Olivetti: Masters of Italian Design (RIP)

We owned two of these beauties - the Praxis 48, Olivetti's first electric typewriter
 We did not know when we bought them (it came out in 1964) that it was designed
by Ettore Sottsass.

The Olivetti typewriter was one of the best examples of Italians' love of, and attention to design.  That's why it was easy for us to put aside our disdain for company-sponsored exhibits and enjoy last year's free show of Olivetti designs at the Galleria Nazionale del'Arte Moderna ("Gnam," or "Belle Arti," as we like to refer to it), the state's modern (not contemporary) art gallery in Rome. If we can't keep ourselves out of a Barbie show, we can't be above an Olivetti one, it would appear. But for my rant on sponsored shows, see the end of this post.

The exhibit highlighted design over company and family history.  As its introduction stated: "The exhibition Looking forward does not cover the epic of an enlightened family of Italian industry, but those moments of creative flash of a company that will forever mark the history of design, graphics, technological innovation, communication."  "Looking forward" is somewhat ironic in that Olivetti barely continues to exist, down from 50,000 workers to about 3,000 and no longer a separate company, but part of Telecom Italia. An excellent article in Reuters on what happened to Olivetti - and the Italian economy generally - is here (and see our review of Edoardo Nesi's "Story of My People"). Of course, when these designs were created, they were looking forward, much more so than the designs of other companies. 

The genius of Olivetti was hiring the world's best artistic designers, such as Ettore Sottsass, as well as superb heads of Art Design, probably a managerial position most office machine companies didn't have.

They also hired Henri Cartier-Bresson to document their factories and the factory workers.

 From the factory in Pozzuoli near Naples in 1961, by Cartier-Bresson.
This factory, built in the 1950s with a view of the sea, was architecturally worthy.
The photo looks like it could come out of a De Sica film.

Most impressive in the exhibit were the typewriters and the publicity for them, best expressed in the photos below.

Bright red, and appropriately named "Valentine," this was Olivetti's portable
typewriter, first on the market in 1969, designed by Sottsass with Perry King.

A 1970 advertising poster for the Valentine,
by Milton Glaser. Maybe someone can explain
 the dog and the Roman sandals (see below!)

Another Valentine ad, this one dated 1969 (note the Pop Art
colors), by Adrianus Van der Elst.

Sottsass even designed an office chair as part of a "landscape" of desk and accouterments for the typist, Sistema 45. For an interesting description of the philosophy behind Sistema 45, see here.

So what do I have against sponsored exhibits?  I think they take the curatorial process and turn it over to capitalistic input.  Shows are often sponsored when the sponsors - or donors - want to increase the value of their holdings, be they dresses, jewelry, art work or, in Sottsass's case - in an exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Art - his furniture designs. That exhibit was sponsored by Max Palevsky, who I believe owned many of the objects. (He also supposedly promised his collection of 250 art works to LACMA but then apparently sold it.)  So generally, I think public art museums, not capitalism, should call the shots. My philosophy here is of a piece with my qualms about private art galleries, about which I've ranted in the past.

The exhibit included the following 1959 statement from Adriano Olivetti, acknowledged as the family member who made the company into a great enterprise: 

"Our Community must be concrete, visible, tangible, a community that is neither too big, nor too small, territorially defined, endowed with vast powers, that gives to all the activities that indispensable coordination, that efficiency, that respect for the human personality, culture and art that man's civilization has achieved in its best places."  

Okay, fine, but in a show sponsored by the Olivetti company and the Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti (no doubt some tax breaks there), one is only going to get this level of b.s., no context, no push-back, not even some designs that didn't work, or, better yet, some machines that looked beautiful but didn't work.

Still, it was a good show, and I'm not about to ignore it.We learned something. We looked at wonderful designs. We got to see our beloved Praxis 48 (it's at MOMA too as I recall).

Dianne

postscript: Our friend Bo Lundin informs us that the Olivetti dog is from "A Satyr mourning a Nymph," by Piero di Cosimo, 1496, National Gallery, London. Here it is:

Thanks, Bo!


Then Bo sent us this parody of the di Cosimo painting:

Thanks again, Bo!

The Gates of Rome: The Postwar Era

Some of these gates are best seen--and photographed--at night. 

A window barred--but elegantly, c. 1910

From the point of view of crimes against the body, Rome is a safe city, with very low numbers of assaults, rapes and murders.  Property crime--things like thefts on the bus, breaking and entering with intent to steal the television set--is more frequent.  Romans--and Italians generally--are understandably anxious about property crimes and eager to protect their homes from invasion.  Hence Romans prefer the upper floors of apartment buildings, where they feel--and are--less vulnerable, and those who must live on the ground or first floor commonly install bars on windows. 

Fenced in, completely

Some have been known to fence in an entire terrace or balcony (right).  Portieri--the guys who sit in little rooms ready to jump out and prevent you from snooping around in that lovely interior courtyard--are less common than they once were, but they're still at work here and there, and they still serve as a deterrent to crime in many buildings.   If a thief does manage to get to your front door, he must deal with multiple sets of multiple-bolt locks on an order that even a hardened New Yorker would have trouble imagining.  Opening one of these doors with the keys requires not only a good memory--for which key fits which lock,  which of the locks, if any, is a fake, which lock to unlock first, how many turns to make--but also a non-arthritic wrist and some time to waste. 



A fanciful gate, in Coppede'

This concern for home safety has one benefit (well, maybe more than one): the iron gates that guard many buildings--the first line of defense, especially in the absence of a portiere--are works of art.  Some are centuries old, veritable masterpieces of the Italian renaissance.  Others, as in the Coppede' neighborhood in the quartiere of Trieste, evoke the medieval sensibilities of Gino Coppede', the architect who built the area, or offer a touch of the "liberty"/art nouveau style that was in vogue in the decades before and after 1900. (The Coppede' neighborhood came in at #20 on RST's Top 40.)

Then there are the modern gates of the between-the-wars Fascist period, with their strong vertical and/or horizontal lines.  No nonsense. 










Here's another, from the 1920s, with touches of the medieval: that spear to the right, the grate-like general appearance.  Nestled in the center, the modernist letters CP (Case Popolari/Public Housing).  This gate is in the planned community of Garbatella (RST's #16 on its Top 40), south of the center. 







And after the war?  Nothing worth looking at, right?  Wrong.  We (and that really means Bill, that master of the perverse perspective) have been enjoying the gates and doors of the 1950s and 1960s.  Yikes!  At least that's when we think they were made; they don't come with dates. 

Angles, colored glass, lovely shadows.  Note the floor.  This
gate is "busier" than most.  You can see it in Piazza Vescovio.

They're easy to recognize: they're "modern" in the sense that they (usually) aren't busy with detail, and they don't resemble Victorian wallpaper.  But the designers of these postwar examples have moved on just a bit from the stark lines favored in the Fascist era.  Lines are bending (photo at top).  New angles.  Playfulness.  One senses a search--not always successful, we admit--for something beyond the stark order of modernism.









Playful, yet bold and powerful.  Straight out of the 1950s, and strong and masculine.  In postwar, modern Garbatella, not far from the Metro. 

Sensational.  Gorgeous.  You could be in Miami Beach.  But it's Monteverde. 

We found this gem in the quartiere of Trieste, while walking to our
apartment from Piazza Bologna.  Wasted on a parking lot, but dazzling.
We're thinking Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome. 

There's Fuller with his dome. 

Bill






 

Manhole Covers: Art and Politics

If we didn’t know that Bocca della Verita', now one of Rome’s major tourist attractions, was once a manhole cover, we might have been more reluctant to introduce today’s subject. Even so, we don’t expect the average tourist to spend the day looking down, eagerly anticipating the next “cover,” or stooping to feel the patina created by thousands of shoes over many decades, or pondering the date of a particularly compelling version of the genre. But then we’re not writing for the “average” tourist. So here goes.

The manhole cover above has two worthy elements. Like many covers, it has the letters SPQR, for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the people of Rome). Once used on the shields of Roman legions, the letters were also popular with Mussolini’s Fascists and today appear on the coat of arms for the city of Rome and on all manner of other things, from sidewalk poster frames to…manhole covers. In this case, SPQR are carried out in a highly stylized, modernist lettering common in Italian design in the early 1930s--note the similarity to the typeface used in the Cherry Show poster from 1932--so it’s likely that this cover was made in that period.

The design to the left of the letters is apparently a version of the Celtic Cross. The Celtic Cross is a very old religious symbol, especially dear to Presbyterians and Catholics and, according to some, invented by Saint Patrick in the 5th century in an effort to combine the Christian symbol of the cross with the pagan symbol of the sun. However, the Celtic Cross on this manhole cover comes without the “ring” that represents the sun, and it doesn’t even have the shape of the standard Christian Cross; all sides are of equal length. So what we have here is a highly derivative version based on the Celtic Cross, but adapted for modern design purposes.

Manhole covers are part of the city’s maintenance system, and so they’re marked in practical ways that help workers know what’s down there. The cover below and to the right, with Arresto SPQR on one side, and Saracinesca on the other, explains that when the cover is removed, you’ll find a valve or nipple (saracinesca) that can be turned off or stopped (arresto). The letters around the center--ACEA--refer to Rome's public/private power and water company.

Some covers tell us where they were made, and by what company. The one below was obviously made in Giovanni Berta’s foundry (fonderia) in Florence—a foundry located, actually, in an area just north of Florence called “delle Cure.” It’s not famous for manhole covers (not, anyway, until this blog), but the name reflects an ancient trade once practiced there: the washing of linen cloth to soften and whiten the material. Fascinating! The crown above reveals that Italy was still a monarchy, and the attenuated Celtic Cross appears once more, in the same position.

This cover, too, has the SPQR, and with it, the fasci, symbol of Fascism. That combination—SPQR and fasci—appears on our final example (below), located in viale delle Provincie, running off Piazza Bologna—don’t miss it!

This gem tells us that there’s water service inside (Servizio Idraulico); that it was made at the Roman Foundry; and—an added treat—that it was manufactured in the tenth year of the Fascist Era (X is ten, EF is Era Fascista)—that is, ten years after the 1922 March on Rome, or 1932. (We have not pinned down the meaning of the A and V letters. They might stand for an Italian version of Annular Velocity, a term in fluid dynamics that refers to the speed of a fluid's movement in a column; or refer to a common abbreviation for the Province of Avellino. Or something else.)

On one level, these are just details. But they can help us toward an answer to a question on which there is a difference of opinion: under Fascism, were the letters SPQR “Fascist”? Because it was common to combine the letters with the fasci of Fascism, it seems likely that the letters, too, carried a Fascist valence—then, if not now.

Keep your head down....happy hunting! Bill