Fascism, the Body, and Art Deco at Rockefeller Center's Palazzo d'Italia

On July 11, 1933, the Fascist battle cry echoed in Manhattan. Nelson Rockefeller stood next to Mussolini’s Secretary of State as he broke ground on the Palazzo d’Italia, a new building at Rockefeller Center representing Italo-American friendship. During the turbulent 1930s, Art Deco spoke to the shared goals of American capitalism and fascist politics: consumerism, authority, and the glorification of labor. Through Art Deco, both ideologies turned to the Classical, white, male body. Just as Mussolini emphasized the body, writing that “Fascism wants man to be active,” Art Deco heralded a return to the figural. To date, almost nothing has been written about linkages between American Art Deco and fascist ideology. This paper addresses the gap in the literature by excavating the collaboration between the Rockefellers and Fascist Italy at the Palazzo d’Italia, focusing on the body as the contested ground of visual exchange. In addition to ornamental fasces and Fascist slogans, the sculptural program (designed by Italian-American artists chosen by the Rockefeller art committee) included Eternal Youth, Attilio Piccirilli’s (1866-1945) monumental male nude wielding a shovel. I argue that the sculptural program at the Palazzo d’Italia was a visual dialogue about the heroic laboring body as white/male/heterosexual/able-bodied/youthful, revealing the complex ways in which Art Deco aesthetics were both informed and co-opted by fascist ideologies (including eugenics) and American capitalism. As a case study, the Palazzo d’Italia reveals the uncomfortable overlap between the art of democracy and totalitarianism during the Great Depression, recovering an important piece of American history.