Over the last two decades, numerous studies have contributed to a more thorough understanding of the cultural policies of the Italian Fascist regime and their effects on artists and intellectuals. 1 More recently, it has been shown that the pluralistic culture of Fascism was no mere by-product of the regime's ideologies, but fundamental to the rise of the new mass politics, of image as substance. 2 At the same time, in a different area of inquiry, the history of twentieth-century art has been undergoing revision, eroding the heroic view of modernism as an inevitable progress toward abstraction and an art devoid of ideological content. 3 Three theoretical approaches have been central to this critique of formalist modernism: a detailed accounting of the political activism of the historical avant-garde; closer scrutiny of the operations of gender; and deeper investigation of the invigorating interaction of high art with popular forms and media. 4
The analysis of Fascist culture, however, is also key to the reevaluation of twentieth-century art history, and not only because it forces us to look outside the dominant French-American axis, which still constitutes the preferred locus of reading. For unlike Nazi Germany, which it preceded in power by a decade, Fascist Italy was not totalitarian in its cultural controls and it supported styles as diverse as pure geometric abstraction, expressionism, and academic neoclassicism. Because of this beguiling margin of creative freedom, the large majority of artists and intellectuals coexisted with, if not openly supported, the regime, at least until the anti-Semitic laws of 1938. The history of artistic activity under Italian Fascism--one of contradiction, compromise, and multiple investments of meaning--dismantles the paradigm of teleological modernism and a heroic avant-garde once and for all.
Nowhere is the dissembling character of Fascist culture better exemplified than in the art and career of Giorgio Morandi. The still lifes of Morandi, for which he is famous, negate the equation between formalist abstraction and political indifference while laying bare the mythmaking invested within even the most unassuming of genres--the still life. Morandi's work has been interpreted as exemplary of twentieth-century modernism, of the primacy of form and the extraneous role of content. After Giorgio de Chirico, he is the best known and most widely exhibited of twentieth-century Italian artists, precisely because he falls into the French camp of pure painting, the love of the sensuous stroke and vivid materiality of the pigment. His paintings and etchings subtly reveal how understatement and simplicity are the means to visual complexity, proving the old adage that less is more. Morandi is especially valued among the pantheon of modern Italian artists because he is one of the few to have escaped the taint of Fascism: protected by his reclusive life in the provinces, so it goes, his art paradoxically escaped the provincialism that was the fate of the culture of the ventennio (the twenty-year period of the party's rule). The art speaks for itself: it must be apolitical, if not implicitly anti-Fascist, because it is resolutely about nothing save the beauty of the brush.
The critical discourse surrounding Morandi focuses overwhelmingly on his linguaggio--his formal language. 5 Departing from the lessons of Corot and Cézanne, it is argued, Morandi distilled his subject and palette into an exquisitely vibrating field of strokes, with a harmonious balance of tone and hue ( 1). From the works of the late teens, when he was associated with the Roman journal Valori plastici (1918-22), until his death in 1964, he was intent upon, in the words of Museum of Modern Art curator James Thrall Soby, "a devout study of slight yet critical shifts in the weight of counterbalancing forms." 6 Critics have ensured this formalist teleology by downplaying, while Morandi himself destroyed, canvases that did not fit into his established phases of stylistic development. 7 To be sure, the work is marked by periods of retrenchment and innovation, alternating between images palpably solid and those dissolving into liquified surfaces. Occasionally, a variation, such as the addition of an object type or a bold color accent, appears to augment the possibilities within the seemingly limited and mundane. It is a question of subtle variations: expanding or reducing the space between things, pushing the impasto up into slight ridges or smoothing it down like butter. Of subject matter, there is none, since the bottles and bowls exist as mere armatures for the articulation of the picture plane and the play with spatial illusionism. 8 The choice and repetition of commonplace items that have hardly changed in form and function over the years only adds to their immanent ability to be taken for granted, to have no identity, or simply to disappear.
It comes as a surprise then to learn that for a substantial and formative period of his career, Morandi and his art were associated with a specific faction of Fascist culture: the Strapaese (supercountry) movement. Strapaese promoted the traditions of small-town life and the peasantry. It was based in the regions of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, and was inspired by the activism of the provincial squadristi (members of the Fascist squads) whose violence helped Mussolini to power in 1922. Strapaese was staunchly Fascist, but--and here the equivocations begin--it represented a certain type of Fascism, one that idealized the revolutionary days of 1919 and envisioned a rejuvenation of Italian society through continuity with the past. 9 Morandi, the international master of nuance and understatement, was--from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s--the cult object of an aggressively regionalist movement. Morandi, the formalist trailblazer, associated himself with a reactionary culture that wanted to get back to basics and expunge the contaminating effects of industrialization and European (particularly Parisian) ideas.
It is a testament to the lingering sensitivity toward the Fascist period, and to Morandi's untouchable position, that postwar scholarship has done its utmost not to delve into his affiliation with Strapaese, often not mentioning it at all. 10 He adhered to it at best for reasons of friendship, at worst out of career opportunism, perhaps because of a certain shared regionalist aesthetic, but never for explicitly political motives. 11 The ambivalence of Strapaese itself and the differing shades of ideological orientation among the group's members only complicate the analysis. The aim here is not to point the finger with an accusatory gesture, but rather to put Morandi in context, and in so doing to understand the contextual nature of interpretation.
As a cultural movement, Strapaese spread its ideas and art primarily through two journals: Il Selvaggio (The Wild One/The Primitive; 1924-43), which was really the personal vehicle of Morandi's close friend, the critic and caricaturist Mino Maccari; and L'Italiano (The Italian; 1926-42), published in Bologna by the writer Leo Longanesi. Strapaese drew numerous writers and artists to its cause, among them Vincenzo Cardarelli, Curzio Malaparte, Camillo Pellizzi, Ardengo Soffici, Carlo Carrà, Ottone Rosai, Filippo de Pisis, and the printmaker Luigi Bartolini. 12 The connections among the visual artists were longstanding: Soffici and Carrà had been associated with the Florentine journal La Voce, and along with Rosai, had participated in the Futurist group around Lacerba. During World War I, Soffici and Carrà had also been principals in the rejection of cubist abstraction and the return to classicizing values, which, they theorized, were part of the grand Italian tradition. Morandi, in turn, had taken part with Carrà and Soffici in the Valori Plastici movement, at a moment when the new classicism was still infused with the unsettling irony of de Chirico's metaphysical painting. 13 Strapaese was a deepening of the postwar return to order both aesthetically and ideologically: the artists combined naturalistic detail and atmospheric brushwork with architectonic form, and associated this middle-of-the-road style with the solid qualities of the Italian "race." Rejecting their modernist roots (except for Cézanne, whom they read as the last old master), Soffici and Carrà recultivated their origins in the bucolic pleasures of the countryside, rendering the local landscape and peasantry with a nostalgic and sentimental vision ( 2, 3).
Strapaese bemoaned the attrition of regional customs and identity, what Mino Maccari termed "the most genuine and pure expression of the race, the ambience, climate and mentality, in which our purest traditions are protected by instinct and love." Its purpose was to defend the homeland against the invasion of "fashion, foreign thought, and modernist civilization," insofar as these "threatened to repress, poison, or destroy the characteristic qualities of Italians." The purity of regional traditions guaranteed the health of the Italian "people," whom Maccari defined (with a combination of admiration and condescension) as those "who go to the big circuses, play bocce ball, love to work, couldn't care less about progress, and who use the knife to butter their bread or when they need to defend their honor." 14 Be it the inbred townsfolk, the perennial foodstuffs of their tables, or the unchanging architectural forms of their villages, the Strapaese associated the popular with stubborn sameness, political independence, and the resolutely antibourgeois.
Strapaese stood for the provinces, individual autonomy, and indigenous expression, as opposed to Rome, centralization, and imported, highfalutin tastes. It was especially merciless towards neoclassicism and propaganda alluding to the imperial period. The Strapaese idea of tradition was far removed from historicist recreations and mass spectacles. In the pages of Il Selvaggio, the public rituals of Fascist bureaucrats and party leaders such as Roberto Farinacci were the butt of numerous jokes. Marinetti and the critic Ugo Ojetti were favored targets, lampooned for career opportunism, compromising their integrity, or decking themselves out in the garb of the Royal Academy of Italy. Another object of ridicule was Marcello Piacentini, the regime's favored architect, whose style of modern classicism was largely responsible for the facade of Mussolini's Third Rome. Yet they also debunked rationalist architecture for its "Germanic" tendencies and rejected abstract art as too rarified and obscure. Until around 1935, Il Selvaggio did not publish the work of any foreign artists, and continually poked fun at those who felt the need to study abroad or follow the latest trends. 15
While the vicissitudes of Strapaese are particular to Italian Fascist culture, the group shared common ground with other regionalist movements in Europe and America between the World Wars. Here too "the people," by definition, were those who toiled the soil, and whose rootedness in the cycles of nature and folk rituals served as a bulwark against the foreign, the urbane, and the industrial modern. Above all, Strapaese pitted itself against Stracittà (supercity), a trend that was epitomized, in their view, by the Milanese Novecento (twentieth-century) artists and the Novecento literary movement led by Massimo Bontempelli. In a caricature of 1932, Maccari paired a nursing mother with an inebriated slut to contrast the solidity of Strapaese's domestic values with the degenerate cosmopolitanism of Stracittà ( 4). Both the style and allegorical conception of the image are indebted to nineteenth-century models, demonstrating that Maccari's notion of the genuinely popular was often confounded by cliches.
The pages of Il Selvaggio represent women in sexist terms as either imposing maternal peasants or wanton sexual objects, with the large majority of images falling into the latter category. Similarly, in its opposition to the "other" that threatened the purity of the Tuscan character, Strapaese was also potentially racist and anti-Semitic, and Maccari's caricatures contain stereotypes of Jews and black Africans. Yet here they are used to target larger game, namely the actual exploiters of the Faccetta Nera imagery or the proponents of official anti-Semitism ( 5). ("Faccetta Nera" or "Little Black Face" was a popular but offensive song sung by soldiers in the Ethiopian campaign.) As Corrado Maltese has argued, at times it is difficult to judge if Maccari was actually taking a moral stance or merely amusing the reader at the expense of others. 16 Only towards Nazi Germany did he take an unambiguously negative position, lambasting Hitler's military, racial, and cultural policies.
"I proclaim myself to be rural," declared Mussolini in 1927, and to a certain extent the Strapaese movement fed into the propaganda of the "Battle for the Grain" begun in the mid-1920s. 17 But the strapaesani were not so easily beguiled by this form of official rhetoric, since the regime openly embraced both Stracittà and Strapaese, modernity and tradition, city and country. Strapaese resented such manoeuvering, and resisted the invasion of the countryside by the radio and cinema. Whereas the regime wanted to create a national culture through uniformity and levelling, Strapaese asserted the livelihood of regional difference. They opposed the idea of popular culture as mass culture, and promoted instead the threatened traditions of craft and folklore and the daily rituals of agrarian society.
Maccari was taken to task by other intellectuals for his reactionary bent, accused of trying to turn back the hands of time, or worse, reduce Italian culture to a narrow-minded parochialism. But Maccari denied taking an anachronistic stance: it was not Strapaese's intention to reject modernity in its entirety, but rather to absorb it through the filter of tradition, and in this way to counter a complete eradication of the past. The bark of Strapaese was worse than its bite: the rhetorical exaggeration was necessary to correct the balance in what was perceived as the overwhelming force of modernization. 18
It was through the efforts of the Strapaese that Morandi's work was first brought to the attention of the public on a regular basis. Indeed, if nothing else, the journal is credited with having recognized the main artistic talent of its time. 19 In addition to numerous citations and reproductions, Morandi was the subject of articles by Maccari, Longanesi, Soffici, and the artist Achille Lega, all of whom extolled his art as being rooted in the purest Italian traditions. 20 Morandi was a featured persona of an inside circle, as seen in Longanesi's caricatures of himself with Morandi and the writer Giuseppe Raimondi, a fellow Bolognese, in the editorial offices of L'Italiano ( 6). His works first appeared in the L'Italiano in 1926, and Il Selvaggio published some thirty-four of his prints and drawings over the years. Although his Strapaese period is generally consigned by scholars to 1927-32, when he pursued a more naturalistic style, it should be noted that he continued to contribute work to Il Selvaggio as late as 1940, and his personal allegiances were no passing fancy. His friendship with Maccari continued well after the war, and he and Soffici maintained a life-long correspondence.
Strapaese was neither Morandi's first nor last involvement with Fascist culture. Indeed, it was impossible for any artist of the period not to work within the framework of the regime, given that the state controlled public exhibitions and instituted regulations governing the artistic professions. In 1926 and 1929, Morandi participated in the exhibitions of the Novecento, led by the critic Margherita Sarfatti, which promoted itself as the official Fascist art. Among the three pictures he showed in 1926 was a still life purchased by none other than Il Duce. 21 Though Francesco Arcangeli claims that Morandi fled the inflated style represented by the Novecento painters to embrace the modesty of Strapaese, his career ambitions did not suffer on a national level. 22 He participated regularly in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale, the most important in the hierarchy of Fascist exhibitions. Moreover, he had the prestigious task of serving by government appointment on the acceptance jury of the Quadriennale in 1931 and 1935. In addition to prizes and state purchases, Morandi's official recognition culminated in a large, one-man-show at the 1939 Quadriennale, the year of the Pact of Steel (the alliance between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy). If Morandi was not celebrated by the cultural bureaucracy in Rome, neither was he shunned. After his Strapaese period ended in the late 1930s, Morandi was associated with the liberal strain of Fascism led by the prominent party member Giuseppe Bottai (who had long maintained a mutually supportive relationship with Il Selvaggio), and his work continued to be shown and published under the auspices of the state. As if to distance himself from the overt connotations of Strapaese regionalism, which was by then well past its heyday, Morandi encouraged the critical support of the young critic Cesare Brandi. Along with Lamberto Vitali, Brandi established the dominant stylistic and ahistorical reading of his work for decades to follow, and laid the foundations for the postwar view that Morandi refused to cater to official taste. 23
But it was with Strapaese that Morandi had his most explicit affiliation, and in a series of articles his critical supporters deemed him "Strapaesano by race." 24 Morandi's subject matter and style became the new expression for the old ways. His art represented the simple life and respect for the individualistic temperament, as opposed to the bombastic rhetoric and mass uniformity issuing forth from Rome. The spokesmen for Strapaese interpreted the palette of Morandi's paintings as specific to the colors--the muted rose and ocher facades--of small Italian hill towns. His canvases exuded the same dusty yellow light that filtered through the silent back alleys of his native Bologna. The silence and calm that permeated his modest arrangements of objects embodied the very tranquility of the provinces and defied the frenzied onslaught of technology and consumerism. To them, Morandi was a "homebody" who had the stength of character to break with the chicanery of Montparnasse: his was a "genuine" art, as "homemade" as the regional Bolognese "bread made with oil" (GMP, 49, 50). 25
As a cultural phenomenon, Strapaese was also instrumental in the renaissance of modern Italian printmaking, and the bond between Maccari and Morandi was sealed by their shared love for and ability in the medium. The design of Il Selvaggio deliberately emulated the style and typography of late nineteenth-century illustrated journals. Maccari himself used roughly hewn woodcuts as a complement to his caustic political satires. Intaglio methods were congenial to Strapaese aims, since they were considered to be venerable techniques steeped in the Italian tradition and accessible to a large public, yet against the technological grain of the mass media. The group promoted printmaking in a series of exhibitions in which Morandi participated. Moreover, the zenith of Morandi's etching production coincided with his Strapaese period: over half of his prints, eighty-six out of one hundred thirty-five, were done in the years 1927-33. 26 Before World War II, Morandi regularly exhibited his prints alongside his paintings, and when he was appointed to a chair at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna in 1930, it was as professor of printmaking. He was appointed, without competition, out of sheer reputation, so it was officially stated. At the time, Morandi's identity as a master printmaker was inseparable from his identity as Strapaese ( 7).
The relationship of Strapaese to Fascism, in turn, is a complicated one and has been analyzed primarily through the history of the journal Il Selvaggio and the personality of Maccari. Il Selvaggio was founded in 1924 as the mouthpiece for the second wave of Tuscan squadrismo. 27 After Mussolini secured power and declared a dictatorship in 1925, he needed to curb the unruly behavior of the squads and began a campaign for civil order. Aware of the new direction of Fascism, Maccari declared the death of the old Il Selvaggio and the birth of a new cultural journal, in the belief that one could influence the life of the nation through intellectual and artistic activity--in effect, the only avenue available under the new reality of the regime. "There is nothing but art," declared Maccari when announcing the new program of Il Selvaggio in 1926. For him, artistic production was the measure of both the "supreme intelligence of a people" and the true "value of the revolution." 28 Therefore, to argue, as some critics have, that Morandi was anti-Fascist because he removed himself from actual politics is to miss the point. For Strapaese, the very making and interpretation of art were forms of ideological commitment and critique, not vehicles of retreat to the "ivory tower."
Indeed, as a Tuscan venture, Strapaese was consciously carrying on the intellectual legacy of the Florentine journals La Voce and Lacerba that had searched for an active role for intellectuals in the nation's political life in the years before World War I. Led by Giovanni Papini, Giuseppe Prezzolini, and Soffici, the vociani theorized how to fill the gap between the educated class and the illiterate masses, how to create a national popular culture that would circumvent class conflict in favor of a unifying religion of the state. 29 Convinced that the promise of the risorgimento had not been met, the generation of La Voce rejected the liberal parliamentary system, as well as marxist materialism, in favor of more radical and mystical ideologies that ultimately formed the basis of early Fascism. The link to La Voce was made concrete by the re of Ardengo Soffici, who was also the first to reevaluate the sacrosanct values of the native soil. For the strapaesani, Soffici was, as Maccari proclaimed, the "Tuscan and Fascist who should be the teacher of us all, and to whom we must entrust the leadership of our intellectual movement." 30
La Voce bequeathed a militant idealism, strident nationalism, disdain for bourgeois values, and the cult of regenerative violence to the younger generation of Strapaese. The key difference was their respective attitudes towards "the people": whereas the vociani were aloof, even openly contemptuous of the uneducated masses whom they would deign to lead, the Strapaese held the reverse true--that Italy would be renewed from the bottom up, so to speak, from the vital roots of the earthy peasantry, or Italia barbara. 31 And whereas the prewar La Voce had sought to revitalize the national spirit through contacts with European currents, the postwar Strapaese promoted a policy of cultural autarchy that complemented the Fascist agenda. In its attitudes of cultural intervention and strident nationalism, Strapaese was avant-garde in the peculiar Italian sense, but it fiercely opposed itself to the avant-garde aesthetics and internationalism of European modernism. 32
Of course, Strapaese, like other groups claiming to represent the true Fascist spirit--the Novecento and Futurism included--was soon marginalized by the regime as Mussolini made it his policy to tolerate a number of different approaches. But Strapaese carved its own niche deep in the character of provincial and agrarian life. It also refused to curry favor with those in power. Above all, it sought to retain the pugnacious tone of the original squadristi, transposing the attitude of nonconformism to a cultural platform. Maccari believed that the regime and the Fascist Party had betrayed the original ideals of the Fascist revolution, and sought to be a moral corrective within the increasingly rigid and hypocritical machine of the state. I selvaggi considered Mussolini one of their own, not only hailing from similar roots in La Voce, but also the hero who had successfully challenged both the bourgeoisie and the socialists during the so-called Fascist revolution. 33 Despite his ridicule of the internal politics of the regime, Maccari clung, at least publicly, to the hope that Mussolini would eventually divest himself of his industrialist allies and pomp and circumstance to return to his genuine plebeian roots. 34
The degree and kind of Maccari's Fascism is complicated by the creative means he promoted as a political instrument: the art of satire. His tone was polemical and abrasive, with commentary ranging from the sly to the scatological. Above all, he defended the freedom of the press, which Mussolini had effectively suppressed, though small literary journals like Il Selvaggio were allowed to print in the belief that they had limited influence. While Maccari promoted what he perceived as the premises of the Fascist revolution, he also suffered reprisals for his open attacks on the regime. He was expelled from the Fascist Party in the mid-1930s, though his protectors within the hierarchy had him reinstated, and numerous issues of Il Selvaggio were censored and removed from the libraries. Nonetheless, Maccari continued to hold official positions within the cultural sphere. 35
As a result of Maccari's contrarian position and the steps taken against him, some postwar opinions have characterized Strapaese as fronda (fronde, or dissent). As with other nominally Fascist movements, such as neorealism and Corrente, it has been argued that these critiques internal to the regime ultimately bred overt anti-Fascism by World War II. 36 While it is true in theory that the regime's cultural tolerance prepared the ground for full-blown resistance, in practice it also allowed potential dissenters to reap the harvest of the unstable ideological terrain. Artists could continue to pursue their craft and even advance their careers. In Maccari's case, it should be noted that he repeatedly stated his absolute dedication to Fascism, and often, sarcastically, used the Duce's own words to prove his points: "I reward those Italians who tell me the truth, especially when it is bitter," quoted Maccari, adding wryly that his journal had been doing just that for years and was still patiently awaiting the reward. 37 On 15 December 1927, Maccari underlined that the ideals of Strapaese were only those articulated by Fascism itself, namely "Catholicism, ruralism, classicism, realism, hierarchy, authority." 38
Maccari did not consider himself an anti-Fascist, though he was antiregime, and the two were not necessarily synonymous until the late 1930s, well after Morandi's association with Strapaese. Moreover, it is difficult to subsume Strapaese under the sole re of Maccari. It was the sum of diverse parts--individuality in the face of conformity was, after all, the very spirit of Strapaese. To begin with, it incorporated two diverse types of ruralism--one that was inspired by traditional, "healthy" Catholic values, and the other which viewed the "wild man" as a symbol of intractable resistance to anything from the outside, including the authority of the state. None of the Strapaese were as provincial as they pretended: some adopted ruralism as a repentance for their modernist past, others used its rhetoric to preserve a strategy of avant-garde antagonism towards any or all "official" culture. The movement housed two half-generations and their respective attitudes towards Fascism: that of Soffici and Carrà born around 1880, and that of Maccari, Rosai, Malaparte, born in the late 1890s. (Morandi, born in 1890, fell between the two.) The former tended to be more compromising in their relationship to the regime, the latter more intransigent.
Soffici, the grand intellectual father re of Strapaese, was the most ideologically conservative, chauvinistic, and, at times, openly anti-Semitic. Ironically, he began his career as an international re associated with the Parisian avant-garde, and promoted new currents in modernism as a cultural critic for La Voce. Always a propagandist for national rejuvenation, Soffici converted from a cosmopolitan to a regionalist position during his experience in the trenches. In his new incarnation, Soffici interpreted the prestigious tradition of Italian art as a guiding authority and moral example, not as an ironic trope as in the case of de Chirico's art, which he had supported for a brief period during the war. The nationalistic imperative of Soffici's Italianità (Italian character), which was permeated by a religious spirit, fused imperceptibly with official Fascist rhetoric. He was one of the foremost theorists in the endless debate on Fascist culture, and his argument for a style that was neither revolutionary nor reactionary, for a nationalistic art rather than a state art, articulated the unofficial party line. 39 Whereas Strapaese has received a sympathetic interpretation as fronda, there is no doubt as to Soffici's loyalty to the regime and the regime's appreciation of him: in 1939, Soffici was inducted into the Royal Academy of Italy--an institution that the other strapaesani despised. 40
As Walter Adamson has observed, it was not the first Italian modernists like Soffici, but rather the younger half-generation that carried on the violent polemics of La Voce. 41 Indeed, it was Soffici's embrace of officialdom which led to the break between him and the more irreverent Rosai in 1930. Though the older artist had been a mentor, drawing him into the orbit of Lacerba, Rosai represented a different Fascist creed, one that was essentially populist (but antisocialist) and anarchic. Rosai, like Maccari and Malaparte, had been a squadrista, Soffici had not. Rosai, the son of an artisan, was a man of the people by birth and in spirit; Soffici had maintained an aristocratic distance from the masses, which was typical of the original vociani. An interventionist, Ardito, and "Revolutionary of 1919," Rosai was a founding member of the Fascio Politico Futurista (the Futurist Political Fascio) that soon merged with Mussolini's Fasci di Combattimento (Combat Groups). Like Maccari, he participated in the early days of squad violence that was directed towards institutionalized socialism and animated by avant-garde rhetoric of cultural renewal. 42 Yet when the squads turned against actual workers, Rosai had a crisis of conscience, and was subsequently disgusted enough by the Matteotti affair to participate in the activities of an antifascist group, Italia libera. 43 Rosai later established a modus vivendi with the regime and worked as a caricaturist for the Florentine Fascist journal, Il Bargello, wherein he continued to idealize the early days of a militant grass-roots Fascism of the people, not of the bourgeoisie or bureaucracy. 44
Morandi, like the other strapaesani, had been nurtured on the ideals of La Voce, had enrolled in the war effort (although he was soon discharged for medical reasons), and had supported Mussolini once he was in power--all towards the ideal of a new Italy. Along the same lines of avant-garde renewal, he had participated in several Futurist activities in 1913 and 1914, and had showed, along with Rosai, in the Esposizione libera futurista internazionale (the Free International Futurist Exhibition) at the Sprovieri gallery in Rome. Morandi's debt to this cultural matrix is made apparent in a brief autobiographical essay that appeared in the Bolognese journal L'Assalto (The Assault), in February 1928 (along with a portrait sketched by Maccari [ 8]). (L'Assalto was founded in 1920 as the journal for the local Combat Group and then became the mouthpiece for the Bolognese Federazione Provinciale Fascista; the editor at the time was Giorgio Pini, later the chief editor of Mussolini's Il Popolo d'Italia. 45 ) Within the text, Morandi declared himself to be an ardent Fascist who "had much faith in Fascism since its first inklings, faith that has never ebbed, not even in the darkest and most tumultuous moments." 46 The not-so-veiled allusion refers to the Matteotti crisis of 1924, the "moment" when many prominent intellectuals who had previously reserved judgement now declared their open opposition to Fascism. The large majority, however, confirmed their support (as Morandi did here), or remained silent. 47
More indicative of his relationship to Fascist culture than the rhetorical statement of L'Assalto is Morandi's open association with Strapaese, and, conversely, the way in which the movement used his art to represent its ideological position. Of all the artists who comprised Strapaese, Morandi was closest personally, and in the matter of artistic orientation, to Soffici, whom Malaparte termed "the prophet of Fascism," and who, as noted earlier, was considered the model for the entire Strapaese movement. 48 Morandi and Soffici developed their friendship inspired by mutual esteem and intellectual compatibility in the years after 1928, and continued a correspondance until 1962, two years before their deaths. 49 Long before they actually met, the young Bolognese artist had gleaned much from Soffici's essays in La Voce on the modernism of Cézanne, Rousseau, Picasso, and Braque. By the postwar period, the isolation of pure form achieved by experiments in abstraction became the foundation for Soffici's new values of solidity, permanence, and moral rigor. Throughout his career, Morandi repeatedly stated that the writings and art of Soffici were the most formative influence on him and his entire generation. 50 In addition to providing a theoretical basis for his work, and promoting it critically, Soffici purchased several oils and prints from the Bolognese artist, and helped him attain his teaching position at the Academy. 51 As intimate as they were, their political fates could not have been more different. After the fall of fascism, Morandi's brief arrest by Fascist police in 1943 was elevated to heroic proportions, whereas Soffici, who adhered to the Republic of Salò, was incarcerated for collaboration. 52
In his Hegelian theory of modern art Soffici sought a synthesis of impressionist naturalism and optical veracity with the unchanging structures of geometric form and architectonic composition. Similarly, he argued that man's lyrical impulse needed to be reconciled with his innate desire for logic and discipline. Whereas modern French art represented the negative extremes of creative freedom and novelty at any cost, the Italian "constructive" instinct provided a needed corrective, and reasserted the primacy of tradition. Since his own works were academic exercises at best ( 9), it is no wonder that Soffici championed Morandi's achievement of mediating the expression of sentiment with pure pictorial values, while laying claim to the essential Italianità of his research. Soffici praised Morandi's development according to his own dialectical scheme, quoting the axiom that "only one who has lived the spirit of rebellion is capable of true order." 53 Hence Morandi rejected his early experiments in cubist abstraction in favor of an overly stylized classicism (the metaphysical period), to arrive triumphant at what Soffici termed the "third epoch," namely the period since the mid-1920s and Strapaese. Without any residue of "artifice, cerebralism, or dilettantism," Morandi had "resolved the problem of a modern style in painting that was at once legitimate and Italian" ("GMO," viii, ix, x). 54
Critics have long discerned a naturalist or ottocento (nineteenth-century) tenor in Morandi's work of the mid-1920s, and to a lesser degree until the late 1930s, manifested in realistic description of objects and atmospheric brushwork. While Morandi never copied the old masters, he openly declared his reverence, at various times, for the Italian primitives and Chardin, Corot, Courbet, and Cézanne, whom he described, echoing Soffici, as the true heirs of the "glorious Italian tradition." 55 Like the other strapaesani, Morandi also admired the nineteenth-century Macchiaiolo painter Giuseppe Fattori, famous for his style of brilliant tonal contrasts, as well as for his intimate association with Tuscan regionalism and the risorgimento. During the interwar period, Morandi's artistic tastes were firmly entrenched within the nationalistic parameters of Fascist culture, and his own art fit comfortably into the moderate, if not retrograde, orientation of his regionalist counterparts. Not merely a stylistic device, the quivering surfaces of his canvases and etchings served as a metaphoric screen of nostalgia through which to view simple and enduring things ( 10). Morandi found amiable insurance against disruptions in his life and art in the values of Strapaese; this allowed him to pursue professional success in relative solitude and under the pretense of modesty. Arguably Morandi, like Matisse, was a preeminent twentieth-century modernist, who in the larger European context, was not culturally avant-garde.
It was the apparent concordance between Morandi's art and the Strapaese group that dismayed the abstract painter Osvaldo Licini, a dear friend since their school days at the Academy in Bologna. In a letter to the critic Giuseppe Marchiori on the occasion of Morandi's one-man show at the 1939 Quadriennale, Licini bemoaned what he perceived as Morandi's cult of the past and the undue influence of Soffici:
You know that I have never doubted Morandi's talent, even as I watched him befuddled by the opium administered to him by Soffici, Oppo, and Company, and was troubled by his retrograde journey, from Cézanne to Chardin, and as far back as Pompei, according to the command of the Cacasenno [prig] from Poggio a Caiano [Soffici]. . . . And so Marchiori, how Morandi has fallen, the champion of the Italian artistic mediocracy and bureaucracy, the creature of Oppo, Soffici, Cardarelli, Longanesi, and Bartolini, of all of the nostalgic, reactionary crawfish of Strapaese. 56
The Strapaese critics, for their part, idealized Morandi's personal character and artistic style: his isolation from the urban centers of culture, his apparent indifference to fame and glory, and the fact that he remained true to his own path. His tenacious repetition of the same subject, without care for the whims of fashions, compared to that essentially Fascist menefregismo, or "I don't give a damn" attitude. 57 The Strapaese revelled in defiance and Morandi was the consummate independent spirit, who literally stood out from the crowd. The visual and verbal depictions of Morandi tended to emphasize humorously his strong jawline, looming height, and gangly posture. Longanesi wrote that for those of small stature, Morandi looked like "an old schooner seen from the prow, his slouch hat rising up . . . like a mast touching the clouds." Or he was described in lilliputian terms: "a giant lost in a city of tiny people, he appears and disappears among the arcades of Bologna, seemingly an antediluvian hulk who survived the flood." 58
The Strapaese notion of the authentically popular, of the unpretentious character of small town inhabitants, found expression in Morandi's etchings of his sister and a sleeping housewife, both reproduced in the pages of Il Selvaggio ( 11). The customs of provincial types were the principal theme of Rosai, who depicted their narrow-mindedness and insularity with a threatening quality absent in Morandi's more serene interpretations. Rosai's images of hooligans, self-important local priests and politicians, artisans assembled in the corner of the piazza to play toppa (a card game) or engage in some conspiracy, are as veiled as the politics of Strapaese itself ( 12). The atmospheric touch of his brushwork and the roughness of his plebeian physiognomies evoke a sense both nostalgic and subversive. Like the characters depicted therein, Rosai's canvases celebrate an anarchic and gruff humanity that eludes both social propriety and civil control. Though Strapaese heralded Morandi as their resident genius, Rosai is really the quintessential Strapaese painter who embodied the attitude of the teppista (hooligan) in both his art and person.
Alternatively, Morandi and Rosai together represent the two sides of Strapaese ruralism, a division created by differing interpretations of high and low culture and the value of tradition. Rosai's anachronistic, rative compositions defied the modernist ideology of progress by tenaciously resisting the pressures of stylistic innovation. His pictures asserted a taste for the naive over the sophisticated, for the lowbrow and popular over the prestige of the old masters. By contrast, it was Morandi's ambition to filter a modern expression through the lens of the past, to extend the pictorial values of the great epochs of Italian art into the present and everyday, which made him, in the minds of Maccari, Soffici, and others of the group, the consummate Strapaese painter. 59
At the same time, Morandi's position as a "modern" artist derived from his avoidance of the anecdotal, picturesque, or academic within a rative style. He made the most mundane and long-standing objects of everyday life seem startlingly new, and in doing so captured the mysterious quality of reality. The most minute changes in tone, hue, and arrangement metaphorically evoked the slow and barely perceptible course of time itself. Not only his style, but also his subject matter--objects whose designs had evolved slowly over centuries of use--reinforced the quotidian miracle of day to day existence. Rather than seeking parallels with the past--a strategy that inevitably acknowledged historical rupture--Morandi's work embodied the Strapaese concept of tradition as continuity. His still lifes depicted the slow accumulation of dust, not the acquisitions of museums.
Here too, Morandi's working method--his revered craftsmanship and slow deliberation--found its analogy in the pace of provincial life. The ability to learn from errors, the going back and trying again, the subtle and endless adjustments of line and tone testified that Morandi had the patience of a saint. Soffici for one, maintained that Morandi's oils were infused with a religious spirit. Be it a landscape or bowl of fruit, his images invoke "a sense of love and welcoming that is not far from prayer" ("GMO," ix). 60 Soffici's reading reveals much about his own Catholic views and effectively fits into a conservative Fascism, made official by Mussolini's reconciliation with the Vatican in the 1929 Lateran pacts--an alliance that Il Selvaggio had supported.
Honesty, simplicity, sobriety--this was the triad of nouns most used in descriptions of Morandi's work. According to the painter and writer Achille Lega (like Rosai, another diciannovista [a Fascist from the party's beginning in 1919]), in an article in Il Selvaggio of July 1927, Morandi painted his ordinary studio or household objects--paint tins, oil lamps, wine bottles--"with a conscientiousness that is rare in these difficult times." 61 Morandi had no need of Paris, and looked no further than his own backyard, the hills, foliage, and old buildings of Grizzana, his country house, for inspiration ( 13). Hence the repetition of the motif in Morandi's art was as much a statement of regional identity as it was a vehicle for tonal harmonies. And even the latter could be incorporated into an ideological reading: after all, only someone attuned to the minute cycles of nature could discern such subtle gradations. For the Strapaese, Morandi's art exemplified habit as well as tenacity, and his art manifested the value of the old and ordinary in the face of the new and novel.
Of course, the status of the plain and proudly low is inherent to the genre of still life on the whole: the common utilitarian objects used by humanity to wash or eat bear the evidence of our routine existence, peasants and dictators alike. It is the painting of rhopography--rhopos--or the unassuming small things of material life. 62 Rhopography situates itself in opposition to megalography--the painting of great men and great deeds. Likewise, in the eyes of the Tuscan regionalists, Morandi's relentless focus on the commonplace, immediate, and small was a means of keeping in touch with down-to-earth, lived experience and avoiding the false grandeur and vulgar or romantic tastes of the bourgeois. In the words of Arnaldo Beccaria, Morandi's canvases exuded "an ineffable poverty" that attested to the humanity and moral fibre of the man and his art. 63
Despite the Strapaese cult of modesty, Morandi's art was never extolled for simplicity's sake alone, but rather for its sophisticated extrapolation of the inherent qualities of the pictorial medium. Throughout the descriptions of Morandi's humble compositions, one reads patently formalist theory between the lines. For Soffici, Morandi's tonal and chromatic relationships and other internal expressive means were all subordinated to the "plastic essence of the whole" and woven into a "rich pictorial, compositional and architectonic fabric" ("GMO," x). 64 His unhurried manner and visual acuity, according to Lega, were "aimed at studying and further deepening the work, at defining it through drawing, in the volumes and impasto. . . . " 65 As Longanesi also insisted, the painter's most central concerns were "the composition of the picture, the clarity of the masses, the harmony of tones, the chiaroscurist contrasts, the fusion of colors, the elegance and solidity of the forms, and the tranquility of the whole." 66
While Strapaese openly attacked the very idea of a regime and the return to order, it considered itself Fascist to the core and unswaying in its loyalty to the ideals of 1919. And while Strapaese railed against Parisian modernism with xenophobic alacrity, they were too sophisticated to negate modernist theory in hailing Morandi's achievement. Given such contradictions, it is no wonder that since World War II Morandi's relationship to Strapaese has been mentioned only in passing, or is substantially qualified. Aside from the refusal to address content in Morandi's epiphanies of pure form, the aversion is in no small part due to Strapaese's reputation after the war. While some have defended the program of Il Selvaggio as morally courageous, others conclude that the movement was foolhardy and its political effect illusory. Both the intention to reform Fascism from within and the desire to return to an unadulterated provincial past showed a profound schism with the social and political realities of the day. Small vignettes and commentaries were not enough to effect true reform and Strapaese's cultural position was essentially reactionary. 67
To understand the circumstances and extent of Morandi's relationship to Strapaese is to understand the complexities of Fascist culture and the compromised quality of intellectual and artistic life under the regime. It is impossible to situate Morandi outside of Fascist culture, if we consider the all-embracing rhetoric of that beast. Take, for example, Soffici's definition of Morandi as the classical and hence supremely Italian artist, whose painting was at once "real and ideal, objective and subjective" ("GMO," ix), and unified the present with the past. 68 The terms "modernity" and "tradition" were so ubiquitous and semantically elastic during the ventennio that they could signify anything and nothing at the same time.
The degree and kind of Morandi's alliance with Strapaese proves that he was neither an outright anti-Fascist nor a collaborator with the regime. Similarly his paintings cannot be categorized as political manifestos; and yet they were also more than mere essays in formalist abstraction. Halftones, like half-truths, envelop Morandi's compositions, blurring any absolutely clear picture. The case of Morandi as Strapaese shows how images can be manipulated to a variety of ideological ends, while exposing the false coherency and unity of the history of the modernist avant-garde. Arguably, today a gallery of Morandi still lifes can be appreciated without a knowledge of Strapaese or the conservative position of intransigent sameness that they embodied at a specific time and place. But to interpret them solely as tributes to autonomous pictorial values is to be party to a cultural amnesia that arose in the postwar years in reaction to the insidious reach of Fascist culture. Exquisitely mute, Morandi's compositions nonetheless reveal that it is just as easy to read out as it is to read in.
Emily Braun is Associate Professor of the History of Art at Hunter College, CUNY. She has written numerous articles on art and culture between the World Wars, and edited Italian Art in the Twentieth Century . Her most recent book is From Manet to Matisse: The Hillman Family Collection .
1. See Philip V. Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso (Bari: Laterza, 1975); and Fernando Tempesti, Arte dell'Italia fascista Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976). Also see Guido Armellini's Le immagini del fascismo nelle arti rative (Milan: Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, 1980), Gli anni trenta. Arte e cultura in Italia (Milan: Comune di Milano, 1982), and Il Novecento italiano 1923-33 (Milan: Comune di Milano, 1983).
2. See, in particular, the studies by Emilio Gentile, "Fascism as Political Religion," Journal of Contemporary History 25 (May-June 1990): 229-51; Il culto del littorio (Bari: Laterza, 1994); and "The Conquest of Modernity. From Modernist Nationalism to Fascism," 1 (September 1994): 55-87. Also see Walter Adamson, "Fascism and Culture: Avant-Gardes and Secular Religion in the Italian Case," Journal of Contemporary History 24 (July 1989): 411-35.
3. The reevaluation of both Fascism and the history of twentieth-century art can be seen as consequences of postmodern critical perspectives; see Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). As Huyssen points out, the teleological scheme of modernism as the progression towards abstraction was ahistorical to begin with, and was established as the dominant paradigm only in the years after World War II. The key text in the revisionary view of the historical avant-garde is Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Although Bürger argues that the avant-garde is so defined by virtue of its attack on the institutionalization of culture and its political committment, he avoids treatment of the Italian Futurist movement, which is the first and foremost example of this strategy.
4. See for example, Thomas Crow, "Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual Arts," in Pollock and After: The Critical Debate, ed. Francis Frascina (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 233-66; Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London: Pluto Press, 1985), 57-82; Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps: the Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Christine Poggi, In Defiance of Painting: Cubism, Futurism and the Invention of Collage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Maud Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: the Weimar Photographs of Hannah Hoch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); and Jeffrey Weiss, The Popular Culture of Modern Art: Picasso, Duchamp and Avant-Gardism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
5. The classic texts on Morandi are: Cesare Brandi, Morandi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1942), and Giorgio Morandi (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1990); Cesare Gnudi, Morandi (Florence: Edizioni U., 1946); Francesco Arcangeli, Giorgio Morandi (1964; Turin: Einaudi, 1981), hereafter abbreviated GM; Franco Solmi, Morandi: storia e leggenda (Bologna: Grafis, 1978); and Lamberto Vitali, Morandi, Catalogo generale, 2 vols. (Milan: Electra Editrice, 1977), and Giorgio Morandi pittore (Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1965), hereafter abbreviated GMP.
6. James Thrall Soby, "Painting and Sculpture since 1920," in Twentieth-Century Italian Art, eds. James Thrall Soby and Alfred H. Barr, Jr.(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1949), 26. In what was the first exhibition in America since the fall of Fascism to address the history of modern Italian art, Soby remarked that Morandi "is today almost universally considered by the Italians to be their finest living painter . . . " (Soby and Barr, Twentieth-Century Italian Art, 26).
7. According to Marilena Pasquali, Morandi himself destroyed certain canvases that appeared anomalous in the context of his development (Marilena Pasquali, "'Quelle sabbie portrate a vibrare . . .' La trasformazione dell'immagine morandiana tra il 1925 e il 1939," in her Morandi e il suo tempo [Bologna: Galleria Comunale di Arte Moderna, 1985], 55).
8. Lamberto Vitali, the author of Morandi's catalogue raisonné, which he produced in close collaboration with the artist, did much to promote the primacy of the formalist reading. As early as 1934, he compared the role of Morandi's bottles to that of Cézanne's apples, the pots and pans of Chardin, and Modigliani's long necks; that is, the subject is "only the point of departure, not the point of arrival; or, more accurately, it provides the necessary impetus for transration." (The original reads: "soltanto il punto di partenza, non quello d'arrivo o, meglio, è lo spunto necessario per la trasrazione," in Lamberto Vitali, L'incisione italiana moderna [Milan: U. Hoepli, 1934], 63.) In 1965, as if to further distance Morandi from Fascist culture, he wrote:
During the period between the two World Wars, when the bloodless guerilla warfare broke out between the Novecento and Strapaese groups, Morandi fought for neither one side nor the other, even though members of the Strapaese included some of his trusted friends, and those closer to him in spirit, such as Soffici. . . .
(The original reads: "Quando poi, fra le due guerre, nacque la guerriglia affatto incruenta fra Novecento e Strapaese, egli non parteggiò né per l'uno, né per l'altro; e sí che nel battaglione di Strapaese militavano amici provati e spiritualmente a lui più vicini, come Soffici . . . " [GMP, 32].)
9. In the words of Francesco Arcangeli: "They were Fascists, but in a way that was so strange, so personal, so independent that their struggle for certain ideas was conducted as though it were a game without rules, perhaps even a slightly dangerous game: certainly, as far as conduct goes, it was an anticonformist struggle." (The original reads: "Erano fascisti, ma in una maniera così strana, così personale, così indipendente, che la lotta a certe idee sembra condotta, da loro, entro un gioco libero, forse anche un po' pericoloso: certo, per quel riguarda il costume, anticonformista" [GM, 153].)
10. Marilena Pasquali acknowledges the connections between the artist and the Strapaese movement, but ultimately straddles the fence: "These [statements] might seem to indicate Fascist commitments, but they might also be considered the consequence of a much larger situation in which the artist is involved, but which he observes as a participating spectator rather than an active protagonist." (The original reads: "Sono affermazioni piuttosto impegnative, se non vengono considerate come frutto di una situazione più vasta in cui certo l'artista è convolto ma che lo vede sostanzialmente come spettatore partecipe piuttosto che come attore protagonista," in Pasquali, "'Quelle sabbie portate a vibrare,'" 57.) Similarly, Luigi Cavallo argues that despite his artistic presence in the journals, Morandi "has little in common with the apocalyptic accounts found in Strapaese or with the heated polemics that surround it. Morandi also stands off to one side among the Selvaggi: he sends them his things, they are published, and even presented quite explicitly as an alternative to the work of the Novecento group. . . . " (The original reads: "[Egli] ha ben poco da dividere con le apocalittiche storie di Strapaese e col resto delle polemiche accese sulla rivista. Anche fra i selvaggi Morandi sta appartato, manda le sue cose, vengono pubblicate e anzi messe chiaramente come alternativa ai pittori del Novecento . . . ," in Luigi Cavallo, "A Prato per vedere i Corot:" corrispondenza Morandi-Soffici, per un'antologia di Morandi [Prato: Galleria d'arte moderna Farsetti, 1989], 31.) Viewing Morandi's participation as passive rather than active allows one to suppose that he adhered for reasons of career opportunism, and Strapaese did much to forward Morandi's success. Such a supposition, however, as well as the thesis that the rapport was casual, is contradicted by the very nature of the artist: both the Strapaese and later critics insist on Morandi's intellectual integrity, sincerity, and uncompromising character.
11. Vitali set out to distance Morandi from the provincialism of Strapaese, and considered it of little consequence for his career. A more objective view is that of Francesco Arcangeli, who removes Morandi from the politics proper of Strapaese, but sees an affinity between the artist's aesthetics and the lyrical agrarianism promoted by the regionalists. As he puts it, "Morandi did not engage in active political participation, but he knew that his way of life, if not its very substance, was connected to the world that Strapaese defended." (The original reads: "Morandi non parteggiava politicamente, ma sapeva che il costume, se non proprio la sostanza, della sua vita era legato a un mondo che Strapaese difendeva" [GM, 154].) Here, however, it is difficult to discern what Arcangeli means by "political participation," since Maccari himself defined the role of Strapaese as that of cultural interventionism. While Maccari's use of caricature made his politics explicit, with the rest of the fine artists--Soffici, Carrà, Bartolini, Lega, Rosai, and Morandi--the ideological content could only be implicit. Even though Arcangeli struggles with the relationship between Morandi and Strapaese, his attempt at least to account for it may be one of the reasons why Morandi disavowed his monograph, which was written in 1960-61, and preferred instead the presentations of his work by the art historian Cesare Brandi, who, like Vitale, emphasized stylistic analysis and the universal resonance of his art; see Marilena Pasquali, "Il significato di un dialogo," in Brandi, Morandi.
12. Another link between Morandi and the Strapaese milieu was his prominent role as illustrator for Cardarelli's book Il sole a picco . By the early 1940s, when Morandi was no longer associated with the journal, it hosted the work of a younger group of artists--Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Giacomo Manzù, and Toti Scialoja--who were more closely affiliated with the anti-Fascist resistance.
13. Contemporaneously with their contributions to Valori Plastici, Soffici, Carrà and Morandi took part in the journal La Raccolta, published in Bologna by Giuseppe Raimondi, who was subsequently associated with Strapaese. Soffici and Carrà also contributed to the literary review La Ronda (1919-22), which opposed the rebellious ideology and activism of the prewar avant-garde in favor of the autonomy of creative pursuits. Though these periodicals were founded in reaction to the militant idealism of La Voce and Lacerba (by those who had participated in the same), they represent a continuation of the debate over the role of the intellectual in contemporary society. That Soffici and Carrà contributed to different journals of varying ideological orientations is a testament to the cultural and political confusion of the immediate postwar years.
14. The original reads: "l'espressione più genuina e schietta della razza, l'ambiente, il clima e la mentalità ove son custodite, per istinto e per amore, le più pure tradizioni nostre. . . . contro l'invasione delle mode, del pensiero straniero e civilità moderniste. . . . minacciano di reprimere, avvelenare o distruggere le qualità caratteristiche degli italiani. . . . quello che frequenta i baracconi . . . gioca alle bocce, ama il lavoro, se ne frega del progresso, adopra il coltello per affettare il pane, e quando occorra per vendicare l'onore . . . " (signed by "Orco Bisorco" [pseudonym for Mino Maccari], "Gazzettino ufficiale di Strapaese," Il Selvaggio, 1 September 1927, 137).
15. Maccari's opinions of contemporary artistic movements are summarized in Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, ed., Il Selvaggio di Mino Maccari (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1959), 37-38, 42, 46-49.
16. The polemic on "Faccetta Nera" is treated in a caricature of 15 May 1936. On the cartoon of Telesio Interlandi ( 5), the anti-Semitic journalist of Il Tevere, Corrado Maltese writes, "In the final analysis, it remained unclear whether the satire was taking aim at his [Interlandi's] racist zeal or the apprehensions of the Jews; or perhaps it was not a satire at all, but simply the amused, and certainly not 'moral,' viewpoint of someone who enjoys the show without taking part in it." (The original reads: "Dopo di che rimaneva uncerto se veramente l'obiettivo della satira erano lo zelo razzista o le apprehensioni degli ebrei o se invece di una satira si trattava piuttosto della divertita, e certo non 'morale,' 'prise de vue,' di chi sta a guardare lo spettacolo senza parteciparvi," in Ragghianti, Il Selvaggio, 106, no. 103.)
17. The original reads: "che mi proclami rurale" (Benito Mussolini, "Il discorso dell'Ascensione," 26 May 1927, in Opera omnia, eds. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel, vol. 22 [Florence: La Fenice, 1957], 361).
18. "Orco Bisorco" (a pseudonym for Mino Maccari), "Gazzettino ufficiale di strapaese," Il Selvaggio, 24 November 1927; reprinted in Luisa Mangoni, L'interventismo della cultura (Bari: Laterza, 1974), 140-1.
19. See Ragghianti, Il Selvaggio, 36; and Mangoni, L'interventismo, 143.
20. See, for example, Mino Maccari, "Affari diversi": "A meeting of the Strapaese group, which was entrusted with deliberative powers, has resolved that the prize for painting for the year 1928 be awarded to Giorgio Morandi," and "Giorgio Morandi has been named the holder of the professorship in engraving at Bologna. The Strapaese group is celebrating." (The original reads: "L'assemblea di Strapaese, riunitasi con potestà deliberativa, ha stabilito di assegnare per l'anno 1928 il premio della pittura a Giorgio Morandi," and "Giorgio Morandi è stato nominato titolare della cattedra di incisione a Bologna. Strapaese è in festa," in Il Selvaggio, March 1929; reprinted in Pasquali, "'Quelle sabbie portate a vibrare,'" 56.) Morandi was also the subject of Maccari's caricature Le origini della pittura tonale spiegate agli enti acquirenti: "Saccheggiando Giorgio Morandi/ Anche i marmocchi si fan grandi," Il Selvaggio, 15 March 1936; reproduced in Ragghianti, Il Selvaggio, 102, 102.
21. See Armellini, Il Novecento italiano 1923-1933, 357. In the 1929 IIa Mostra del Novecento italiano Morandi exhibited three canvases, two drawings and four etchings.
22. See Arcangeli, Giorgio Morandi, 153. Arcangeli's assertion that a rhetoric of quality increasingly permeated the Novecento is rather inaccurate to begin with, since the Novecento included artists and subgroups of widely varying styles. Indeed, such heterogeneity contributed to the movement's rapid disintegration by the end of the decade. Moreover, Morandi continued to exhibit, as late as 1932, in the Novecento shows organized abroad by Margherita Sarfatti. See Rossana Bossaglia, Il "Novecento italiano"--storia, documenti, iconografia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979).
23. The degree to which later critics and Morandi himself divorced his art from a historical context is epitomized in a line from Franco Solmi: "Morandi began to oppose the reality of memory, based on an 'eternal' order, to the reality of human disorder that troubled the consciousness of those times; to the history that unfolded, for better or for worse, on the Italian squares." (The original reads: "E una realtà di memoria che Morandi comincia a oppore, nei suoi ordini 'eterni,' a quella dei disordini umani che in quegli anni scuotono le coscienze: alla storia che si fa, nel bene e nel male, sulle piazze d'Italia," in Solmi, Morandi: storia, 56.) Also see Jennifer Mundy, "The Etchings of Giorgio Morandi: A Renewal of Tradition," in Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio Morandi: Etchings (London: Tate Gallery, 1991), 31, no. 6.
24. The original reads: "strapaesano di razza" (Leo Longanesi, "Morandi," L'Italiano, 31 December 1928, n.p.; reprinted in Vitali, Giorgio Morandi pittore, 48-50).
25. The originals read: "genuina, fatta in casa come il pane con l'olio" and "uomo casalingo." Morandi's ability to learn from the avant-garde experience without succumbing to its dangers, to extract the true essence of modernity free of easy formulas, was also the argument of Mino Maccari in his article "Giorgio Morandi," Il Resto del Carlino, 8 June 1928; reprinted in Vitali, Giorgio Morandi pittore, 47-48.
26. See Mundy, "The Etchings of Giorgio Morandi," 12; and Janet Abramowicz, "Vision and Technique: The Etchings of Giorgio Morandi 1890-1964," Print Collector's Newsletter 12 (September-October 1981): 97-103.
27. From 1924 to 1927, Il Selvaggio was directed by Angelo Bencini and Maccari in Colle Val d'Elsa (outside of Florence) as a vehicle for reaffirming the revolutionary origins of Fascism in the wake of the Matteotti crisis. (The first activities of the original squadristi in the immediate postwar years had been directed towards the perceived dual threat of Bolshevism and parliamentary liberalism.) By 1926, Il Selvaggio was edited out of Florence by Maccari alone, who then moved the journal to Siena (1929-30), Turin and Rome (1932-43). See Giorgio Luti, ed., Critici, movimenti e riviste del '900 letterario italiano (Rome: La Nuova Italia scientifica, 1986), 238-39.
28. The original reads: "L'arte è espressione suprema dell'intelligenza d'una stirpe. . . . Dunque dalla produzione artistica ne avremo l'indice del valore d'una rivoluzione" (Mino Maccari, "Addio del passato," Il Selvaggio, 1-14 March 1926; reprinted in Mangoni, L'Interventismo, 112). Maccari's strategy of oblique cultural intervention echoed that of Marinetti, who, in 1920, after having participated in the founding of the Fasci di Combattimento, conceded that the artistic temperament was incompatible with political pragmatism (F.T. Marinetti, Al di là del comunismo [Milan: La Testa di ferro, 1920]; excerpted and reprinted in Maria Drudi Gambillo and Teresa Fiori, eds., Archivi del futurismo, vol. 1 [Rome: De Luca Editore, 1958], 38-40).
29. The history of La Voce and its contributions to Fascist culture is the subject of Walter L. Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
30. The original reads: "toscano e fascista che dovrebbe di tutti noi essere il maestro e al quale dovremmo affidare la guida del nostro movimento intellettuale" (Mino Maccari, Il Selvaggio, 10 November 1925; reprinted in Mangoni, L'interventismo, 105, 176, no. 25).
31. Italia barbara was the title of a book by Kurt Erich Suckert (1898-1957), who took the pseudonym "Curzio Malaparte" in 1925, the year of the book's publication. Walter Adamson calls Malaparte, who fought in the war and later took part in squadrismo, "the most important single individual to carry the Florentine avant-garde into Fascism" (Avant-Garde Florence, 232). Malaparte's theory of Fascism idealized an antidemocratic, aristocratic Italy that idealized the rituals of a primitive populism. An intellectual renegade, Malaparte embraced a variety of ideological positions over the course of Fascism, became best known as a novelist and journalist, and eventually turned to communism after World War II.
32. It is the argument of both Emilio Gentile and Walter Adamson that the project of cultural renewal and radical nationalism engendered by La Voce was by definition avant-garde and modernist, and was carried on by fascism (see notes two and twenty-nine). Their use of the terms, however, does not account for the schism between avant-garde and modernist political ideologies and the often retrograde, antimodernist aesthetics of the art and literature of the war years and beyond.
33. As Mangoni notes, quoting the article by Ardengo Soffici, "Mussolini dal vero," Il Selvaggio, 15 August 1927, the strapaesani insisted on Mussolini's past as both a selvaggio and a vociano; see Mangoni, L'interventismo, 146, 182, no. 109.
34. See Ruggero Jacobbi, "L'Avventura degli intellettuali," in Ardengo Soffici. L'Artista e lo scrittore nella cultura del 900. Atti del convegno di studi, ed. Ardengo Soffici (Florence: Centro Di, 1976), 75.
35. For several years, Maccari was an editor for Mussolini's personal newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia. Toward the end of the regime he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and in 1941-42 he became president of the Sezione del Consiglio Superiore delle Arti (Section of the Higher Council of the Arts). He was also the subject of a one-man show at the 1939 Quadriennale. See the biographical sketch written just months before the fall of the regime in Mino Maccari, Mino Maccari. Disegni ed incisioni e documenti (Rome: Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, 1943), 7-8.
36. This is the overall thesis of Mangoni, L'interventismo, and Giorgio Luti, La letteratura nel ventennio fascista (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1972).
37. Mussolini's original reads: "Io premio gli italiani che mi dicono la verità, specialmente quando è amaro" (quoted in Ragghianti, Il Selvaggio, 12).
38. The original reads: "cattolicismo, ruralismo, classicismo, realismo, gerarchia, autorità" (Maccari, Il Selvaggio, 15 December 1927; quoted in Mangoni, L'interventismo, 182, no. 105).
39. Soffici's ideas on Fascist culture are stated in "Il Fascismo e l'arte," Gerarchia (September 1922): 2-4, and "Arte fascista," Critica fascista, 15 October 1926, 383-5.
40. Of Soffici's political allegiance, Renzo De Felice writes: "it should also be said that he always remained a Fascist. To think that he could become anti-Fascist is absurd: it would have meant denying the moral value that the war had held for him." (The original reads: "va per altro anche detto che egli rimase sempre un fascista. Pensare che potesse diventare antifascista è un assurdo: avrebbe voluto dire negare il valore morale che per lui aveva avuto la guerra," in Renzo De Felice, "Soffici, gli intellettuali e il fascismo," in Ardengo Soffici, 71.)
41. See Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence, 219, 227-34.
42. See Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence, 227-34. Rosai was also associated for a time with the nefarious re of Amerigo Dumini, a leader among the Florentine squads who later claimed responsibility for the murder of the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti. Soffici and Rosai both contributed to his journal, Sassaiola fiorentina, which appeared from 1920 to 1923.
43. By 1921, Rosai began to distance himself from the Florentine squads in the wake of their escalating violence, now directed against the workers themselves. He took a more decisive step away at the time of the Matteotti murder (hanging protest posters during the night, creating a disturbance at the local Fascist headquarters, and warning potential victims of thugs on the way). As Giuseppe Nicoletti writes, however, his participation
did not entail for Rosai a conversion to militant anti-Fascism--the ideals and the political culture thatwere expressed through anti-Fascism were too remote for him--but it represented a gesture of private rebellion and subversive sympathy for a spirited minority, and it virtually signified his wish, now that all illusions had been stripped away, to disavow the 'revolutionary' passion of the returning ex-soldier, passion that had been so poorly expended.
(The original reads: "non comportò per Rosai una conversione all'antifascismo militante [troppo estranei essendo per lui la cultura politica e gli ideali che attraverso l'antifascismo si esprimevano] ma rappresentò un gesto di ribellione privata e di simpatia sovversiva per una minoranza animosa e significò quasi la volontà di sconfessare, ora che tutte le illusioni sembravano cadere, la malriposta passione 'rivoluzionaria' del reduce," in Giuseppe Nicoletti, "Storia di Ottone Rosai," in his Ottone Rosai. I disegni del "Bargello" [Florence: Edizioni Pananti, 1990], 18.)
44. Il Bargello was the weekly political and cultural journal of the Federazione provinciale fascista fiorentina, founded by Alessandro Pavolini, which published between 1929 and 1943. The majority of Rosai's drawings appeared in 1929-30, though he continued to illustrate for the journal until the mid-1930s. Il Bargello was faithful to the municipal politics of Fascism, and it did not use regionalism as a pretext for critique as did Strapaese. The cultural pages, however, took greater liberties with the party line, and were European and modern in outlook. See Giuseppe Nicoletti, "Rosai e 'Il Bargello,'" in Ottone Rosai, 33-37.
45. "Autobiografie di scrittori e di artisti del tempo fascista: Giorgio Morandi," L'Assalto, 18 February 1928; reprinted in 20 Giovani Leoni: Autobiografie pubblicate su 'L'Assalto' negli anni 1927-28, eds. C. Barilli and M. Bonetti (Rome: Volpi, 1984), 73-76. A photograph of the original text and layout is reprinted in Cavallo, "A Prato," 53. The portrait of Morandi by Maccari which accompanied his autobiographical essay had been previously published in Il Selvaggio, 30 July 1927. The Bolognese Giorgio Pini participated in the squads, became editor of Il Popolo di'Italia in 1936, and adhered to the Republic of Salò. In 1929 Longanesi became the editor of L'Assalto; see Cavallo, "A Prato," 98.
46. The original reads: "Ebbi molta fede nel Fascismo fin dai primi accenni, fede che non mi venne mai meno, neppure nei giorni più grigi e tempestosi." The choice of the word "faith," which Morandi emphasizes, is particularly loaded in the context of the time, for it was a term officially linked to the fascist ideology, with its origins in diciannovismo. As Emilio Gentile states: "In a certain sense, it is correct to state that, for Fascism, the essence, foundation and aim of political activity could be summed up by the key word in Fascist language--'faith'" (Gentile, "Fascism as Political Religion," 238).
47. On the division among intellectuals after the Matteotti crisis, see Philip V. Cannistraro, "Fascism and Culture in Italy, 1919-1945," in Italian Art in the 20th Century, ed. Emily Braun (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1989), 148-9; Emilio Papa, Storia di due manifesti (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1958); and Emilio Papa, Fascismo e cultura (Padua: Marsilio, 1974), 159-73.
48. Malaparte quoted in Mangoni, L'Interventismo, 105.
49. In 1919, Soffici was encouraged by de Chirico and Carrà to follow Morandi's work, and in the following year he noted Morandi as an up-and-coming painter in La Vraie Italie, a Florentine journal published in French by the former vociano Papini. The first surviving letter from Morandi to Soffici dates from November 1923. On their relationship and correspondance see Cavallo, "A Prato."
50. See A. Beccaria, "Visita a Giorgio Morandi," Nuova Antologia (February 1964); quoted in Cavallo, "A Prato," 5. As early as 1927, in his autobiographical essay published in L'Assalto (see note 45), Morandi declared his admiration for Soffici, echoing Maccari's statement that "The work of Soffici is of the sort that cannot be forgotten; his influence on the mind of our generation has been enormous and beneficial." (The original reads: "L'opera di Soffici è di quelle che non si cancellano, la sua influenza sullo spirito della nostra generazione, grandissima e benefica," in Il Selvaggio, 10 November 1925; reprinted in Mangoni, L'Interventismo, 105.) Morandi also cited Carrà as an inspiration: Carrà contributed to Il Selvaggio, but was not as strongly associated with Strapaese as was Soffici. Nor did he cling so tenaciously to regionalist identity: he simultaneously pursued a national Fascist art represented by monumental painting, which was an outgrowth of the Novecento movement. See Massimo Campigli, Carlo Carrà, Achille Funi and Mario Sironi, "Manifesto della pittura murale," La Colonna (December 1933).
51. See Cavallo, "A Prato," 21. Cavallo unwittingly described the characters of the two artists in terms endearing to the Strapaese attitude:
Besides, the characters of Soffici and Morandi seem truly those of days gone by; they were of a rigor and simplicity that were difficult to emulate, qualities that had, at any rate, disappeared over time, along with the wholly spiritual sense of mission and discipline with which they dedicated themselves to art.
In an attempt to account for their seeming political differences, he writes:
Morandi was much less emotional than Soffici, much lessan ardent nationalist, and scarcely as inclined to undertake political commitments; Morandi must have been loved by Soffici precisely because he kept his distance from these passions, because he was different, because he had a certain idealistic superiority like that of Manzoni.
(The original reads: "Del resto i ritratti di Soffici e Morandi sembrano davvero di tempi remoti; semplicità e rigore difficili da tenere a modello, ma comunque andati smarriti con il senso che loro davano all'arte in qualità di missione e disciplina prima di tutto spirituale," and, "Così diverso dall'emotività di Soffici, dal suo ardore nazionalistico, dal suo impegno politico, Morandi doveva essere amato da Soffici proprio per la sua distanza da queste passioni, per la sua differenza e superiorità 'manzoniana,'" in Cavallo, "A Prato," 22.)
52. Suspected of anti-Fascist activities (though there is no evidence to that effect), Morandi was seized by the local secret police on 23 May 1943 and was incarcerated for around ten days. Ragghianti and others associated with the Partito d'Azione (the Action Party) were arrested at the same time. I thank Janet Abramowicz for this information. According to Cavallo, he was arrested along with friends from the anti-Fascist Giustizia e Libertà movement (Justice and Liberty movement) and other Bolognese intellectuals; see Cavallo, "A Prato," 23. Without going into great detail about the circumstances of his arrest, Arcangeli elevates Morandi's solitude and stoicism during the German occupation to mythic proportions; see Arcangeli, Giorgio Morandi, 217-9. By contrast, Soffici was arrested at the end of 1944 and set to a concentration camp near Terni overseen by the Americans. In February 1946, he was tried for collaboration "because of his writings exalting the dictatorship" but was absolved of the charges due to insufficient evidence (Giuseppe Raimondi and Luigi Cavallo, Ardengo Soffici [Florence: Nuovedizioni E. Vallecchi, 1967], 161).
53. The original reads: "esser solo capace di ordine vero chi ha vissuto lo spirito di ribellione" (Ardengo Soffici, "G. Morandi," L'Italiano 10 [March 1932], hereafter abbreviated "GMO"; reprinted in the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, 16 April 1932, ix).
54. The original reads: "terza epoca. . . . Giorgio Morandi ha risolto il problema di uno stile moderno e nello stesso tempo legittimo ed italiano in pittura. . . . Senza alcun residuo di artificio, di cerebralismo o di dilettantismo."
55. In his autobiographical essay published in L'Assalto (see note 45), Morandi asserts: "Among the moderns, in my view, Corot, Courbet, Fattori, and Cézanne are the most legitimate of the glorious Italian tradition." (The original reads: "Dei moderni ritengo Corot, Courbet, Fattori e Cézanne gli eredi più legittimi della gloriosa tradizione italiana.")
56. The original reads: "Voi sapete pure che io non ho mai messo in dubbio il talento di Morandi, per quanto lo vedessi incoglionito dall'oppio propinatogli da Soffici, Oppo e Comp., e soffrissi per quel suo camminare a ritroso, da Cézanne verso Chardin, ed oltre fino a Pompei, come comanda il 'Cacasenno': da 'Poggio a Caiano'. . . . Ecco, Marchiori, come è crollato Morandi, il campione della mediocrazia artistica e burocratica italiana; la creatura degli Oppo, Soffici, Cardarelli, Longanesi, Bartolini di tutti i gamberi nostalgici reazionari di Strapaese" (letter from Osvaldo Licini to Giuseppe Marchiori, 3 March 1939; reprinted in Osvaldo Licini, Errante erotico eretico. Gli scritti letterari e tutte le lettere, eds. Zeno Birolli, Gino Baratta and Francesco Bartoli [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1974], 142-43). I thank Simonetta Fraquelli for this reference. The "Cacasenno" from "Poggio a Caino" refers to Soffici and the name of the village outside Florence where he lived. Cipriano Efisio Oppo was a painter, critic, and Fascist deputy, who served as the head of the artist syndicates, and wrote a favorable article on Morandi in L'Italia letteraria, 10 April 1932.
57. The phrase "I don't give a damn" (me ne frego) was used by soldiers in the war, and later associated with Mussolini. According to Walter Adamson, it ultimately derived from a 1913 article by Papini in Lacerba; see Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence, 230, 307, no. 85.
58. The original reads: "Quando cammina sembra un vecchio schooner visto di prua e il cappello a cencio, lassù in cima alla testa . . . e tocca le nuvole. . . . specie di gigante sperduto in una città di uomini piccoli, appare e scompare sotto i portici di Bologna come un fusto d'altri tempi scampato al diluvio" (Longanesi, "Morandi," n.p.; reprinted in Vitali, Giorgio Morandi, 48).
59. See Maccari, "Giorgio Morandi"; reprinted in Vitali, Giorgio Morandi, 47-48.
60. The original reads: "un senso di amore e di raccoglimento che non è lontano dalla preghiera."
61. The original reads: "con conscienziosità assai rara nei tempi che corrono" (Achille Lega, "Giorgio Morandi," Il Selvaggio 30 July 1927; reprinted in Cavallo, "A Prato," 85-86).
62. The categories of rhopography and megalography are applied by Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked. Four Essays on Still Life Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 60-95. Bryson notes that the categories derive from Charles Sterling, Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1981). Interesting in this regard is Bryson's brief discussion of Morandi; see Looking at the Overlooked, 97-98. He sees his work as exalting empty space in reaction to the overabundance of commodities in the industrialized age. While such analysis has the potential to be grounded in the specifics of Fascist culture, Bryson reverts to a typically ahistorical, formalist reading: "Modernist still life knows this space well: the work of Morandi (1890-1964) is made up of such vibrations in vacancy, of 'seeing solid in void and void in solid,' and of interresonating intervals eventually so fine that it takes a lengthy viewing to analyse their discriminations" (Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 98).
63. The original reads: "Ed è nel mondo di Morandi un'effabile povertà" (Arnaldo Beccaria, Giorgio Morandi [Milan: U. Hoepli, 1939], 13).
64. The original reads: "l'essenza plastica dell'insieme. . . . di ricca tessitura pittorica, compositiva e architettonica."
65. The original reads: "inteso a studiare e approfondire sempre più l'opera, a caratterizzarla, nel disegno, nei volumi, e negli impasti . . . " (Lega, "G. Morandi"; reprinted in Cavallo, "A Prato," 85).
66. The original reads: "la composizione del quadro, la chiarezza delle masse, l'armonia dei toni, il contrasto dei chiaroscuri, la fusione dei colori, l'eleganza a la solidità delle forme e la tranquillità dell'insieme" (Longanesi, "Morandi"; reprinted in Vitali, Giorgio Morandi, 49.)
67 Ragghianti defines the courageous political stance of the journal through the personality of Maccari, distancing him from more programmatic Fascists such as Soffici; see Ragghianti, Il Selvaggio, 9-35. A more negative opinion, in direct response to Ragghianti's defense, is given by Maltese in Storia dell'arte in Italia, 337-40. Mangoni points out that Ragghianti's focus on Maccari's caricatures lends itself, incorrectly, to interpret Il Selvaggio as anti-Fascist. In her opinion, Maccari's desire to operate as a corrective force, based on an anachronistic Fascism, was doomed to failure; see Mangoni, L'interventismo, 143.
68. The original reads: "E intendo classico all'italiana; cioè reale e ideale, oggettivo e soggettivo, e tradizionale ad un tempo."


The title tag as the name implies contains the title of the your HTML code. Some text editors ignore it as it is usually used to tell other web developers the title of your code.
It is written inside the head tag.


Hi, I'm David Eboh and I'm a computer engineer.
I am a Texas Tech University Alumni with a degree in Computer Engineering. I am passionate about leadership, building up others professionally and personally, reaching out to the community in service, and developing my own skills in order to become a professional who will have an impact and make a difference in the life of his company and friends/coworkers. With a degree in Computer Engineering I am capable of working as a computer Scientist and as an Electrical Engineer. I am interested in all aspects of Engineering and technology and am very eager to learn more in my professional career.
Languages and Frameworks include: C#, C++, C, Python, Verilog, Unix, HTML, SQL, Javascript, CSS.
Tools and Skills: Git, Visual Studios, Agile Methodologies, Scrum, Kanban, MATLAB, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, Sharepoint, oscilloscopes, function generators, power supplies, and other lab test equipment.
Here are links to my Resume, my Cover letter, and Professional References
Some example text...
Some example text...
Some example text...
Some example text...


The purpose of this tool is to provide a visibility of the modeshape statistics.
For more information, you can have a look to the Modeshape monitoring API documentation.
window
duration(seconds)
start time
end time
| Count | Minimum | Average | Maximum | Variance | Standard deviation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
window
duration(seconds)
start time
end time
| Count | Minimum | Average | Maximum | Variance | Standard deviation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duration | Query |
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Namespace SIPSorcery.SIP
Classes
AuthHeaders
Authorization Headers
CallProperties
HTTPDigest
SIPAuthenticationHeader
SIPAuthorisationDigest
SIPCDR
Call detail record for a SIP call.
SIPChannel
The SIPChannel abstract class encapsulates the common properties and methods required of a SIP channel. A SIP channel's primary responsibility is sending and receiving messages from the network.
SIPClientWebSocketChannel
A SIP transport Channel for establishing an outbound connection over a Web Socket communications layer as per RFC7118. The channel can manage multiple connections. All SIP clients wishing to initiate a connection to a SIP web socket server should use a single instance of this class.
SIPConstants
SIPContactHeader
SIPDialogue
See "Chapter 12 Dialogs" in RFC3261.
SIPDNSConstants
SIPDNSLookupEndPoint
SIPDNSLookupResult
SIPDNSServiceResult
SIPEndPoint
This class is a more specific versions of the SIPURI class BUT is only concerned with the network and transport properties. It contains all the information needed to determine the remote end point to deliver a SIP request or response to.
This class must remain immutable otherwise the SIP stack can develop problems. SIP end points can get passed amongst different servers for logging and forwarding SIP messages and a modification of the end point by one server can result in a problem for a different server. Instead a new SIP end point should be created wherever a modification is required.
SIPEscape
For SIP URI user portion the reserved characters below need to be escaped.
reserved = ";" / "/" / "?" / ":" / "@" / "&" / "=" / "+" / "$" / ","
user-unreserved = "&" / "=" / "+" / "$" / "," / ";" / "?" / "/"
Leaving to be escaped = ":" / "@"
For SIP URI parameters different characters are unreserved (just to make life difficult).
reserved = ";" / "/" / "?" / ":" / "@" / "&" / "=" / "+" / "$" / ","
param-unreserved = "[" / "]" / "/" / ":" / "&" / "+" / "$"
Leaving to be escaped = ";" / "?" / "@" / "=" / ","
SIPEvent
SIPEventConsts
SIPEventDialog
SIPEventDialogInfo
SIPEventDialogParticipant
SIPEventFilters
SIPEventPresence
SIPEventPresenceTuple
SIPExtensionHeaders
Constants that can be placed in the SIP Supported or Required headers to indicate support or mandate for a particular SIP extension.
SIPFromHeader
SIPHeader
SIPHeaderAncillary
SIPHeaders
SIPMessageBase
SIPMessageBuffer
Represents an incoming message before having determined whether it is a request or a response.
SIPMethods
SIPMIMETypes
SIPNonInviteTransaction
SIPParameterlessURI
SIPParameters
Represents a series of name value pairs that are optionally included in SIP URIs and also as an additional optional setting on some SIP Headers (Contact, To, From, Via). This class also treats the header value of a SIP URI as a special case of a SIP parameter. The difference between a parameter and a SIP URI header is the start and delimiter characters used.
SIP URI with parameters:
sip:1234@sip.com;key1=value1;key2=value2
SIP URI with headers:
sip:1234@sip.com?key1=value1&key2=value2
SIP URI with parameters and headers (parameters always come first):
sip:1234@sip.com;key1=value1;key2=value2?key1=value1&key2=value2
SIPProtocolsType
SIPReplacesParameter
SIPRequest
Represents a SIP Request.
SIPRequestAuthenticationResult
SIPRequestAuthorisationResult
SIPResponse
Represents a SIP Response.
SIPResponseStatusCodes
SIPRoute
The SIPRoute class is used to represent both Route and Record-Route headers.
SIPRouteSet
SIPSchemesType
SIPServices
SIPStreamConnection
Represents a reliable stream connection (e.g. TCP or TLS) between two end points. Stream connections have a more overhead than UDP. The state of the connection has to be monitored and messages on the stream can be spread across multiple packets.
SIPTCPChannel
SIPTimings
SIPTLSChannel
SIPToHeader
SIPTransaction
A state machine for SIP transactions.
SIPTransport
SIPTransportConfig
SIPUDPChannel
SIPURI
Implements the SIP URI concept from the SIP RFC3261.
SIPUserAgentRolesTypes
SIPUserField
name-addr = [ display-name ] LAQUOT addr-spec RAQUOT
addr-spec = SIP-URI / SIPS-URI / absoluteURI
SIP-URI = "sip:" [ userinfo ] hostport
uri-parameters [ headers ]
SIPS-URI = "sips:" [ userinfo ] hostport
uri-parameters [ headers ]
userinfo = ( user / telephone-subscriber ) [ ":" password ] "@"
If no "<" and ">" are present, all parameters after the URI are header parameters, not URI parameters.
SIPValidationException
SIPViaHeader
The Via header only has parameters, no headers. Parameters of from ...;name=value;name2=value2 Specific parameters: ttl, maddr, received, branch.
From page 179 of RFC3261: "Even though this specification mandates that the branch parameter be present in all requests, the BNF for the header field indicates that it is optional."
The branch parameter on a Via therefore appears to be optionally mandatory?!
Any SIP application element that uses transactions depends on the branch parameter for transaction matching. Only the top Via header branch is used for transactions though so if the request has made it to this stack with missing branches then in theory it should be safe to proceed. It will be left up to the SIPTransaction class to reject any SIP requests that are missing the necessary branch.
SIPViaSet
SIPWebSocketChannel
A SIP transport Channel for transmitting SIP over a Web Socket communications layer as per RFC7118.
var sipTransport = new SIPTransport();
var wsSipChannel = new SIPWebSocketChannel(IPAddress.Loopback, 80);
var wssCertificate = new System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2("localhost.pfx");
var wssSipChannel = new SIPWebSocketChannel(IPAddress.Loopback, 433, wssCertificate);
sipTransport.AddSIPChannel(wsSipChannel);
sipTransport.AddSIPChannel(wssSipChannel);
UACInviteTransaction
SIP transaction that initiates a call to a SIP User Agent Server. This transaction processes outgoing calls SENT by the application.
UASInviteTransaction
The server transaction for an INVITE request. This transaction processes incoming calls RECEIVED by the application.
Structs
SIPEventDialogStateEvent
SIPEventPackage
Enums
SIPAuthorisationHeadersEnum
SIPCallDirection
SIPDialogueStateEnum
SIPDialogueTransferModesEnum
SIPEventDialogDirectionEnum
SIPEventDialogInfoStateEnum
SIPEventPresenceStateEnum
SIPExtensions
List of SIP extensions to RFC3262.
SIPMessageTypesEnum
SIPMethodsEnum
A list of the different SIP request methods that are supported.
SIPProtocolsEnum
A list of the transport layer protocols that are supported (the network layers supported are IPv4 mad IPv6).
SIPResponseParserError
SIPResponseStatusCodesEnum
SIPSchemesEnum
SIPServicesEnum
A list of the different combinations of SIP schemes and transports.


News story
The Department for Education announces a £490,000 grant extension to help recruit and train School Games volunteers.
More than 1,400 extra volunteers and coaches will be recruited and trained to help deliver the School Games, DfE announced today.
Children’s Minister Edward Timpson announced the volunteer leaders and coaches grant will be extended for a further year at £490,000. The grant aims to increase the quantity and quality of the volunteer workforce supporting and developing the School Games.
The Sainsbury’s School Games is a national programme that aims to motivate and inspire millions of young people across the country to take part in more competitive sport. More than half of primary and secondary schools took part in 2012.
The money will be distributed through Sport England to county sports partnerships, with each receiving £10,000 to recruit, train and deploy 20 volunteer leaders and coaches to support the games - a total of 1,470 across the country. The majority of these volunteers will be young people between the ages of 16 and 25, as evidence suggests younger volunteers are more likely to continue to volunteer over time, and this gives young people the opportunity to be involved in sport once they leave school.
The announcement comes after the launch of Moving More, Living More , a cross-government strategy to increase participation in physical activity to provide an Olympic and Paralympic legacy for the nation.
Children’s Minister Edward Timpson said:
I have seen just how much of a difference the School Games can make to young people and I’m delighted to announce this extension to help the programme go from strength to strength.


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