TOTalitarian ARTs

Mark Epstein, Fulvio Orsitto, Andrea Righi

This collection represents a tool to broaden and deepen our geographical, institutional, and historical understanding of the term totalitarianism. Is totalitarianism only found in other societies? How come, then, it emerged historically in ours first? How come it developed in so many countries either in Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) or under implicit Western forms of coercion (Latin America)? How do relations between individual(s), mass and the visual arts relate to totalitarian trends? These are among the questions this book asks about totalitarianism. The volume does not impose a one size fits all interpretation, but opens new spaces for debate on the connection between the visual arts and mass-culture in totalitarian societies. From the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, from Western Europe to Latin America, from the fascism of the early 20th century to...