With thanks to Robert H. Kargon, Karen Fiss, Morris Low
and Arthur P. Molella, authors of World’s Fairs on the Eve of War: Science,Technology and Modernity, 1937-1942 (2015, 205 pp., including 46 pages of
notes, and index, $34.95 hardback [$21.00 amazon]), and thanks to the
publisher, University of Pittsburgh Press, for providing a review copy. A good read, highly interpretive,
fascinating.
Followers of this website
will be familiar with E42, the world’s fair-like exposition south of Rome, planned
by Mussolini and a bevy of Fascist-oriented architects. E (esposizione, exposition) 42 (1942, the
planned opening date) never opened and was only partially built when the war
changed everything. It was not finished
until the mid-1950s.
What is less well-known is
that E42 was only one of 5 major world’s fairs—planned and/or opened in France
(1937), Nazi Germany (1937), the U.S. (1939, New York City), Japan (1940,
planning only), and Italy--in the 6 years spanning 1937 and 1942. The authors of this slim and smart book—Robert
H. Kargon, Karen Fiss, Morris Low, and Arthur P. Molella--take up all of them,
one at a time in chronological order, including an extended and worthy treatment
of the Rome expo. They examine how each
of these nations (and others, such as Russia, that mounted exhibits at some of the
fairs), came to terms with science and technology—that is, “modernity”—but also how
each nation, and each political regime, used the fairs to negotiate the
relationship between modernity, the world-wide Great Depression, their own
national cultures, and their needs as nation-states in a world rapidly
approaching—and then fighting—World War II.
In some sense, the fairs were about defining the future, and the future
looked very different from these distinct national perspectives. All the fairs can be understood as national propaganda.
At the 1937 Paris fair, for
example, the French positioned themselves against what the country perceived as
the American version of modernity: consumption of things and Fordist mass
production. Instead, the French fair
emphasized “human creativity,” “artistic invention” “good taste,” intellect,
and bringing social classes together.
Lots of art (Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger), French cinema. As the authors suggest, “France imagined
itself as a rational middle way between contending ideologies, the “new and
powerful forces threatening the stability of Europe.”  |
| Sonia Delaunay, Propeller (Air Pavilion), Paris, 1937 |
 |
| German pavilion, Paris |
In contrast, the Soviet and German pavilions,
situated across from each other, were huge, imposing, and confrontational, all
about strength and power. Italy’s
pavilion, designed by Marcello Piacentini, was more modest, though it did
feature an enormous equestrian statue honoring Mussolini, who was fond of posturing
on horseback.
 |
| Russian pavilion, Paris |
 |
| Schaffendes Volk, Dusseldorf |
The 1937 German fair, the
Schaffendes Volk in Dusseldorf, while less than a full-blown world’s fair
(as in Rome, there were no foreign pavilions), expressed the German perspective. This fair was about getting the Germans to
understand and participate fully in the ongoing militarization of Germany, while
recognizing that some consumer purchases would have to be deferred; autarchy
(the 1930s word for economic self-sufficiency); and the machine age. The Nazis were suspicious and intolerant of
modernism in the fine arts, and so the fair didn’t do much, if anything, in
those areas. To emphasize the goal of
self-sufficiency, the fair incorporated a display by IG Farben, maker of
synthetic rubber (and, as it turned out, Zyklon B gas, used to kill millions of
Jews), as well as other exhibits about synthetic fabrics. Lebensraum (living space) was the theme of
another pavilion, which also emphasized the German “race.” The fair presented women as housewives and
purchasers.
 |
| Poster for the planned 1940 Japan fair |
In contrast to the 1939 New
York World’s Fair, which accepted modernity whole-heartedly and looked
relentlessly into a technological and scientific future, the 1940 Grand
International Exposition of Japan, planned but never opened (that darned war!)
was packed with tension between modernization and tradition. The Japanese didn’t reject technology and
science (they would need both to fight the Chinese and the Allies), but they
were into the cult of the emperor and didn’t like the idea of seeing their
country overwhelmed by western ideas, values, and modes of production. Those planning the fair also had to find a
way to merge international modernism in architecture with Japanese design
traditions (like the Shintō shrine). “Many
Japanese,” write the authors, “believed that Japan combined the best of East
and West.”
One result was the “Imperial
Crown style” of architecture, a herald of postmodernism: take a rationalist,
concrete, steel-frame, modernist building and put a traditional, pitched roof
on top. The winning entry for one of the
Japanese halls combined the Shintō shrine with designs for Michelangelo’s Capitoline Hill complex and Bernini’s St. Peter’s Piazza.
Like the Italians and Germans, the Japanese were into “autarchy”
(self-sufficiency) as well as race and nationalism, “blood and culture.”
Hey, we’ve made it to Italy,
and E42! Here at RST we’ve written extensively about the planned expo and the arch
intended to be its centerpiece (Modern Rome has an EUR itinerary, Rome
the Second Time devotes a special section to the arch, and there’s E42 material
on the blog, too; links to some posts are at the end of this post). So here we’ll deal
mainly with what the authors of World’s Fairs on the Eve of War
contribute to our understanding of E42.
 |
| Ludovico Quaroni poster, with a version of the E42 arch |
Kargon et. al appropriately
emphasize the way in which the exposition, designed to be permanent, looked to both
a Fascist future, in which Italy was imagined as a world power, and the glorious
ancient Roman past. The never-built
symbol of this synthesis of past and future was the Arco dell’Impero, the
enormous arch that was to sit astride the far-flung complex, evoking not just
technology and science but the imperial conquests of imperial Rome, past and present. Mussolini wanted to be compared (favorably,
of course) to the Emperor Augustus (just as Hirohito saw himself as the heir to
Emperor Jimmu), and so he had an Augustan exhibit that had been at the Palazzo
delle Esposizione moved to a new building in E42.
E42 planners also wanted to
emphasize “Italian scientific genius.”
The arch would have done that, had Italians been able to figure out how
to build an arch 600 meters high. But
they couldn’t—at least in the time frame they were afforded.
Another way to showcase
Italian prowess in this area was E42’s Museum of the Sciences, “heavily planned”
but, like the arch, never built.
Italy was not without a
scientific heritage, and the new museum would have trumpeted the
accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, and Marconi. Planners hoped to present Galileo as the
founder of scientific method, and Marconi’s contributions to radio were widely
acknowledged and praised. However, as
the authors of this book argue, there was not much more to celebrate. “Too bad,” they write, Italy’s “great atomic
physicist Enrico Fermi had fled with his wife, Laura, to America.” Too bad, too, that the 1938 anti-Semitic laws
had forced many other notable scientists to leave the country. (Mussolini once referred to Einstein’s
theories as “a Jewish fraud lacking in originality.”) Some thought the planners might have
done better emphasizing technology rather than science (think of the Roman
invention of cement). Perhaps the basic
idea was flawed. “The Italian
performance in science and technology over the last century,” the authors
conclude, “was distinctly subpar by world standards.”
 |
| Square Coliseum |
Where Italians did excel was
in art, architecture, and design, and today EUR (Esposizione Universale di
Roma) stands as a monument to that heritage, albeit a flawed and ambivalent one. The authors present E42 as the product of a
debate and competition between Italian rationalist modernism, on the one hand,
and “monumental Fascist classicism,” represented by Piacentini, on the
other. The former found its way into the
fair’s most iconic structure, the Square Coliseum, and some other buildings,
and the arch would have fallen in this category, too. Indeed, the authors of World’s Fairs foreground
the contributions to E42 of Italian futurism and they echo architectural critic
Vincent Scully’s remark, that “EUR has a de Chirico-like perspective.”
 |
| Museum of Roman Civilization (now closed for lack of funds) |
To be sure, there are places
in EUR where the absence of people might lead one to think of Giorgio de
Chirico. But by and large the complex
lacks the painter’s sense of the mysterious, and its linearity and stasis seems
to have no relationship with futurism’s curves and movement. No, Piancentini (as the authors acknowledge) “won”
the competition with rationalist modernism.
The result is a heavy, overbearing architecture that represents Fascism’s
glorification of strength and power, its turn to colonization and, not far down
the road, war.
Bill
Some additional RST posts featuring EUR:
Il Fungo - Rome's Mid-century architecture.Some additional RST posts featuring EUR:
The art of Caffe' Palombini in EUR.
EUR's manhole covers.
Folk-art and Fascist architecture in EUR.
