This may be the most disturbing piece of art I’ve ever seen. ‘Head of Mussolini’ by R. A. Bertelli (1933). A ceramic construction, it portrays Mussolini’s profile from which ever direction you see it. For a while Italian fascism and futurism were happy bedfellows. I saw it at the V&A Modernism exhibition in London recently – a show that has generated a lot of column inches. The picture doesn’t really do it justice. You have to be able to move around it to register its full impact. I enjoyed the show, though as is often the case with such blockbusters, it was rammed with people making it impossible to move around as freely as one would have liked. But as a highly ambitious project though, I think it went some to displaying the multi-facetted nature of its subject matter. Perhaps more space between exhibits would have been beneficial.
Posted @ 19:48:38 on 03 May 2006 back to top