The State of the Art. Fascism and Cultural Legitimation

We asked a series of questions to Monica Cioli and David Rifkind, authors of two important books which focus on the process that enabled art and architecture to acquire a specific political meaning under fascism. The outcome is a dialogue that shows how the relationship between fascism and art is not characterized by a mere appropriation or a mutually functional exploitation between the artist or the architect and the fascist regime. Art prepares a specific appropriation of technology and serves to introduce the political anthropology of the fascist man. Similarly, architecture establishes an organization of urban spaces coherent and necessary to the hierarchical order of the corporatist society.