South of Rome–West of Ellis Island
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Italian American Culture: Robert Venturi vs. Frankie Valli
(March 22, 2009)
Little Italy: Urban Village Street Corner Society
Italian American culture is southern Italian/Sicilian culture filtered through Little Italies
Anthony Tamburii wrote: “We need to take our [Italian American] culture more seriously. We simply cannot continue to engage in a series of reminiscences that lead primarily to nostalgic recall. Instead, we need to revisit our past… and reconcile it with our present.”
The “nostalgic recall” he refers to, I believe, is an attempt by post ‘Little Italy’ Italian Americans to redefine their Italian identity. It seems to me, Italian Americans are struggling to find Italianita threads; i.e. objects, people, signs, and images that represent symbols of what it means to be Italian. They are seeking the cultural threads that connect the 19th century southern Italian /Sicily peasant culture with the early 20th century urban “Little Italy” culture with the present 21st century suburban culture. Italian Americans have a profound sense of being Italian, but cannot articulate what it means to be Italian; they are not Italian nationals (nor do they what to be) and they are no long residents of “Little Italy”(nor can they be).
Below, I suggest, the biographies and work of Italian American artisans Robert Venturi and Frankie Vallie’s “The Four Seasons” brings to light one such Italianita thread that connects today’s Italian Americans with their progenitors, and may help us define our Italianess in post “Little Italy” America.
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Recently I happened upon some library books by and about the architect Robert Venturi. I explored the books and frankly I was not impressed with his work. I found it to be uninspiring, uncreative – dare I say – boring. As it turns out, I’m not the only one.
The renowned architect Philip Johnson wrote about the plans Venturi (et al) submitted for the 1967 Brooklyn Housing Project competition:
“To the majority [of judges], of which I was one, [the Venturi and Rauch-Kawasaki submission] seemed a pair of very ugly buildings. We felt…that the buildings looked like the most ordinary apartment construction built all over Queens and Brooklyn since the Depression, that the placing of the blocks was ordinary and dull” (LFL ‘72 p135)
Interestingly, such lack of beauty and inspiring form in Venturi’s work was not to his mind a failure, rather a manifestation of his design philosophy. He specifically rejects ‘beauty’ as an architectural criterion. He says:
“[I] use ‘ugly and ordinary’ (boring, if you will) elements in a building like Guild House –brick, sash window, the TV antenna – to give a realistic expression of the use of the building and a meaning familiar to the inhabitants. Actually the term ‘ugly and ordinary’ derived from a derisive description of our Transportation Square office-building project in Washington, D.C., which we adopted as a positive slogan.” (interview p147)
In short, Venturi’s goal as an architect is to achieve structures that are ‘ugly’, ‘boring’ and ‘ordinary.’ Respectfully, I think a survey of his work demonstrates that he is very successful in achieving those objectives.
When I think of 20th century Italian names in architecture; names like Pietro Belluschi and Aldo Rossi come to mind. Venturi doesn’t remotely approach their creativity. Compare, for example, the brickwork on Venturi’s much discussed Guild House with that of Belluschi’s St Philip Neri Catholic Church and you will understand what Ventrui means by ‘ugly and ordinary’ verses, what I would call, a quest for eloquence and beauty. More generally, perhaps because he rejects ‘beauty’, there is nothing about Venturi’s work that conjures in me a sense of Italianita, a sense of being Italian.
If any single characteristic permeates the culture of the Italian people it’s ‘beauty’. From per-Roman mosaics to Renaissance frescos and sculpture to contemporary Milan fashions to the vegetable and flower gardens of my Italian neighbors, the 2500-year history of Italian culture is differentiate and defined, to my mind, by a single concept - ‘fa bella figura’. Even our gangsters try to “show some class.” Venturi’s explicit rejection of beauty as a characteristic of architecture made me wondered if he was Italian in name only.
However, according to Sal Primeggia, who kindly responded to an H-ItAm inquire I posted; Robert Venturi's father had migrated in 1890 from the town of Attesa, Abruzzi. His mother’s parents came from Puglia. Venturi is absolutely Italian. The apparent contradiction of a hundred percent Italian American artisan rejecting beauty was perplexing and in turn lead me to reflect on the nature of Italian American culture.
Nature and Nurture
Psychologists say an individual’s behavior, ideology and indeed total Being is the product of ‘nature’ (genetics) and ‘nurture’ (environment). While, Mr. Venturi’s ‘nature’, per his parent’s nationality, was very much Italian, his biography indicates that his ‘nurture’ was very much not Italian American.
Young Robert Venturi attended school at the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania. “The Episcopal Academy, founded in 1785, is a private school for grades Pre-K through 12 and has been consistently ranked as a top private school in the nation by various media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal.”
Notable alumni include:
Lionel Barrymore - 1931 Academy Award winner for Best Actor
Richard Harding Davis - Managing Director of Harper's Weekly.
R.W.B. Lewis - professor of English at Yale, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize
John C. Bell, Jr. - Pennsylvania Governor and Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice
Significantly, in the much longer list of notable alumni, Venturi is the only Italian name. Venturi then went on to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University; again, not a school where Italian Americans are generally found. In short, his education is not what one would call the ‘nurturing’ of ‘the typical Italian American boy’.
Further, he married far removed from Italian Americana: Denise Scott Brown, a Rhodesian born Jewish woman who went to a South African university and came to America via London. An architect, she became his colleague in teaching, business and design. Also, Venturi’s professional life was not characteristic of Italian Americans. Relatively few Italian Americans get teaching positions in Ivy League Universities. Venturi taught at three Ivy League Schools: University of Pennsylvania, Yale School of Architecture, and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
In sum, while he was very much Italian by ‘nature’, the life (nurturing) of Robert Ventrui was not remotely similar to Italian Americans generally. In statistical parlance, if one were to randomly sample the population of Italian American males, Venturi would be a very atypical “outlier” – indeed.
“The Four Seasons”
At the same time I was reading about Venturi and wondering about the absence of Italianita and the quest for beauty in his work, I went to see the fantastic stage musical production “Jersey Boys” about the lives of Frankie Valli’s group “The Four Seasons.” WOW! If you want an example of creativity, passion, and the pursuit of beauty, one would be hard pressed to do better than those four Italian American boys from Little Italy neighborhoods in New Jersey.
Tommy Devito, the founder of the group quit high school in the 8th grade. His family was so poor during the Depression that he would steal milk. The other members of the group came from similar backgrounds. In short, the “nurturing” of the Four Seasons’ singers was very different than Robert Venturi’s, and much more typical of Italian American males through the 1950’s. In statistical parlance: if one where to randomly sample Italian American males of Devito’s generation, the nurturing experiences of Four Season’s singers would be close to the mean.
Street Corner Society
Near to the last scene of “Jersey Boys”, the Frankie Valli character, reflecting on the phenomenal success of the group, waxes nostalgic and harkens back to his singing origins “under a street light”. Immediately what came to my mind were the two great anthropological studies of Italian Americana: W. F. Whyte’s “Street Corner Society” and H.J. Gans’ “The Urban Villagers”. The lives of the four Italian American boys who created the music of The Four Seasons were quintessential examples of the Italian Americans described in those great social scientific studies. They were ‘urban villages’ whose social life centered on ‘street corners.’
In sum, the present day culture of the Italian American people is the product of the 19th century peasant culture of southern Italy and Sicily modified by the early 20th century ‘urban village’ culture of American Little Italies. I’m wondering if the architecture of Robert Venturi does not speak to me of Italianita because, unlike the Four Seasons, he was insulated from and did not absorb the historic ‘bella figura’ culture of Italy as it was filtered through American Little Italies. Given his Italian bloodline and his masterful craftsmanship, I can’t help but wonder what ‘beautiful’ things he might have designed had he gone to public school, hung out on a street corner, and studied architecture at a Community College – just a thought.
Finally, Anthony Tamburii writes: “We need to be sure that our progeny is aware of our culture.” To my mind, the most important thing we can teach our children about Italian American culture: whatever endeavors private or public, humble or grand, cultivating a fig tree or carving marble – ‘make it beautiful.’ In our efforts to redefine what it means to be Italian Americans, ‘fa bella figura’ is a very good place to begin –indeed!
Tom Verso
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La bella figura...according to who?
Mr. Verso,
Your column is the only thing that keeps the i-Italy website in my bookmark list. Most Italian American organizations seem to focus on things that have little to do with what I, as an Italian American, am interested in *see my comments in your Chickens Come Home to Roost 3-16-11 article* I'm no longer a member of NIAF for similar reasons. The “star studded” approach to Italian American self-worship is typical of the way many Italian Americans approach their historical roots in Italy as well, which is very ironic considering most Italians had little to do with the Renaissance work that is pawned off as the sum total of our heritage. Yes, certainly it is part of it, but not the part that I relate to or care about the most. Art patronage was for the wealthy who had the leisure and money to invest in it. That does not describe the majority of Italians then.
In that article as well as this one you hit on two areas that interest me, language and architecture and how they are related to our psychological development, particularly as Italian Americans.
Perhaps I am more of a middle of the road person having my roots in central Italy (70 miles south of Rome), but I see this idea of “fare la bella figura” as it relates to Italian American culture just a little bit differently.
I wonder if extremism may be an Italian trait. I am by no means an expert, just an observer of my own family history and a student of my heritage language and culture so I can’t argue my points with the benefit of years of academic research. Sorry:-)
You suggest Venturi’s work is more a product of his nonItalian upbringing and education, (which certainly has to be, in part, true) than his Italian genes. I rather think his take on beauty is very southern Italian. While ostentatious showiness seems to be the mark of beauty in northern Italy, I think that the harsh realities of living in poverty in Southern Italy would certainly be reflected in a more utilitarian view to building construction as well as all other aspects of life (food, fashion, religion, language). Maslow's hierarchy of needs I guess. “You can’t eat beauty” as they say. From a woman’s perspective, if I am dirt poor I am not going to have my nails done, my hair permed and styled, expensive makeup expertly applied, the latest fashion cut more for show than usefulness, etc. For one thing, I can’t afford it, and don’t have that much leisure time to devote to it either. If I am a poor woman, I’m trying to survive. You get the idea.
[By they way, have you ever tried painting your nails, curling your hair, and doing your makeup, while deciding what to wear? It is very time consuming:-) I’ve tried doing my nails a few times. I can never wait for them to dry and end up smudging them. I just have better things to do with my time. Today for instance I spent all morning reading your article and fashioning this response instead of dedicating myself to the so called feminine arts, so I will be going out later today in a pair of slacks instead of something nicer. Slacks are very utilitarian, but they do the job and are really more comfortable than a dress in the winter. No wonder men prefer them-]
I might even go so far as to suggest that Venturi was rejecting the idea of “fare la bella figura” as a Northern Italian concept, as opposed to his own southern Italian heritage.I know the concept of fare la bella figura reaches to far more than just physical appearances, but that is a big part of it. I might also suggest that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I personally find not only the excessively ornate buildings (or literature) of northern Italy ugly, and the simple utilitarian structures of the countryside more to my liking, I also find a woman wearing the typical beauty mask complete with ridiculously high heels and short skirts, an insult to natural feminine beauty. In that sense, like Venturi, I reject beauty, if THAT is beauty. That many modern men (and women) seem to prefer a photoshopped, artificially enhanced version of femininity to the real thing reminds of why some people head straight for the Sistine Chapel to see God, beauty, and Italy, when one might just as easily find all three sitting at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. One is the fabricated work of man, the other is God’s handiwork and the result of life itself.
I think Venturi was trying to make a point, but like many artists (and I consider any good architect an artist), too extremely. Because even though I reject a “northern, metropolitan” concept of beauty, I still demand something more than what Venturi’s designs would offer me. Sometimes too much education makes practitioners hold onto an idea obsessively, especially if it is driven my deeper psychological unconscious motives. Was Venturi intentionally rejecting a typical northern Italian outlook on beauty? Was he dealing with his own inner demons through his work?
Watching a staged performance of Frankie Valli’s life as opposed to reading about it, or seeing a photo in a book, like Venturi’s work, can’t help but affect us. I’m sure the actors and set designers did everything they could to draw you in and tell a good tale. Franki Valli’s early music that brought him great success was creative, had energy, and while he imitated the sounds typical of the fifties/early sixties here in the U.S. he was innovative, no doubt about it. But does it typify the Italian American soul any more than Venturi’s work? For some perhaps. That is the one thing we all need to keep in mind when discussing just what Italian American culture is. We all have our own opinion and perspective. When I heard my brother listening to the Four Season’s music, I found it to be rather silly and light. I wasn’t attracted to what for me sounded very corny and mainstream. (My brother also liked the Beach Boys, which I didn’t, might be a guy thing?). What kind of music did I like back then? Soul music. African American music felt more real to me. I wanted anything as far as possible removed from typical Anglo American fare. I was looking for something with some depth, some feeling, some color, that reflected my feelings of alienation as an Italian American, not candy. I was in a sense, like Ventruri, rejecting the part of me I didn’t want to deal with. I wanted my grandfather’s language, his color, his elegance, his style, but I was growing up in a culture that was, whether I wanted it to or not, going to strip me of all that. I was fighting it. For me Venturi and Valli are two sides of the same coin, one rejecting ornate concepts of beauty and of the Renaissance, the other assimilating the Anglo candy culture of the U.S. Both represent the ways Italian Americans dealt with life here.
In some ways, I see Venturi’s rejection of traditional concepts of beauty similar to my own battle in trying to come to grips with the Italian American dilemma. He went one way rejecting the type of architectural designs expected of an Italian. I was trying to hold on to my Italian heritage. I think both approaches are flawed. Today, I am not interested in Italy’s literature, music, or culture all that much. I am more intrigued by Italian-American culture. That includes a wide rage of contributors from Valli to Venturi. I appreciate how the motherland may be reflected in both of them, but more importantly, value the way their separation from that culture changed them.
Nothing exemplifies this idea of dichotomy regarding beauty, particularly of southern Italians and Italian Americans, that this photo form Napoli below. One thing that came to my mind when I saw the photos of The Guild, was that I remembered seeing many buildings like that in southern Italy, especially Napoli. So I started looking for pictures of Napoli when I fell upon this one. The buildings in the background are very much Venturi -like in appearance. The subway design, might be seen as more beautiful by some, but I’d suggest it too is very utilitarian and simplistic in design. (also seems to be a collaboration of British and Indian architects, not Napolitani).
Two entrances to subway in Napoli, notice Venturi-like apartment buildings in background: http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/italy/naples_subway_ala200709_1.jpg
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/italy/naples_subway_ala200709_2.jpg
I’ll be honest, footage of Italy always pulls at my heartstrings. I’m drawn to the landscape as well as the colors of the buildings, and the use of various styling and design strategies, and the language does the same thing to me, but I have to remind myself in the words of the Four Seasons “Girl, we can’t change the places where we were born”1 “Don’t you know that world is over, you cannot live it over”2. Italy is a song we can’t sing. “Walk on and Don’t Look Back.”3.
Those old buildings and the land itself are a reflection of a past that has not kept pace with the minds of the modern Italian. As an Italian American I feel I have more in common with Chicanos than Italians. The moment my grandfather stepped foot on the boat to make his journey to the States, he set himself apart from those who stayed behind and set in motion something that will forever make me different from the Italian mind. I’m an explorer, a nonconformist, someone who can’t settle for the status quo. He started the work that I have continued to tool and reshape, and in that sense I feel that the tourist marketed Italy of Northern Renaissance art, churches, and literature has very little to offer me, nor does contemporary Italy which seeks to be more like the rest of the world every day.
Italian Americans are in a unique position. We can begin our own Italian American Renaissance by exploring our heritage through our own language (as Dante did then) and through a more realistic lens (as did the artists then.). We need to quit looking across the ocean to accomplish that. The tools do that work are here in the U.S. and within us.
(Dawn, The Four Seasons:-); (A New Beginning, The Four Seasons) 3. (You’re a Song I Can’t Sing; Walk On, Don’t Look Back, Four Seasons)
terenova.net