Futurism
An obsession with speed, power and modernity
Out of all the movements covered in this book, the Futurists were perhaps the strangest and definitely the most ideologically driven. They first came to prominence in 1909 when the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. In his manifesto he exalted in the technological innovations of the day – such as the automobile and its power and speed. “We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” (An ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre.)
He glorified violence and called for the tearing down of traditional values, museums and institutions. “We will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries.”8 The tone of the manifesto was aggressive – intended to provoke anger and controversy. It was quite the auspicious beginning. The manifesto had its intended result, inspiring a host of young male Italian artists including Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla.
Futurists embraced and glorified anything to do with modernity – with cars, aeroplanes, trains and war being frequent themes. Their art took many forms including painting, literature, sculpture and architecture, and aimed to communicate their infatuation with power, speed, movement, masculinity and violence.
Heavily influenced by Cubism, they adopted many of their techniques such as multiple view points, and fragmenting or intersecting planes. They also utilised repetition and blurring (similar to multiple photographic exposures) to convey motion.
Perhaps no other movements of the time could match the Futurists for their prolific ideological writings, as more manifestos were written on the subjects of painting, literature and architecture. Fittingly, they embraced modern technologies to widely disseminate their writings, utilising dynamic design and typography. Perhaps because of this, offshoots soon sprang up in the USA, Belgium, England and Russia – with the Russians being largely focused on literature. Marinetti himself had a strong vision for a new literature for a new world – stripped of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, and utilising mathematical symbols. Once again this was expressed through a manifesto in 1913 – Destruction of Syntax–Wireless Imagination–Words-in-Freedom.
The preoccupation with power, violence, technology and war inevitably led to many of the leading Italian artists of the movement meeting their deaths in World War One. The movement was never quite as prominent after the great war. However, its founder Marinetti was able to inspire a resurgence known as the second phase. As many of the artists were opposed to democracy, they eagerly embraced Mussolini and his fascists when they rose to power in 1922. Marinetti even wrote a manifesto for Mussolini.
Futurism was ultimately very influential on a number of other art movements of the time, particularly Vorticism and Constructivism. However, their obsession with violence and masculinity, their embrace of fascism, and many other aspects are very off-putting to me on a personal level.