Futurism

Futurism. Italian avant-garde art movement, launched in 1909, that exalted the dynamism of the modern world; it was literary in origin, but most of its major exponents were painters, and it also embraced sculpture, architecture, music, the cinema, and photography. The First World War brought the movement to an end as a vital force, but it lingered in Italy until the 1930s, and it had a strong influence in other countries, particularly Russia.

The founder of Futurism was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who launched the movement with a manifesto published in French in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. In bombastic, inflammatory language, he attacked established values (‘set fire to the library shelves … flood the museums') and called for the cultural rejuvenation of Italy by means of a new art that would celebrate technology, speed, and all things modern. Many Italians shared Marinetti's dismay that—following the stirring days of unification in the mid-19th century—their country had failed to become a truly modern nation, and few, if any, of the ideas expressed in the manifesto are original: they emerge from ‘a tangled web of turn-of-the-century political, cultural and philosophical currents’ ( Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla, Futurism, 1977). What was new was the exaggerated violence of the language and the skill with which the document was publicized. Marinetti was a brilliant manipulator of the media, and it is typical of his panache that he had his manifesto published not in some obscure journal, but on the front page of one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world (he was very wealthy and simply hired the space). Futurism was also novel as a movement in that it chose its own name and that it started with an idea and only gradually found a way of expressing it in artistic form.

In spite of Marinetti's repeated use of ‘we’ in the manifesto, there was no Futurist group when it was published. However, he soon attracted adherents among other Italians, notably a group of painters based in Milan, whom he helped to produce the Manifesto of Futurist Painters, published as a leaflet by his magazine Poesia in February 1910. It was drawn up by Boccioni, Carrà, and Russolo, and also signed by Balla (who lived in Rome) and Severini (who was in Paris at this time). The same five signed the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting, published in April 1910. Whereas the first painters' manifesto is little more than a repetition of Marinetti's bombast, the Technical Manifesto does suggest—although in vague terms—the course that Futurist painting would take, with the emphasis on conveying movement (or the experience of movement): ‘The gesture which we would reproduce on canvas shall no longer be a fixed moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation itself.’

In trying to work out a visual idiom to express such concerns, the Futurist painters at first were strongly influenced by Divisionism, in which forms are broken down into small patches of colour—suitable for suggesting sparkling effects of light or the blurring caused by high-speed movement, as in Boccioni's The City Rises (MOMA, New York, 1910–11). In 1911, however, Boccioni and Carrà visited Marinetti and Severini in Paris, where they were influenced by Cubism. Thereafter they began using fragmented forms and multiple viewpoints, with the sense of movement often accentuated by vigorous diagonals. Balla developed a different approach to suggesting motion, imitating the effects of multiple-exposure photography in which successive images taken a fraction of a second apart overlap and blur (such photographs had first been taken by Étienne-Jules Marey in the 1880s). The subjects of the Futurist painters were typically drawn from urban life, and they were often political in intent.

Futurist paintings were first publicly shown at a mixed exhibition in Milan in 1911, but the first proper group exhibition was held in February 1912 at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. Subsequently it travelled to London (the Sackville Gallery), Berlin (the Sturm Gallery, where many of the exhibits were bought by a private collector), Amsterdam, Zurich, Vienna, and Budapest. Marinetti's skilful promotion techniques (backed by his personal fortune) ensured that the exhibition gained a great deal of publicity; reactions to it were very mixed, but the Futurists were never ignored. The preface to the catalogue, signed by Balla (who did not exhibit), Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, and Severini, was in effect an updated manifesto, in which they discussed a vague principle of ‘force-lines', through which objects fuse with their surroundings. Their ideas are summarized by George Heard Hamilton as follows: ‘According to this document they wanted to portray the sum of visual and psychological sensations as a “synthesis of what one remembers and of what one sees”. In addition to the visible surface of objects, there are the dynamic sensations conveyed by the invisible extensions of their “force-lines”, which reveal how the object “would resolve itself were it to follow the tendencies of its forces”. Since the work of art, through this process of “physical transcendentalism”, can be considered the representation of a state of mind, and the force-lines, as perspective elements, tend towards infinity, the spectator is placed “in the centre of the picture”.’

Boccioni (the only major sculptor in the group) expressed similar ideas about the relationship of form, motion, and environment in his Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, published in April 1912. There was also a Manifesto of Futurist Architecture—by Antonio Sant'Elia (1888–1916), whose powerful and audacious designs remained on paper—as well as musical manifestos (see RUSSOLO), and several on other topics, including a Manifesto of Futurist Lust (1913) by the French writer, dancer and painter Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953). She thought that lust was an essential part of life's dynamism: ‘It is the sensory and sensual synthesis that leads to the greatest liberation of the spirit. It is a communion of a particle of humanity with all the sensuality of the earth.’ The Futurists spread their ideas also through meetings—in various public venues—that were sometimes like a cross between political rally and variety theatre, anticipating Performance art.

In keeping with this talent for self-promotion, the Futurists had widespread influence in the period immediately before and during the First World War. Stylistically, the influence is clear in the work of the Vorticists in England, for example, and that of Marcel Duchamp in France and Joseph Stella in the USA, whilst the use of provocative manifestos and other shock tactics was most eagerly adopted by the Dadaists. Outside Italy, however, it was in Russia that Futurism made the greatest impact, although there were significant differences between the movements in the two countries: Russian Futurism was expressed as much in literature and the theatre as in the visual arts, and it combined modern ideas with an interest in primitivism. The Union of Youth, founded in 1910, was an important nurturing ground for Futurism, but its starting-point as a movement in Russia is often reckoned to be the manifesto A Slap in the Face for Public Taste (1912), the signatories of which included David Burliuk and Vladimir Mayakovsky. The Russian Futurists rejected Symbolism, which had been such a powerful force in the country's art, demanding a new and experimental attitude, and they welcomed the Revolution. In terms of Russian painting, Futurism was particularly influential on Rayonism (see also CUBO-FUTURISM).

Russian Futurism flourished into the 1920s, but Italian Futurism—as an organized movement—was virtually ended by the First World War (during which Boccioni, its outstanding artist, and also Sant’ Elia died; ironically, Marinetti had welcomed the war as a means of cleansing the world). Of the leading painters of the pre-war phase, only Balla remained true to Futurism, and its centre of activity moved from Milan to Rome, where he lived. Carrà changed course completely during the war, joining de Chirico in Metaphysical Painting. After the war, Marinetti continued with his literary and political activities, supporting Fascism (he was a friend of Mussolini). Fascism and Futurism shared an aggressive nationalism and the names are often linked; Futurism has even been described as ‘the official art of Fascism'. This, however, is untrue. Although Fascism was ideologically close to Nazism, it was much more tolerant and open in artistic matters; there was no official art of the regime, but in the 1930s the pompous style favoured by some Novecento artists came much closer to this than Futurism ever did (see TOTALITARIAN ART). By this time all the life had gone out of Futurism, and Marinetti's attempt to revive it as Aeropittura was a mere footnote to the movement.

One of the best collections of Futurist art outside Italy is the Eric and Salome Estorick Foundation, London, which opened to the public in 1998. The collection was made by the American-born art dealer Eric Estorick (1913–93) and his wife Salome (1920–89).