For us progressive amateur aesthetes, it's always been somewhat unsettling that so much top-drawer design has emerged from 20th century European fascist regimes. Does anybody have any insight into why that might be? My first guess would have something to do with repressed homoerotic urges.
Meanwhile, Behold the 1938 Hispano-Suiza Dubonnet Xenia:
The only company I'm aware of that consistently produces world-class industrial design today is Apple, which thrust itself into the public mind with it's "iconic" (and in my opinion overrated) 1984 Superbowl commercial. Old-timers will remember that the archetypal living symbol of Freedom and Justice For All---noted war hero, business executive, and human-rights crusader Ronald Reagan---was presiding over the American Experiment at that very moment in history.
It may be hard to believe that, at one time, high design in computer technology could be achieved with putty-colored plastic, a 9 in. monochrome TV picture tube, and a handful of simple picto-glyphs and 16-bit screen fonts. You had to be there; your mainstream business-grade alternative was an IBM (or clone) PC box about the size of Francisco Franco's tombstone displaying its data on a bile-green 8-bit VGA monitor, or amber if you were really uptown. No mouse necessary, or available! (And, yes, Amiga fascists, I do know about your pet machine. Highly respectable, but no design awards from this amateur aesthete.)
Mac 128 image above ganked from this blog, but it certainly doesn't belong to him!
To say, "20th century European fascist regimes" for a time at least largely includes the German culture, or more precisely Prussian. One could point to a cultural tendency to attention to detail and order. But then there's your Italian example. So, for a start, I'd instead go with state directed funds to "make a splash" (i.e., gun barrel mandated edicts that had little constraint on funding). Hire, or kidnap, the best and go for greatness (and PR).
ReplyDeleteDieter Franzoni
You may have something there. Remember that the symbol of Italian fascism is the fasces---a bundle of rods or sticks bound together for greater strength (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Etymology). I didn't know that it was a symbol of civic authority dating back to Roman antiquity. So the chaotic, laissez-faire Italian national character (a stereotype, of course) seems a likely "application waiting to happen" during a period of internal disarray... such as characterized the peninsula since before the time that Constantine started putting together his LBO of Christianity.
ReplyDeleteOn the so-called other end of the political spectrum we have Stalin-era aesthetics, which are appreciated by many (including me) for qualities that are not altogether different than other examples we've mentioned. They produced no world-class deco automobiles for fairly obvious reasons, but geometry and order---but also highly dynamic angularity and asymmetry---are central to the aesthetic.
Other end? Do what you're told, toe the party line...or else. Sprawling multiple time zones; state directed rush to modernize in 5-yr increments; assigned your profession; religion outlawed...
ReplyDeleteThe art of a culture (or is that the culture of a country's art?) has multiple influences -- state mandates being only part of it.
Toynbee Lite Brigade
I think that description pretty much applies to both ends. My political spectrum theory has both ends sort of merging in fetid murk about 180 degrees away from bland centrism, color-wheel-like.
Delete