisel y painted, solidly modeled Medit erranean farrnhouses.

These numerous, conservatively ordered compositions are followed closely by a form of genre painting depicting hard-working and robust "contadini"- peasant fmers- in a

'O bid. '" Quoted in Omeila Casazza and Luigi Cavaiio, ArCtengu %@ci: Arte e Storia, 195. monumental style that emphasizes their dignity, proud demeanor and quiet strength.

Constant to SofXciTsoeuvre throughout the various stylistic phases of his career is

the theme of regional identity and the visualization of the daily experiences of provincial

Iife. As we have seen Soffci had fonnulated his own self-styled regionalism in the form

of Toscurzitù, early in his avant-garde career, the culmination of which occurs under the

fascist regirne. Soffici's renewed respect for the peasantry was integral to his notion of

Toscunitù; his visualizations of the Tuscan peasant served as icons of the regional. These

figures are depicted as analogous with the soi!, serene, tenacious and determined, the ernbodiment of faith. This regionalist agenda may appear at odds with Soffici's self-

professed nationalist concerns and certainly difficult to integrate into Mussolini's conception of the strong unitary nation. However, Sofici believed that Itaiy must be built on the strength of its regional, peasant populations; it was useless to attempt to eliminate regional difference in Italy as it was precisely this component which represented the c~nnituentelement of Italy's social fibre.

In 1924 Sofici had become involved with the Strapaese (SuperCountry) movement and with Mino Maccari's II Seivaggio, an affi~liatedjournal which promoted regional customs and identity as 'We most genuine and pure expression of the race, the ambiance. climate and mentality, in which our purest traditions are protected by instinct and love."'" Soffici understood and respected Strapaese 5; atternpts to privilege the peasant roots of Italian national culture. This embrace of art foms representative of the simple reality of natural things was intended to celebrate the sublime religiosity of the

'" Quoted in Braun, 92, popular in Italian society, in a manner that was sincere. According to Braun: "Strapuese

was a deepening of the pst-war retum to order both aesthetically and ideologically: the artists combined naturalistic detail and atmospheric bmhwork with architectonic fom, and associated this middle-of-the-road style with the solid qualities of the Italian race." ''O

The Strupaese movement was also concemed with impeding the onslaught of foreign thought, fashion, and modemist civilization with its consurnensm and Arnencanism.

Much of Soffici's artistic output is in keeping with the focus of the Smpaese movement that juxtaposed and contrasted rural life with city life in order to highlight the s irnplicity, order, and puri ty of the countryside. Soffici celebrated regional identity and folk customs as reflecting the profound roots of Italian civilization, as seen in his 1928

Contadini (8g.23). in this large canvas a robust peasant fmeris depicted working the land, barefoot and suntanned, while his wife brings him a satchel, moa likely containing his lunch, along with a bottle of Chianti in its typical Tuscan straw casing The female figure is depicted as the picture of health, plurnp and rounded, with rosy cheeks. Her role is of a domestic nature, to provide support to her hardworking husband and thus she is positioned slightly behind his massive solidly modeled form. During the fascist regime the myth of rural life was revitalized in order to cornterbalance socialist proletariat irnageiy and to stimulate the colonial function of the Italian population Fascist ultra-nationaiist theones, relating to procreation and the fecundity of the Italian race, posited the peasant family as the fiuidamental building block of the Italian social order. The peasant's strong

'"'Braun, "Speaking Volumes: Giorgio Morandi's Stili Li& and the Cultural Politics of Sîrapaese." MdernismhUix&rniiy 2,no.3,89-116. p.92 "' Adamson, "Soffici and the Religion of art" 63-64. LUigi Cavallo, Ardengo Sotci: Un Percorso d 'me. Poggio A Caiano, Manotta, 1994,. 1 I 2. work ethic and intimate relationship with the land were qualities seen as vital to Italy's

imperiatist mission of the colonization of new lands. The peasant's fecundity and typically

large families could be seen to exempli@the fascist ideal of racial proliferation and

propagation of the Italian race. As such the sturdy, solid, and hardy peasant type was

seen as the embodiment of the finest qualities of the Italian people.

In his works of the late twenties and the thirties, Sofici's figures have a new

presence, firmly occupying space, modeled with a definite emphasis on volume and mass.

His life size po-ts and paintings of peasants, such as Donna Recanto un Piaftu (fig 24)

of 1932, have increased in size, taking on new monumental proportions. These works

also reflect his new interest in fresco technique, which to Sofici signified the most

ancient painting technique and thus represented yet another example of the recuperation

of the Italian cultural legacy. The 1930's in Italy witnessed a revival of mural painting,

partly due to an interest in the revival of art foms associated with Romanità and partly

because the regime promoted large scale, monumental projects that often required mural paintings. A popular theme of the criticism of the 30's was the concept that fiom mural

painting a new style wodd develop, informed by Romanità, a style which could be ancient and at the sarne time very new.17' These fiesco panels demonstrate Soffici7sinterest not only in the revival of the ancient technique but also his desire to adapt this traditional art fom to his ovm needs as an artist in modem society. Sofici was able to overcome the practical restrictions associated with fresco, such as immobility and limited access to

lfJ~orexample se: M SuOti, "PiMua Mudq" II PqdoD 'IfdieMilano, (Jan 1 1932): C. Ca& uMuri ai Pinori,'' Qriadrante, ,Milaao (May 1, 1933); M-Carnpigli and C. Carra', "Manifest0 della phmurale," LA Colorura: Roma @ec. 1933). 76 viewers, by painting his mural art on movable panels that aliowed him to exhibit his work in numerous exhibits, most notably the Venice Biennde. Stylistically, these fresco panels recall the compositional, spatial and plastic lessons of Masaccio and other quattrocento

Florentine artists such as Fillipo Lippi, Paolo Ucello, Andrea del Castagno, and Piero della

Francesca. The simplicity of forms, reduced coior scheme, flanened backgrounds and lack of ornamentation reIate directly to these rnodels.

The elderly peasant woman in Donna recunro zut Pzutto embodies a sense of gravity and slow movement through daily existence, a serene acceptance of the human reality of life, an almost religious rhythm of ritual. An important tenet of Sofici's retm to order was that art should reflect the sobriety and limitation of human existence, a belief which was derived fiom the lesson of the ancients whose discovery of humanism was balanced with discipline and a subordination of stylistic expression. The sobnety of the painting, in which a woman holds a plate as though it were an offering, elevates the simple, silent act, to the level of the sacred Soffici manages to imbue the peasant population of Tuscany with an universal moral dignity in the face of tiresome existence.

In addition, Sofici conflates a genre theme of peasant life with the monumental dimensions and fiesco technique traditionally reserved for history and religious painting.

Thus, Soffici's amalgamation of past and present is not limited to his creative selection of stylistic features from varying epochs of Italian art. His art also subverts fundamental art historical codes, leading to the breakdown of traditional hierarchies of form and genre and a collapsing of historical time. The fiesco Processione (fig.25) of 1933, depicts three fernale peasant figures dressed in black with bowed heads, clutching Frayer beads. Soffici 77

further ernphasizes the religiosity of the figures through the severity of the women's

expressions, the solemnity of the fwieral procession, and the slow cadence of their

cortege. In 1935 Soffici described this work as: "A piece where man and nature are

indispensably complementary, where figure and country form a profound spirihial and

poetic unity." Cleariy, Soffici sees the pesant as inherently spiritual and the embodiment

of his ideal to unite man and nature. Thus, he elevates the figure of the peasant to the

highest level as demonstrated by his use of large scale monumental fresco. In so doing

Soffici synthesizes a technique first developed by the Etniscans and the Romans and rediscovered in the trecento with images of contemporary peasants engaged in timeless daily rituals. Such works represent yet another example of Sofici's desire io create a classicisrn conducive to his palingenetic fascism, in that they highiight cyclical returns to past styles, as well as the periodic rediscovery of lost techniques, and the etemal practices which take the fom of daily ritual; elements that can be viewed as representative of the process of rebirth and rejuvenation.

San Froncesco (fig.26) of 1932 can be taken as an example of Soffici's desire to operate according to the spirit of the ancient masters, while offering modem perspectives.

Soffici attempted to avoid recreating the pst but instead wanted to represent "subjects, people, and places from our time and that are familiar to us ..." The memory of those ancient masters should be evident, imposing itself indirectly, whether in fom or structure, in the treatment of figures, in the profundity and spontaneity of the technique, or in the seriousness, gravity and spirihial heights animating the whole. '" Again the work is

-- - --

'" Soffki, Sel~Arte, 1942, in Opere V, 353. simplified; the spatial configuration is extremely basic, allowing the gestures and expressions of the figures, while subtle, to take on new significance. He endows his figures with austerity and decomm suggesting their moral fonitude and integrity. Here

Soffici combines a traditional Christian theme with a conternporary setting in order to infuse the scene with actuality. dernonstrating his aim to incorporate the spirit and grandeur of classicism with modernity and pictorial language representative of the present. Soffici also revives his interest in the theme of charity and begging by depicting

St Francis, renowned for his selfless charity, altniism and rejection of worldly possessions, receiving an offering of bread from a barefoot pesant woman.

Sofici's incorporation of a religious theme with the fresco technique was especially relevant in Tuscany where massive fresco cycles devoted to the lives of the saints adom the walls of countless churches and chapels. Ln the pre-war period Soffici had studied local fresco cycles, copying the massive and voluminous figures of saints in order to transfer their monumental presence to his own art. Based on his interest in religiosity, and his declared aims to deform his art according to the spiritual values of the ancients, it is likely that Soffici was equally concemed with capturing the sublimity and spiritual presence of his trecento models. As we have seen Soffici ofien signals the linkage of the present, through the use of a modem subject, to the past, through the fresco technique.

In San Francesco, there is a further bluning of temporality and historical tirne in the conflation of a traditional Christian saint of the thirteenth century with a contemporary pesant figure. Such a combination operates on two levels: firstiy, it places the peasant figure on the same level as San Francesco, arguably the most popular Italian saint and the 79 embodiment of gwdwill and compassion; secondly it challenges the strict art historical distinction between subject matter and technique. Such a manipulation of technique, form, and genre represents a specifically modem approach which is antithetical to the rigid categorizations associated primarily with academic painting. So fici appears to be searching for alternative means to express his modemity in opposition to both the neo- ciassicists and the futurists. He had clearly demonstrated a need to distance himseif from a reliance on abstraction as a marker of modemity, a strategy employed by both the pre-war avant-garde in its desire to appear original, and by the futurists in their negation of the pas His use of fresco suggests a Mercondemnation of neoclassical and academic artists who superficially depended on classical models, mythological themes, and history painting, and expressed these themes in standard easel paintings using self-effacing brush strokes. According to Sofici, this type of aesthetic restoration contnbuted to the destruction of the sublime and heroic vison of the 'classical' and negated its true legacy, its moral lega~y.'~~Although Soffici7sown art is in many ways characterized by aesthetic conservatism, his subversion of tradition in ternis of technique and genre signifies his aspiration to remain resolutely modem

in viewing Soffici's peasant imagery we are rerninded of the largely rhetorical role of the peasant in the modem imagination, a role which Pierre Bourdieu has defined as that of the ''classe-objet." Romy Golan summarizes Bourdieu's position stating: "Predisposed to a form of anarchic individudism by the harshness of its struggle with nature, the peasantry has never been in a position to think of itself as a class capable of mobilizing as a revolutionary force. As a result, the peasant does not speak, he is always spoken of.

Endlessly objectified and stereotyped, the peasant class exists, Bourdieu argues, not for its own sake but as a n~eta~hor.""~The nature of Soffci's regionalism relates to his conceptions of modemity and tradition and to a particular formulation of temporality heavily informed by norions of palingenesis. Soffici's reliance on tradition and idealization of Tuscany and its peasantry, was inspired by the desire to recapture the values associated with that community, and as such, functions as a way of defining a lack in the present One useful investigation of the modem era's dependence on tradition is

Stephen Spender's, which States: "Traditions of course fa11 into certain classifications of tirne and place. But they only 'live' in the minds of contemporaries, to the extent that they are understood and imagined by them. Yet to select a period and Say 'this was our true tradition, the rest was false' is to exercise an entirely contemporary selective judgement, and to tell little about the past except its relevance to our present situation."'"

Soffici's motivations are consistent with some forms of fascist and proto-fascist myths that are radically anti-urban and draw on the cultural idioms of nostalgia for moral virtue, or racial purity. Ln these cases, it is only the perceived degenerative elements of modem society that are rejected In the Sfrupaese movement, a similar attitude towards the tradition/modemity dichotomy is evident. Strapaese 's emphasis on the purity of rural life, far fiom being anachronistic, was simply an attempt "to absorb modemity through the filter of tradition," not to reject modemity in its entirety. '" Consequently, Soffici's post-

176 See Romy Gola.Modernity and Nmtalgitz Art and Politics in France Betwetin the Wars New Yaven: Yale University Press, 1995,4445- '" Stephen Spender, The Stmggle of rhe Moctern, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1963-232-3. Braun, Speaking Volumes: Giorgio Morandi's Stin Li& and the Cuitural Poütics of Strapaese." 95. 81 wvar provincial aesthetic reflects the need for accommodation inherent in much anti- rnodemist rhetoric. In the Italian case, fascist cultural policies allowed the artist to detemine to what extent culture ought to embrace innovation and modemity at the expense of tradition and, conversely to what degree culture ought to inscnbe itself within a speci fically Italian histoncal perspective.

The spectrum of attitudes relating to the traditiodmodemity dichotomy is vast in the Italian case and Soffici's specific vision was often incompatible with the rnovements he was involved with. For example, Sofici had ken an ardent advocate of historicist remsand a dependence on the great legacy of the Italian artistic heritage, ideas which were distasteful to the Strapese movement As we have seen, Soffici embraced a

Gentilian rhetoric of the militant artist, educator and rnember of the cultural elite who serves a moral ideal and who is willing to subordinate his own individuality to the comrnunity and the national collectivity. Yet he was ais0 a promoter of the Strapaese, which, in its strident regionalisrn and political independence, stood for individual autonomy and indigenous expression as opposed to centralkation, to Rome, and to bourgeois taste. '* Such ideas can be viewed as far removed from the ideals of fascism's ultra-nationalism and yet were accommodateci into Mwolini's conception of cultural politics. Soffci's cal1 that art should reflect the motivations and aims of the political movement it represents becomes problematic when applied to Mussolini's regime, a regime which made a plicy of tolerating a nurnber of different approaches.

Jeffery Scnapp, " Epic Demonstrations: Fascise Modernity and the 1932 Exhïibition of the Fascist Revolutioq" in FCLX:~~.Aesthetics. and Culture- " Richard Goslan ed. HanoverUniversity Press of New England, 1992, p.2. lK0 Braun, 93. 82

3.4 CONCLUSION

As a an artist operating within fascist society, Soffici believed that he was to take

an active role in the rejuvenation and transformation of the nation of Italy. Soffici viewed

his distinct version of classicism, entailing a retum to order and to naturalism, as aligned

with fascism's desire to clarifj and strengthen moral and spiritual values through stability,

discipline, law, and order. In attempting to fornulate an art that would relate to fascism's

spiritual essence, Sofici aspired to develop a national art form, that was both

representative of the finest qualities of the Italian race, and that was to serve as a moral

paradigm for the Italian "popolo." Hence Sofici's reiiance on the peasant figure; the

exemplar of the values which Soffici wished to disseminate through his modemist

classicism. Equally pertinent to Sofici's modemist classicism was his desire to express

the ideals of harrnony and beauty through ordinary subjects, as opposed to heroic ones.

An elastic and extremely flexible incorporation of the traditions, forms, and techniques associated with Italy's past artistic legacy was vital to Soffici's aesthetic. Consequently, he called upon such varied sources as the ancients, the Italian primitives, the masters of the Renaissance, in order to recapture their spirit, to transform his own modern art through their vision. These "classical" sources were vital to Soffici's aesthetic as they

infused his work with enduring and timeless spiritual values, such as religiosity, sobriety, dignity, and decorum, values that Soffici perceived as lacking fiom contemporary Italian society.

Soffici's desire to guarantee the wntinuity of past and present, and through a process of transformation eff' change in the future, is heavily informed by the myth of 83 decadence and renewal. In effect, the powerful Italian wave of palingenetic expectancy in intellectuals, political activists and ordinary people provided a source of renewal and redemption, fed by a cultural climate in which inationalist and elitist theones were factors. Sofici's palingenetic cultural mission, a campaign to forge the "new Italian" and develop an essentially Italian modern art, represents the underiying and fundamental motivation for a large part of his artistic output It is crucial to recognize the coherence of

Soffici's nationalist agenda despite shifting cultural allegiances and changes in his aesthetic formulations.

In summary, this thesis has investigated the challenge of modernity in relation to the Italian cultural avant-garde movernents of Leodo,La Voce. and Lacerbu. with specific emphasis on the cultural politics of Ardengo Soffici, to isolate specific theories and currents of national palingenesis. In analyzing Soffici's intended societal role for art, along with the political implications of such a secular religion, and in examining Sofici's conception of Tuscan regionalism and his "parsatista" embrace of tradition, this thesis has endeavored to dernonstrate how such rhetoric hctioned within the predorninant discourse of nationalisrn. Furthemore, the apparent contradiction of Soffici's modemist and traditionalist impulses has been considered in terms of temporal and spatial models investigated in pivotal studies by scholan concemed with national culme. 1 have attempted to establish that Soffici's myihic use of tradition, which is a typical aspect of modem mass politics, did not merely draw on regret for a lost pst, but encompassed an attitude of active enthusiasm towards modem redity. The nse of ultra-nationalkm in Italy was certainly related to fascism's ability to draw strength fiom such mythic forces as 84 traditionalism, regionalisrn and secular religion using the political language of

Nationhod While fascism would eventuaily declare its triumph in having accomplished the national regeneration envisioned by the Hisurgrmento, Mazzini, and the militants of the modernist avant-garde, in the final analysis the aspirations of freedom and liberty associated with this aim were sacrificed "in the name of the absolute primacy of the totalitarian state." 18' Figure 1. Ardengo Soffici Don Chiscioite in Toscana (Cover of Leonmdo August 1906) and pparatory sketches for the print Figure 2 Ardengo Soffici Paesaggio 1907 Oil on cardboard Private collection Figure 3 Ardengo Soffici Strada Mizestra t 908 oil on canvas Galleria d' Arte Modema, Milano Figure 4 Ardengo Soffici Paesaggio con Cipressi 1909 Oil on cardboard Collection of G. Prezzolini, Florence Figure 5 Ardengo Soffici II Skwignone 1909 Oil on canva Private collection Figure 6 Ardengo Soffici Paesaggio P rzmaverile 1909 Oil on canvas Collection of G. Prezzo f hi, Florence Figure 7 Ardengo Soffici Contadini Toscani 1907 Oil on cardboard Private collection Figure 8 (a & b subsequent pages) Ardengo Soffici Album di S'udi 1907 Two pages of a sketchbook, watercolor on paper

Figure 9 Ardengo Soffici Vendemmia 1907 Oil on cmdboard Private collection Figure 10 Ardengo Soffici La Potatura 1908 Oil on canvas nivate collection, Viarepgio Figure 11 Ardengo Sofici I Mietitori 1908 Tempera and oil on canvas Private collection, Florence Figure 12 Ardengo Soffici La Raccolta delle Olive 1908 Oil on canvas Private collection, Florence Figure 13 Ardengo Soffici Stdi da tm Afiesco nelh Chiesa di Jolo 1907 Pend on paper and tempera on paper Figure 14 Ardengo Sofici I Mendicanti 1906-7 Tempera on cardboard Private collection, Milan Figure 15 Ardengo Soffici Curnpi Arati 19 10 Oil on canvas Galleria dYArteModerna, Roma Figure 16 Ardengo Soffici Sintesi Pittorica di un Paesaggio d 'Autmo 19 12- 13 Oil on canvas Rivate Collection, Bergamo Figure 17 Ardengo Soffici Masse e Pimi di un Paese 19 13 Oil on cavas Galleria d'Arte Modenia, Roma Figure 18 Ardengo Soffici Nature Morta "Teppista" 19 14 Oil, tempera and collage on canvas Private collection, Florence Figure 19 Ardengo Soffici Composirione con Bottigfia 19 14 Oil, tempera and collage on carciboard Pnvate collection, Bergamo Figure 20 Ardengo Soffici Novembre 1928 Oil on Canvas Private Collection, Verona. Figure 21 Ardengo Soffici Colle Toscano 1925 Oil on Canvas Gaileria d7ArteModema, Florence Figure 22 Ardengo Soffici Paesaggio (S.&) 1925 Oil on Canvas Galleria d'Arte Modema, Milano Figure 23 Ardengo Soffici Contadini 1 928 Oil on canvas Commune di Poggio a Caiano Figure 24 Ardengo Soffici Donna Remo un Piatto 1932 Fresco, applied to canvas Gallena d'Me Moderna, Milano Figure 25 Ardengo Soffici Processione 1933 Fresco, applied to wood panel Galleria D'arte Modenia, Firenze Figure 26 Ardengo Soffici San Francesca 1932 Fresco, transferred to canvas Collezione Vaticana d'Me Religiosa Moderna, Musei Vaticani BLBLIOGRAPRY

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