The Island of ItalianDesign? Some Notes for Questioning a Long-Lived Myth

«... one is constantly surprised to note how frequently the Italians compare conditions in their own country with those in “Europe”, as though they inhabited, not a peninsula, but an island quite separate from the continent.» These are the words used in the catalogue of the renown exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, held at MoMA in 1972, to introduce the international public to Italian design. Indeed, within the historical and critical discourse on Italian design, developed in Italy, a strong interpretive strand can be detected that has tended to read Italian design as a singular phenomenon, isolated from the space and time of the mainstream international developments of modern design. The idea of Italian design being off-axis compared to other countries crosses a range of diverse authors, historians and critics. Its roots, for instance, can be found in the inter-war period, in the advocates of the intrinsic “Italian-ness” of design and arts, and of a Mediterranean, classical, tradition that had to be renewed. Signs of the idea of the singularity of Italian design are also to be found in the claims of commentators who, after World War II, engaged in gaining Italian industrial design recognition within the international arena, and who lamented the backwardness of Italy with comparison to other European industrial countries. And yet the most self-aware contribution to the image of Italian design as an island, has come from the theories and criticism developed in the name of the “Second Modernity,” in a way that was functional to the positioning of post-modern design. By opposing terms such as modernity/tradition, backwardness/advance, industrial/post-industrial, Italian/European, and by mixing loose sociological and anthropological considerations, since the 1970s designers and critics such as Andrea Branzi gradually developed a reading of Italian design’s history and character that has become, since then, rather influential and widespread. This interpretation, however, has tended to over-emphasize some aspects as inherent to Italian design, such as its non-industrial, anti-institutional, non-professional, craftsmanship-like and domestic quality, while deliberately neglecting the analysis of the places, contexts, stories and episodes that would not align with that picture – for example, the influence and impact of ideas, technology and know-how coming from other countries, or the role played by large industry in sustaining in shaping the identity and ideology of the industrial design’s profession during the post-World War II years. In this paper we intend, first, to outline the main steps of the historical-critical reading of Italian design’s singularity, also attempting to show its links it to the wider sociological and political discourse concerning Italy’s position in the international arena. Secondly, we aim to highlight the weaknesses of that reading, by considering studies and research developed in the recent decades within the fields of Italian Studies, economics and industrial history which can help questioning the myth of the isolation and anomaly of Italian design.