The Visual Arts, Mass Society and Totalitarianism

Is totalitarianism only found in ‘other’ societies? How come, then, it emerged historically in ‘ours’ first? How come it developed in so many countries either in Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) or under implicit Western forms of coercion (Latin America)? How do relations between individual(s), mass and the visual arts relate to totalitarian trends? TOTalitarian ARTs. The Visual Arts, Fascism(s) and Mass-society (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), edited by Mark Epstein, Fulvio Orsitto and Andrea Righi deals with aspects of the transition to totalitarianism, in mass-societies: from the rise of ‘classic’ fascism in Italy, to the various reappearances and transformations of totalitarism in the contemporary world. Focusing on the visual arts allows for a rich variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, which can examine areas of education, acculturation, value-formation, and persuasion that are less immediately and obviously political, legal, or institutional. Most importantly in covering a wide spectrum of phenomena across cultures, historical periods and media, it avoids the Manichean and fetishistic opposition of “democratic” (parliamentary) to “totalitarian” systems, a widespread, often hegemonic, consensus, that mostly distorts or hides the actual processes of transition from one to the other.

The collection includes sections on architecture, urban space and sculpture (Genoa and Verona specifically); on the fascist regime’s image management (the use of religious figures and iconography to add luster to the Duce’s presence; the way in which in the US the media and entertainment industry made Mussolini into an early element of the “star” system as well as the political and economic interests in the background); the various ways in which fascism has been represented in cinema from immediately after the war to today, as well as an essay on Pasolini’s Salò and how it relates to his comparison of classic fascism and contemporary consumerist neocapitalist totalitarianism; reflections on German culture and the rise of nazism, an analysis of French authors whose discourse showed many affinities with elements of fascism, an examination of graphics and visual culture used under the Vichy regime, and an analysis of Salvador Dali and his ambiguous relationship with Francoism; cinema in Franco’s Spain, Portuguese cinema and its representation of the fascistic military dictatorships there, and documentaries dealing with the military dictatorship in Uruguay; theatrical representations and satires of nazism in contemporary Germany and its implications for identity politics, the use of allegory in comic strips created by the contemporary German extreme right, and the various uses of the YouTube medium by the far right in Sweden as a means to proselytise and create political bonding; reflections on contemporary totalitarian trends in the EU and US, and reflections on the possible uses of some contemporary theories as tools to analyse fascism.

The interdisciplinary nature of the essays allows readers to reflect on the advantages of specific visual media (we include sculpture, architecture, the organization of urban spaces and theater as somewhat less canonical members of the ‘visual arts’ because of their strong visual components) for the purposes of representation, persuasion, inclusion, and participation. The fact that these media were and are used both by totalitarian regimes or by groups advocating for similar causes and ideologies, and by individuals and groups who were and are critical of them allow for a more critical and comparative perspective on the issues. The variety of cultural perspectives and the broad historical range are intended to aid readers in developing a wide-ranging set of parameters and criteria. The editors intended it to be a useful work across a range of levels of expertise: from scholars of fascism and totalitarianism all the way to students who are for the first time being exposed to the broad range of historical events and artistic representation they elicited, an interdisciplinary and multicultural reader.