FUTURISM

A term coined by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), Futurism emphasized discarding the static and irrelevant art of the past. It celebrated change, originality, and innovation in culture and society and glorified the new technology of the twentieth century, with emphasis on dynamism, speed, energy, and power. Russian Futurism, founded by Velimir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), a poet and a mystic, and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), the leading poet of Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet period, went beyond its Italian model with a focus on a revolutionary social and political outlook. In 1912 the Russian Futurists issued the manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" that advocated the ideas of Italian futurism and attacked Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. With the Revolution of 1917, the Russian Futurists attempted to dominate postrevolutionary culture in hopes of creating a new art integrating all aspects of daily life within a vision of total world transformation; artists would respond to a call to transcend and remake reality through a revolutionized aesthetic, to break down the barriers that had heretofore alienated the old art and the old reality. Russian Futurism argued that art, by eliciting predetermined emotions, could organize the will of the masses for action toward desired goals. In 1923 Mayakovsky cofounded with Osip Brik the Dadaistic journal LEF. Soviet avant-garde architects led by Nikolai Ladovsky were also highly influenced by Futurism and the theory that humanity's "world understanding" becomes a driving force determining human action only when it is fused with world-perception, defined as "the sum of man's emotional values … created by sympathy or revulsion, friendship or animosity, joy or sorrow, fear or courage." Only by sensing the world through the "feeling of matter" could one understand, and thus be driven to change, the world. The Futurists were initially favored by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet commissar of education, and obtained important cultural posts. But by 1930 they had lost influence within the government and within most of the literary community.

See also: lunacharsky, anatoly vasilievich; mayakovsky, vladimir vladimirovich; october revolution

bibliography

Janecek, Gerald. (1996). Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism. San Diego, CA: San Diego State University Press.

Markov, Vladimir. (1968). Russian Futurism: A History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hugh D. Hudson Jr.

futurism, Italian school of painting, sculpture, and literature that flourished from 1909, when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's first manifesto of futurism appeared, until the end of World War I. Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, and Giacomo Balla were the leading painters and Umberto Boccioni the chief sculptor of the group. The architect Antonio Sant' Elia also belonged to this school. The futurists strove to portray the dynamic character of 20th-century life; their works glorified danger, war, and the machine age, attacked academies, museums, and other establishment bastions, and, in theory at least, favored the growth of Italian fascism. The group had a major Paris exhibition in 1912 that showed the relationship of their work to cubism. Their approach to the rendering of movement by simultaneously representing several aspects of forms in motion influenced many painters, including Duchamp and Delaunay. Futurist principles and techniques strongly influenced Russian constructivism.

See studies by M. W. Martin (1968), J. Rye (1972), U. Apollino (1973), C. Tisdale and A. Bozollo (1985), and M. Perloff (1989); V. Greene, ed., Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe (museum catalog, 2014).

Futurism. Italian architectural movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) in 1909. It exploited images derived from industrial buildings (dams, hydroelectric schemes, silos, etc), skyscrapers, multi-level highways, and factories with curved ends, and it glorified machines, speed, and violence leading to world war. The chief architectural exponents were Antonio Sant-'Elia (1888–1916) and Mario Chiattone (1891–1957), who produced visions of the metropolis of the future, with forms reminiscent of some of those designed by the Vienna Sezessionists and Mendelsohn. The movement became closely associated with Fascism, and many of its ideas were absorbed by the avant-garde, notably Russian Constructivism, Le Corbusier, Archigram, and many others.

Bibliography

R. Banham (1960);
Caramel & and Longatti (1988);
Hulten (1987);
Martin (1977);
E. D. C. Meyer (1995);
Jane Turner (1996);
Tisdall & and Bozzolla (1977)

futurism. Artistic movt. which began in 1909 when Marinetti published his futurist manifesto in a Paris newspaper. Aim was to emphasize dynamic force and motion in industrial soc. Musically this meant all kinds of noise, and special instr. were invented, such as exploders, thunderers, and whistlers. Prominent in the movt. were Francesco Pratella (1880–1955), who composed for a standard orch., and Luigi Russolo (1885–1947), a painter, who wanted every kind of sound to be mus. material. Two of his works, perf. London 1914, were The Awakening of a Great City and A Meeting of Motorcars and Aeroplanes. Movement petered out c.1918, but left its mark.

fu·tur·ism / ˈfyoōchəˌrizəm/ • n. concern with events and trends of the future or which anticipate the future. ∎  (Futurism) an artistic movement begun in Italy in 1909 that violently rejected traditional forms so as to celebrate and incorporate into art the energy and dynamism of modern technology. Launched by Filippo Marinetti, it had effectively ended by 1918 but was widely influential, particularly in Russia on figures such as Malevich and Mayakovsky.

futurism Art movement that originated in Italy (1909) with the publication of the first futurist manifesto. It aimed to glorify machines and to depict speed and motion by means of an adapted version of cubism. It was violently opposed to the study of art of the past and embraced the values of modernity. Leading futurists include the poet Marinetti. Its ideas were absorbed by the Dada movement and by surrealism.

http://www.unknown.nu/futurism