Exploring the legacy of an iconic Italian scooter manufacturer, this visual history delves into the intersection of design and Futurism. It showcases how innovative design concepts shaped the brand’s identity and influence in the automotive world, highlighting the aesthetic and cultural significance of its scooters. Through engaging imagery and insightful commentary, readers will discover the artistry and engineering that define this legendary manufacturer.
Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles reflect on what libraries have been in
order to speculate about what they will become: hybrid places that intermingle
books and ebooks, analog and digital formats, paper and pixels. They combine
the cultural history of libraries with innovations at metaLAB, a research
group at the forefront of digital humanities.
Modernitalia provides a map of the Italian twentieth century in the form of twelve essays by the celebrated cultural historian Jeffrey T. Schnapp. Shuttling back and forth between literature, architecture, design, and the visual arts, the volume explores the metaphysics of speed, futurist and dada typography, real and imaginary forms of architecture, shifting regimes of mass spectacle, the iconography of labour, exhibitions as modes of public mobilization and persuasion, and the emergence of industrial models of literary culture and communication. The figures featured in the book include Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Mario Morasso, Julius Evola, Piero Portaluppi, Giuseppe Terragni, Alessandro Blasetti, Massimo Bontempelli, Giorgio de Chirico, Bruno Munari, Curzio Malaparte, and Henry Furst. Alongside these human protagonists appear granite blocks that drive the design of modern monuments, military searchlights that animate civilian shows, worker armies viewed as machines, sunglasses that tiptoe along the boundary of the private and public, newsreels as twentieth-century interpretations of Trajan’s column, and book covers and bindings that act as authorial self-portraits. The volume captures the Italian path to cultural modernity in all of its brilliance and multiplicity.
A visionary report on the revitalization of the liberal arts tradition in the
electronically inflected, design-driven, multimedia language of the twenty-
first century.
