Tom Pupo_ Metropole / Colony Exhibit Analysis

METROPOLE/COLONY ANALYSIS

Italian fascism manifests its image very quickly through the medium of modernity in technology, material symbolism, architectural gestures, and its social influence.  It is easy to gain power when people believe in a greater meaning or cause, and the belief in that grander gesture makes people want to bring this change themselves.  This is very apparent in the works shown in Metropole/Colony : Africa and Italy.   The prevalent use of the airplane as a recurrent theme speaks of its ambitions in many ways.  It speaks of technological advancement, national power, and growth through colonization as well as the opportunities of globalization opened up to its Nation.  The poster that depicts the people giving up their gold rings for steel ones has quite a few meanings as well.  First it is a visual testament that reinforces the devotion and pride the people had for their nation, but it also speaks of a sacrificial offering of the old (financial) values of gold, and embraces the symbolic (ideological) values of steel which shows the acceptance and desire for the modern material and of modernization in general.  The products, machines, buildings, and airplanes were all made of steel, so it is easy to correlate this material to the idea of progress.  The architectural works being designed also carried these themes. The poster that displays the design of the Roma 1942 arch by Giorgio (1939) forms a symbolic reference to the trajectory of the flight of an airplane bridging nations.  It speaks of technology, power, growth, and is the epitome of all these ideals as it solidified it in built form.   It shows that design across the board was embracing these themes and it was the variety all of these forms that became the subject matter for the propaganda that reinforced the social and political change.  They all worked together to reinforce the cause, very much reminiscent of what fascism asked of its people, and therefore the display of the exhibit not only displays each medium used in a variety of propaganda, but in itself becomes a large scale metaphor for the ideals of the fascist government and all it represents.