/lit/ - Literature

>>18812270
>the german marxists pre and post war are good on theory of fascism.
Literal propaganda
Fascism is anti-traditionalist. This can be seen in Mussolini or Marinetti himself, where there is a whole hymn to modernity. Moreover, fascism is for them the zenith of the Risorgimento.

>>16374453
He doesn't know any of it.

Indeed, many of the fascists - specially those who supported the movement in the early days - were at the forefront of modernism. Denying the value of fascist art only shows that one doesn't know anything about art in the 20th century. Ezra Pound, Carlo Carrà, D'Annunzio, Mascagni... And, of course, Marinetti, one of the decisive figures of early 20th century futurism, and a huge influence on, among others, Fernando Pessoa.

Also, if I am allowed to be more precise, it's not necessarily about "fascist art" (which did exist), but rather about "art made in fascist Italy by people who supported fascism". Ezra Pound didn't write "fascist art", as he simply kept writing in the same ideogrammic and free verse style he had found for himself 20 years earlier, but he still can be considered a "fascist artist", in a certain political but non-aesthetic way, specially if you look at the Italian Cantos. The same applies for other great artists who worked in fascist Italy and supported the regime: they didn't obey a fixed government plan, like the Soviets had to do under the rules of social realism. Italian artists who supported fascism were freer and much more in tune with the tendencies of modernism, specially futurism, but also surrealism, hermeticism, meta-literature, and others - some of them even helped to start those tendencies themselves.
Authors like Pirandello, Quasimodo, Ungaretti, and Montale were all living in Italy during the days of fascism, and freely publishing their books, which were at the very forefront of the modernist movements of that era.

Still, alongside those older and the more purely aesthetic styles aforementioned, there did exist a distinctively fascist type of art, which manifested itself specially in public buildings and projects. Pic related. You can see a blend of neoclassic and modernist (smooth, flat surfaces) features; and there's also a great rigidity and soberness, which differentiates it from, say, futurism.