Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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La Comune

La Comune is an extreme left-wing political theatre company formed by Dario Fo and

Franca Rame in 1970 after the breakdown of their partnership with the Italian

Communist Party (PCI), which had provided the performance venues for their previous

company, Associazione Nuova Scena (New Scene Association).

When Fo and Rame left the mainstream theatre circuit in the wake of the 1968 student

uprising, they performed for working-class audiences in factories and in the workers’

clubs run by the cultural arm of the PCI. However, their criticisms of the party’s

revisionist policies led to an inevitable falling-out, and the company split: Fo and Rame

and a number of other actors then formed La Comune. Throughout the 1970s the

company toured incessantly, invited by striking workers to perform at rallies and in

occupied factories. They were continually harassed by authorities, and Fo was even

arrested at one point. Nevertheless, some of Fo’s most inventive plays were written

during this period, and the company achieved an enormous popular following, providing

the workers with what Fo called ‘counter-information’ on the real state of Italian political

and social affairs.

Further reading

Mitchell, T. (1984) Dario Fo: People’s Court Jester, London and New York: Methuen (an

overview of the careers of Fo and Rame, including discussion of the political dimension of their

collective theatre work).

TIM FITZPATRICK

Comunione e Liberazione

Founded by Don Giussani in Lombardy in the 1960s, Comunione e Liberazione became

one of the most influential ‘inspired’ movements at work in the Italian Church, with

privileged access to Pope John Paul II. It has been particularly strong among young

people, especially in schools and universities, with highly successful rallies at Rimini in

the summer and on Catholic World Youth Days. An integralist and conservative

organization, Comunione e Liberazione has tended to be intolerant of even its Catholic

critics, describing them as ‘neo-pelagians’ or ‘crypto-Protestants’. Il Sabato and Trenta

giorni form its journalistic arm, and its Compagnie delle Opere (Companies of works)

run manufacturing and service industries and social welfare organizations valued at 2

billion pounds sterling worldwide.

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Through the Movimento Popolare (Popular Movement), Comunione e Liberazione

exerted a powerful influence on the DC. Its present political point of reference is the

CDU. One of the leaders of Comunione e Liberazione, Roberto Formigoni, is also

president of the Lombardy region.

Further reading

Urquhart, G. (1996) The Pope’s Armada: Unlocking the Secrets and Mysteries of Powerful New

Sects in the Church, London: Corgi.

JOHN POLLARD

conceptual art

Conceptual art is an approach to art, widespread in the 1960s and 1970s, which placed

more emphasis on the idea or ‘concept’ being expressed, than on the physical art object

which carried the meaning. The art object thus became a mere vessel for the message,

and manifested no aesthetic qualities. Significantly, this approach coincided with the

liberalization of art education, and the spread of the notion that anyone can be an artist,

and that technical expertise is not necessary.

Conceptual art is neither movement nor style, but rather a tendency in which works

may participate to a greater or lesser degree. While the term was coined by American Sol

Le Witt in 1967, the tendency goes back at least to 1917, when French artist Marcel

Duchamp took a porcelain urinal, titled it Fountain, and attempted to enter it in an

exhibition. Duchamp argued that the new title and point of view superseded the original

use.

Duchamp’s Fountain delineates some of the possibilities: conceptual art may consist

of preexisting objects or it may be purpose-built; in either event it requires little skill. It

may comment on the nature of art and the production and consumption of art, or it may

bear some clear political message.

This approach was ideal in the social context of the 1960s. Traditional art, despite

being ‘beautiful’, seemed not to have effected any positive social changes. Produced at

high cost in individual examples, it could only be bought by the wealthy or the state,

which became anathema at a time of increasing social protest against consumerism and

state control. Traditional art thus came to symbolize all that was wrong with capitalist

society. It was aesthetically pleasing but served the oppressors. Conceptual art, on the

other hand, questioned and educated.

The great Italian precursor of conceptualism is Piero Manzoni. Like Duchamp, his

taste tended to the scatological. By canning his own excrement, in a limited and

numbered edition, Manzoni is not asking us to admire the colour and consistency of his

stools. Instead, in Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit), from 1961, he is commenting on artistic

production and the effrontery of his peers. Artists produce excrement, yet they pass it off

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as gold and expect us to receive it with admiration. Manzoni is also dealing with

authenticity. This is real and personal, and literally produced by the artist.

Conceptual art spills over into installation and performance art and is also related to

arte povera, notwithstanding the latter’s attention to physicality and materials. Italian

critics have categorized the distinction in various ways: implosive and explosive;

synthetic and analytical; process and behavioural. Both, however, work against the

traditional ideas of painting and technique. Examples include Mario Merz, with his use

of the Fibonacci series, sometimes as numbers scrawled in chalk on existing objects;

Jannis Kounellis, who exhibited a live parrot, as well as live horses, which, while real,

are somehow prosaic; Giulio Paolini, whose plaster pairs of classical sculptures are

intended to raise the question of perception; Luciano Fabro, whose titles and materials

are intended to comment on the state of Italy; and Emilio Isgrò, who in 1970 crossed out

all the words in Volume XXXII of the Encyclopedia Treccani.

Further reading

Migliorini, E. (1979) Conceptual Art, 2nd edn, Florence: Il fiorino (in Italian; gives Italian

examples, with illustrations).

Smith, R. (1994) ‘Conceptual Art’, in N.Stangos (ed.), Concepts of Modern Art, 3rd edn, London:

Thames & Hudson (gives description and international history, with some illustrations; this

chapter was written in 1980).

MAX STAPLES

Confindustria

As the national association of employers, the Confindustria (Confederazione generate

dell’industria italiana) has been an important player in the Italian political arena. Since

1945, when it was reestablished as a free association, the Confindustria has always

proclaimed itself independent of parties and sometimes aspired to direct political

leadership, but rarely achieved either. The period of postwar reconstruction was its

golden age. At this time it rejected the legacy of Fascist period, when it had become a

bureaucratic arm of the state, but maintained a strong centralized organization and tight

links with the state bureaucracy. Chaired by Angelo Costa, a Catholic family

entrepreneur of Genoa close to the Church hierarchy, the Confindustria generously

funded all centre and right-wing parties and developed a tight alliance with centrist

governments and particularly with the Christian Democratic Party (DC). Through close

ties with De Gasperi, Costa deeply influenced government economic policy though this

proved short-lived. The alliance went through a crisis when the DC began to colonize old

and new state-owned enterprises, thus enforcing itself as an economic power. A Ministry

of State shareholding was established and state-owned enterprises, which had been

members of the Confindustria until 1958, created their own association, Intersind, and

instituted a more flexible policy towards unions. The Confindustria suffered more major

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setbacks in the early 1960s when it unsuccessfully opposed the birth of a centre-left

government, the nationalization of electricity and the launching of economic planning.

A further challenge came from workers whose struggles since the autunno caldo (‘Hot

Autumn’) of 1969 had strengthened the unions’ political influence. Finally, the

emergence of the small enterprises of the so-called ‘Third Italy’, in the regions of

northeast and central Italy, widened an already existing cleavage, since the Confindustria

was traditionally ruled by representatives of north-west big business.

All this required a change of strategy and organization, and so in 1970 the so-called

‘Pirelli Project’ was launched. Drawn up by a committee chaired by Leopoldo Pirelli,

this became a sort of manifesto of Italian neo-capitalism, stressing that fighting unions

and maintaining a patronage over moderate parties could no longer suffice. As a result,

under the leadership of Gianni Agnelli (see Agnelli family) and later of Guido Carli,

entrepreneurs joined government and unions in negotiating economic planning and goals.

The Confindustria also attempted to improve its own democracy and to strengthen

internal cohesion by involving all members in the decision-making process and making

an effort to improve its public image by promoting better relations with the mass media

and the cultural elites. The public standing of Italian entrepreneurs was thus improved

and their social role was eventually legitimated, leading to a major change in the

country’s culture throughout 1980s. Nevertheless, the political influence of the

Confindustria declined, and in fact big business became more dependent on state support

in order to overcome the crises of the 1970s and early 1980s. Even organizational

problems proved difficult to solve: new intermediate associations of small enterprises and

young entrepreneurs arose and representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises,

such as Luigi Lucchini, Sergio Pininfarina, Luigi Abete and Giorgio Fossa, were

appointed as chairmen. However, the gap between big business and small enterprises

persisted, thus weakening Confindustria’s claim to represent all Italian entrepreneurs.

Further reading

Mattina, L. (1993) ‘Abete’s Confindustria: From Alliance With the DC to Multiparty Appeal’, in

S.Hellman and G.Pasquino (eds), Italian Politics: A Review, vol. 8, London: Pinter, 151–64 (an

examination of the Confindustria in the early 1990s).

STEFANO BATTILOSSI

Consagra, Pietro

b. 4 October 1920, Mazzara del Vallo, Sicily

Sculptor and writer

Consagra studied at the Academy of Fine Arts (1941–4) in Palermo before moving to

Rome, where he met Renato Guttuso. He became a founder member of the group Forma

(1947) and by 1948 he had produced his first abstract sculptures (such as Homage to

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Christian Zervos, bronze). He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1956, 1960 and

1972, with individual exhibitions on each occasion. In 1961 he co-founded the group

Continuità.

Consagra had numerous public commissions such as the bronze sculpture for the

Foreign Ministry in Rome (1966) and the cemetery gates in Gibellina (1977). His main

preoccupation remained the investigation of humanity’s place within a changing world, a

subject that dominates his work, from the abstract spatial figures known as Dialogues

(1954–62) to the larger environmental projects such as Frontal City (1968). He also

experimented with colour in works such as the Planets series (1987). His writings include

Necessità della scultura (The Need for Sculpture), a polemical response to Arturo

Martini’s La scultura lingua morta (Sculpture, a Dead Language) (1945).

Further reading

Consagra, P. (1952) Necessità della scultura, Rome: Lentini.

OLIVIA DAWSON

Consiglio Nazionale di Ricerca

Originally founded in 1923 as an agency to represent Italian scientific interests

internationally, the Consiglio Nazionale di Ricerca (National Research Council) was

reorganized in 1945 as an autonomous governmental body within the department of the

President of the Coucil of Ministers. It was assigned responsibility for promoting,

undertaking and co-ordinating scientific research in Italy, as well as supplying technical

and scientific support to the government and helping to define proper standards and

practices in scientific and technological areas. In 1989 the CNR was merged with other

public research institutions through the creation of MURST (the Ministry for Universities

and Scientific and Technological Research), but this produced a number of organizational

problems which hampered its efficient functioning. In July 1998, with the aim of

facilitating the CNR’s functions and in the context of a major redefinition of national

objectives in the area of scientific research, the Prodi government restructured the

Council so as to give it more financial autonomy and greater organizational flexibility.

GINO MOLITERNO

Console, Vincenzo

b. 18 February 1933, Sant’Agata di Militello, Messina

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Lawyer, novelist, playwright and essayist

A lawyer by profession who practises in Milan, Consolo uses his professional training to

research issues which he then explores in writings which focus on his native Sicily. The

rich linguistic and stylistic experimentalism of his literary works has been likened by

some to that of Gadda. The novel Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (The Smile of the

Unknown Mariner) (1976), for example, is based on archival documents of the 1860

Sicilian uprisings, while its linguistic style is forged out of a fusion of language and

dialect. Consolo’s concern with social activism is an underlying theme of many of his

works, including the collection of essays and short stories Le pietre di Pantalica (The

Stones of Pantalica) (1988). He was awarded the prestigious Pirandello Prize for his play

Lunaria (1985), and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for his novel Retablo (The Altar Piece)

(1987). He has also published several collections of sociological essays, including Il

barocco in Sicilia: La rinascita della Val di Noto (The Baroque in Sicily: The Rebirth of

the Val di Noto) (1991).

VIRGINIA PICCHIETTI

Constituent Assembly

On 2 June 1946, Italians voted in the first free elections since 1922. Before them was a

choice between the old monarchy, strongly implicated with the fallen Fascist regime, or a

new republican form of government. In addition, they were to elect of a single-chamber

legislature which would guide the country through the necessary postwar

reconstruction. For the first time in Italian history women were given the vote, and

almost 90 per cent of the 25 million qualified voters participated. A majority of 12.7

million voters chose the Republic (as against 10.7 million for the monarchy) and the

elected assembly of 556 therefore set to work for the next eighteen months in order to

draw up a new republican constitution.

The new women’s vote undoubtedly contributed to the DC’s relative majority (35.2

per cent) in the Assembly. The Left was represented by the Socialists (PSIUP) who won

20.7 per cent and the Communists (PCI) who received 19 per cent. On the Right was the

quasi-Fascist Qualunquista movement (see L’Uomo Qualunque) led by Guglielmo

Giannini, which polled 5.3 per cent, while the secular and liberal parties were split and

polled poorly compared to the pre-1922 Parliament. The constitution which was

produced—and eventually approved on 22 December 1947 by 453 votes to 62—reflected

the Assembly’s political composition, with strong collectivist elements coming not only

from the Left but also from part of the Catholic sector.

The draft constitution was drawn up by a committee of seventy-five nominated by the

Assembly’s president, Giuseppe Saragat, on the recommendation of the various parties.

They presented their work in January, and it was debated in the Assembly from March to

December. The Vatican pressured for an American-style president, but De Gasperi and

the Assembly resisted. The Vatican also pressed for inclusion of the 1929 Lateran Pacts

in the constitution; surprisingly, this became Article 7 when Togliatti decided that the

PCI should support the measure against its secular and socialist allies, and all but one PCI

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deputy agreed to support the party line. An amendment proposed by another Communist,

Giovanni Grilli, prevented the indissolubility of marriage from being written into the

constitution, thereby making the passage of a divorce law twenty years later much easier.

In practice, however, many of the more innovatory elements of the constitution were

not applied and many existing Fascist laws remained on the books after a verdict of the

Court of Cassation in February 1948 divided the constitution’s articles into those to be

immediately implemented and those which could de delayed.

Apart from purely constitutional matters, the Constitutional Assembly also witnessed,

in January 1947, the split of the Socialist Party (PSIUP) into the left wing PSI and the

centrist PSDI, and later that month De Gasperi visited the USA preparing the ground for

the expulsion of the PCI and PSI from executive government, a move he put into action

in May. Soon Italy began to receive the aid and benefits that came as part of the Marshall

Plan.

The Assembly, and the republican constitution that it produced, have often been

criticized for their many compromises. Nevertheless, given the division between East and

West, and consequently between Christian Democrat and Communist, which became

increasingly bitter during the Assembly’s time, it was a remarkable achievement to have

drafted, approved and implemented a constitution which has lasted largely intact for fifty

years.

See also: church, state and society; political parties

JAMES WALSTON

constitution

Drafted by the Constituent Assembly over a period of eighteen months and ‘often

criticized for its “studied imprecision”’ (Hine, 1993:147), the constitution of the Italian

Republic came into force on 1 January 1948. It is made up of 139 articles divided into

two sections: the first (articles 1–54) covers ‘basic principles’, the aims of the state, the

nature of citizenship and citizens’ rights and duties, and the second part (articles 55–139)

deals with institutional arrangements.

Given the political makeup of the Constituent Assembly which produced it, the

constitution is a compromise between Catholic, Marxist and secular ideology It thus

includes nineteenth-century liberal (negative) rights and guarantees, together with

twentieth-century collectivist and positive rights. Institutionally, given the recent

experience of fascism, it aimed above all to prevent a concentration of power, to weaken

the executive and to make the Parliament and the parties the centre of power.

Most of the first section makes statements of aims rather than describing rights which

can be implemented. There is the right to work (article 4) and the protection of linguistic

minorities (article 6); the ‘Republic promotes the development of culture and scientific

and technical research’ (article 9). These and other clauses needed normal legislation to

actually take effect. By contrast, relations between Church and state (see church, state

and society) are regulated by the 1929 Lateran Pacts which become an integral part of

the constitution (article 7). After the basic principles, the constitution outlines civil

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liberties (13–28), ethical and social relations (29–34), economic relations (35–47) and

political relations (48–54).

The second section describes the institutions. There is a symmetrical bicameral

legislature (articles 55–82). The President of the Republic’s powers are defined (83–91)

along with the powers of government (92–100), a Constitutional Court and the

governance of the magistrature through a High council of the Magistrature (CSM) (101–

13). There is some regional autonomy (114–15) and there is provision for referenda to

repeal certain types of legislation (75). Modification of the constitution is only possible

by passage of the proposal through both houses twice on occasions at least three months

apart. A referendum is necessary if the second majority is less than two-thirds.

In practice, implementation of much of the constitution was a slow process; the

Constitutional Court only came into operation in 1956, and the CSM in 1958. The

ordinary regions elected their first assemblies in 1970 while the first referendum (to

repeal the divorce law) was held in 1974. The twenty-five constitutional laws passed up

to 1999 and the Constitutional Court verdicts have only produced minor revisions.

By the late 1970s there were strong calls to revise the constitution in the name of

‘governability’, although these calls were led by Bettino Craxi who saw himself as the

potential president of a new system. Old fears of fascism coupled with a fundamental

inertia prevented any real reform until the early 1990s when first, the electoral laws were

changed through normal legislation (see electoral systems) and then a series of bicameral

commissions put forward proposals for constitutional reform regarding presidential

powers, relations between the two chambers of Parliament, federalism and administration

of Justice. In 1997 Massimo D’Alema was elected to the chair of the Third Bicameral

Commission with high hopes of reforming the constitution, but the Commission

concluded its work a year later without agreeing to any change.

Further reading

Hine, D. (1993) Governing Italy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Neppi Modona, G. (ed.) (1995) Lo stato della costituzione (The State of the Constitution), Milan: Il

Saggiatore.

Pasquino, G. (1998) ‘Reforming the Italian Constitution’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 3(1):

42–54.

Vercellone, P. (1972) ‘The Italian Constitution of 1947–48’, in S.J.Woolf (ed.), The Rebirth of Italy

1943–50, New York: Humanities Press.

JAMES WALSTON

Constitutional Court

The creation of a Constitutional Court envisaged in the 1948 constitution was Italy’s

first experiment with judicial review. That such a Court did not come into existence until

1956 and that the election of its fifteen judges is shared equally by the President of the

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Republic, Parliament and the highest judicial bodies testify to the extreme wariness

among the political class that its own decisions might be subjected to critical review by a

partizan power centre free from all accountability. In fact, those worries have been

largely groundless. The Court has shown itself to be essentially conservative in relation to

the established political order, protecting the secular and centralized nature of the postwar

state and preferring to prompt Parliament into action or revision rather than risk open

dispute. On the other hand, it has been progressive in regard to issues of individual

freedoms, extending the rights of citizens against the overmighty state and thus ensuring

that the Court itself has remained largely exempt from the widespread distrust of other

parts of the judicial system.

The Court responds to queries raised by lower courts over the constitutionality of

particular laws and resolves disputes between different branches or levels of government.

Its field of intervention has therefore been exceptionally wide, and by 1990 it was

receiving nearly one thousand demands for adjudication each year.

The most significant sets of issues that it has been involved in are essentially four.

First, it has extended civil liberties by regularly striking out illiberal or discriminatory

fascist laws in conflict with the 1948 constitution. The Court was also instrumental in

expanding freedom of speech by forcing change to the RAI’s monopoly on public

broadcasting in the mid-1970s (see broadcasting). Second, in its judgements on religious

freedom, the status of the Catholic Church and the constitutionality of divorce, the Court

has played an important role in resisting attempts to limit the state’s authority in the name

of religion. Third, by virtue of its substantial and largely selfdefined powers to approve or

block referendum proposals, the Court has become an important filter for the pressures to

force major changes on a reluctant Parliament, especially because the referendum has

been repeatedly used as an instrument of political mobilization since 1970 (see

referenda). Fourth, this political involvement has been accentuated by the establishment

of regional governments in 1970 and the subsequent demand to define the constitutional

limits of national and regional authorities (see regions; regional government). Here too,

however, the Court has been essentially conservative: its decisions have tended to

frustrate efforts to devolve greater legislative powers to the regions and convert Italy into

a federal state.

Further reading

De Franciscis, M.E. and Zannini, R. (1992) ‘Judicial Policy-Making in Italy: The Constitutional

Court’, West European Politics 15 (3):68–79.

Volcansek, M. (1994) ‘Political Power and Judicial Review in Italy’, Comparative Political Studies

26 (4):492–509.

DAVID MOSS

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consumerism

There was little to consume in Italy in 1945, as the war receded to leave Italians cold,

hungry and unemployed. The imperative of ‘autarchy’ or self-sufficiency, imposed by the

Fascist regime during the 1930s, had practically cancelled the very idea of consumerism

and replaced it with the modest dream of just ‘mille lire al mese’ (a thousand lire a

month) and a peaceful life. In 1950, over 70 per cent of an Italian family’s expenditure

was on food, housing and clothing. By the mid-1950s, however, three major factors

began to effect a profound change on Italian spending patterns: rapid economic expansion

(the so-called economic miracle), mass motorization and television.

With much of the population in work by this time, increased wages offered new

possibilities for allocating a greater part of income to other than basic expenses. As

damage to infrastructure and transport systems was repaired (see postwar

reconstruction), the country was brought back together. The first part of the motorway

between Milan and Rome was opened in 1958, connecting different parts of the country

as never before (see autostrada network). The introduction of the Vespa motor scooter

made personal transport easy and economical, although it was the motor car that now

arose as the new object of desire. The mass production of small, affordable cars like the

Fiat Cinquecento and Seicento soon put most Italians on four wheels, signalling the

beginning of consumerist behaviour. This was energetically fanned by the introduction of

television in 1954, as advertisements for consumer products were now able to reach a

larger audience through the new medium. Carosello, the advertising segment introduced

on public television in 1957 which showcased an attractive carousel of consumer

products, thus encouraging a new standard of living and a new ideal of consumption,

immediately became—and for many years remained—the most watched programme on

Italian television. As children were allowed to stay up late to watch the barrage of ads,

the first consumerist generation born without memories of lack and deprivation matured.

Nevertheless, the new affluence was not uniform and there were great disparities: the

economic ‘boom’ clearly favoured the North over the South. So, from the early 1950s on,

southern labourers flocked to the northern factories of Turin and Milan, chasing the

utopia of economic well-being (see Southern Question). At the same time, the new

consumerism began to be criticized by the Catholic Church, alarmed by the progressive

loss of ethics and the reduction in religious observance. Some intellectuals also voiced

their criticism. Writers like Luciano Bianciardi, in his novel La vita agra (Sour Life), and

Valerio Mastronardi, in Il maestro di Vigevano (The Teacher of Vigevano), both written

in 1962 at the peak of the boom period, highlighted the dramatic contradictions of a

rapidly changing society. Louder than most, filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini

passionately criticized the new mass society created in the image of television

commercials, although he was to remain largely a voice in the wilderness.

Although the economic boom was all but over by 1965, consumerism had become

firmly established as a standard of life and the measure of wellbeing. A concerted attack

on consumerism was mounted by the 1968 student movement, but this had little practical

effect until the ‘oil crisis’ of 1973–4 imposed on Italians another real period of austerity.

The subsequent double-digit inflation and economic downturn coupled with political

terrorism to make the late 1970s the anni di piombo (years of lead). Beginning in 1983,

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