Course description
This course is a comparative study of the art, visual culture, and architecture of the twentieth-century single-party states of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the broader legacies of "totalitarian" culture. The learning outcomes of the course are three-fold: historical, theoretical, and historiographic.

We will examine art and visual culture within the context of broader historical and political developments. A key feature of this historical component is the comparative study of the cultural manifestations of ideologically distinct political regimes. We begin by considering historical precedents for the entanglement of art and politics, such as public monuments in Imperial Rome and the Catholic Church's deployment of art as propaganda during the Counter-Reformation. We then explore the culture of each regime with close attention to its distinguishing characteristics and ideological differences.

As the semester's "Comparing East and West" core course, we will also examine the ideological geographies through which these regimes imagined themselves and their enemies. Rather than treating "East" and "West" as fixed cultural or geographic categories, the course asks how such distinctions were constructed and aestheticized in art and architecture. Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union all positioned themselves in relation to ideas of Europe, civilization, modernity, backwardness, empire, national traditions, and international threats. The course therefore approaches East and West not as stable locations on a map, but as politically charged categories that were materially and visually manifested in artistic cultures.

A key theoretical issue explored in this course is the relationship between modernity (the economic and social transformations that accompanied industrialization) and modernism (the emergence of new cultural forms that rejected or reworked tradition). Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Soviet Communism all had their origins as responses to modernity; they were political systems that sought to contain and control aspects of modern mass society. Similarly, modernism is often conceived as a cultural response to modernity, an attempt to overcome the potentially negative aspects of the new mass culture. Through class discussions of modernist art theory combined with the analysis of relevant cultural objects, students will develop a nuanced understanding of the entanglement of art and politics in twentieth-century culture.

Modernism and modernity are also important concepts in relation to the central historiographic issue explored by the course: the exclusion of art produced under these regimes from most histories of twentieth-century art. What are the grounds for this exclusion? What does it reveal about the limits of art history as a historical practice? What does it reveal about the ideological nature of art history? How did Cold War categories oppose "free" Western modernism to the "totalitarian" art of the Soviet "East"?

Finally, how might we rethink these histories in the wake of the Cold War and the return of authoritarian politics in the present moment? As such, this course is also designed to provide students with the skills to think critically about the use of terms such as fascism, Nazism, communism, totalitarianism, and propaganda in relation to contemporary culture and politics.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will:

• Deepen their knowledge of the range of art, architecture, and visual culture produced in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, while attending to their historical specificity and ideological differences.
• Develop a critical understanding of the political, artistic, and ethical issues involved in studying this material.
• Refine their communication, research, and visual analysis skills.
• Practice thoughtful and engaged speaking and listening across different academic disciplines, cultural backgrounds, and points of view.
• Become more aware of how language, categories, and historical terms can shape our perceptions of the world, and use this awareness to read, look, and think more critically.

Required Preliminary Knowledge
No prior study of art history is required, as this course has been designed to foster discussion across academic disciplines. Students should have a general interest in twentieth-century history, politics, visual culture, or the relationship between culture and power. Some familiarity with major events of the twentieth century — including the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Fascism and Nazism, the Second World War, and the Cold War — will be helpful, but the necessary historical background will be introduced in lectures and readings.

Assessment
There are three main components of the assessment:

Class Engagement and Discussion Facilitation 15%
Research Project 60%
Examination 25%

During the semester, each student will complete a cumulative research project. With guidance from the instructor, students will develop a topic and complete a series of tasks that will culminate in an academic essay or a research-based creative project. Students will be placed in teams for peer support through the completion of the project. Detailed instructions for each stage of the project will be provided on Moodle.

Teaching Methods
The course will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminar discussion, close visual analysis, guided reading of primary and secondary texts, and student-led activities. Most weeks are organized around a central theme. The first class will introduce the main historical and visual material for the week. The second class will develop the topic further and include discussion of primary source texts and visual material.

The course will also draw upon relevant artworks, architecture, monuments, and related sites in and around Venice. A site visit to Milan will provide an opportunity to study Futurist works from the Gianni Mattioli Collection at the Museo del Novecento and examine examples of monumental art and architecture from the Fascist era. Local visits will include mosaics at the Francesco Morosini Naval Military School and Mario Sironi's mural Italy Between the Arts and Sciences (1935-37) at Ca' Foscari University.

Weekly Breakdown of Course Topics

WEEK 1: Modernism and Modernity; East and West

Introduction and Overview of Course
Modernity and Modernism; East/West as Ideological Categories

Week 2: The Russian Revolution and the New Culture

Russian Art: From Icon to Revolutionary Avant-Garde
The New Soviet Culture

Week 3: Russian and Soviet Realisms; Italian Futurism

Russian Critical Realism and Soviet Socialist Realism
The First Historical Avant-Garde: Italian Futurism

Week 4: Italian Fascism from Futurism to Classicism

Mussolini and the Fascist "Intellectual Revolution"
Mario Sironi: From Futurism to Classicicizing Monumental Art

Week 5: Nazi Culture: From High Art to Mass Media Spectacle

Nazi Art and Ideology
"Degenerate Art" and "Great German Art"

Week 6: Forging the New Person: Political Bodies

The Body in Nazi Culture
Forging the New Person (USSR, Italy, Germany)

Week 7: Personality Cults and Leader Portraits

Personality Cults and Leader Portraits
Fascism as the Aestheticization of Politics

Week 8: Exhibitions and Ideology: Politics on Display

The Soviet Pavilion at Pressa; The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution
Exhibitions and Ideology

Week 9: Rome-Berlin-Moscow: Architecture as Power

Architecture and the Capital Cities
Dictator as Architect

Week 10: Regimes in Confrontation: From Symbolic Opposition to War

The Clash of Ideologies at the 1937 Paris Expo
War Art, Propaganda, Counterpropaganda

Week 11: Post War Culture (Official and Unofficial)

Denazification, Compromised Artists, and Fascist Legacies
Cold War Art History and Soviet Unofficial Art

Week 12: Totalitarianism and Recent Art

Monument Toppling
Rethinking "Totalitarian Art" and Comparing East and West

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: July 27, 2026