“Energies of History” in Modernism: the case of Casa Malaparte

Abstract

This paper takes Casa Malaparte as a case study for modernism’s complex relation to history. Its design expresses the modernist desire for a tabula rasa, but at the same time remains strongly embedded in the architectural styles of the past. We want to demonstrate how Casa Malaparte functions as a spatial form of writing and thinking that mediates these paradoxes by bringing them together in a spatial constellation. Taking the lead from Walter Benjamin, we illustrate how the interior architecture of Casa Malaparte—despite its modernist character—can be interpreted as an exaggeration of the escapist bourgeois interior of the nineteenth century. But precisely in this exaggeration, the “dream space” that is Casa Malaparte can be used to turn the past into an imaginative and critical force, a creative energy within modernism itself.

Keywords:

• Casa Malaparte
• Walter Benjamin
• surrealism
• antiquity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Unfortunately, Casa Malaparte is not open to the general public. However, Godard’s Le Mépris contains some scenes that show both the interior and the exterior of the house (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHmsbo3Xb5M (Accessed: June 4, 2015). A series of images, again both form the interior and the exterior, can be found in a special issue of Domus (n° 605, published in 1980). See: http://www.domusweb.it/en/from-the-archive/2012/07/21/adalberto-libera-s-villa-malaparte.html (Accessed: June 4, 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadia Sels

Nadia Sels is visiting professor at Ghent University, where she teaches classical mythology and Greek tragedy at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, and guest lecturer at the University of Antwerp, where she teaches cultural history at the Faculty of Design Sciences. Her research is situated in these three domains. [email protected]

Kris Pint

Kris Pint is assistant professor at Hasselt University, Belgium. He teaches and does research in the domains of cultural philosophy, semiotics and scenography at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at Hasselt University. Kris Pint publishes in scientific and cultural journals, and is the author of The perverse art of Reading (2010). [email protected]