A Bonfire of Vanities: Futurism and the Second Reformation

Why do so few books on twentieth century art history pay attention to futurism? Or to put it differently, why do so many books pay solittle attention to futurism? Possibly because it was a short-lived movement, dying with the deaths of two of its main practitioners andtheorists in WWI; possibly because the spokesperson who did not die became affiliated with Mussolini and so there has been atendency to associate futurism with a type of pre-fascist mind-set, possibly because in the eyes of some critics and historians itappears to be derivative of cubism with nothing new to offer. If we go against the grain and decide to include futurism, what reasonsdo we have for doing this? Possibly because of the ways in which futurism is precisely unlike cubism: although cubism did noteliminate the real world from its content and Picasso did use his art as a form of social commentary, this moderately political use ofhis art has always been elusive and hard to perceive. In contrast, the futurists centralized the social-political thematic to such adegree, we have to see this movement as being a social revolution before being an aesthetic one.

Umberto Boccioni: Development of a Bottle inSpace, 1912

Development of a Bottle (from a slightly differentangle)

A cmparison between these two works may illuminate the differences between the movements and foreground the futurist experience.

The Bottle has been cut open and the forms have been peeled off and juxtaposed in such a way that the viewer cannot logically putthem together. Motion is implied as the viewer tries to experience the bottle from all sides in order to put it together again. Yet thebottle is still a frontal work, and this frontality denies movement and to some extent gives the bottle the sense of being a collage orrelief. The bottle is frontal because the only position from which we can perceive the peeling away of conical forms is the front. Fromthis position, the hollow center becomes an embodiment of stillness while the exterior begins to embody rotation and movement. Thebottle also becomes a metaphor for our partial knowledge of things. Although this does connect to cubism, the difference betweenthem lies in the fact that the cubists were more interested in the language of representation than the futurists were, while thefuturists were more interested in the creation of movement.

Picasso: Guitar, 1912 Picasso: Guitar, 1924

The cubist construction remains closer to a collage in its format and conceptualization; it is not, in the end, intended to be experiencedas a guitar but as an experiment in the revelation of the language and grammar of a work of art, which in this case is visual and three-dimensional. Picasso has not really dissembled his guitar; he has taken the language he was developing in his collages and made itexist in three-dimensional space. If the bottle becomes a visual argument for a penetrating intelligence that sees through to inneressences, this is a very different message from that of Picasso's guitar. In the instrument, Picasso uses the marks and signs ofshading and three-dimensionality, signs that are used in a drawing or painting and which are superfluous in a sculpture. These marksand signs therefore become the symbols of a language, but a language deprived of meaning in this context.

Marinetti and the Futurist Manifesto, published in Le Figaro, Feb. 20, 1909

Cubism was a direct attack on Renaissance perspective. As such, it was also a direct provocation to some Italian artists, to Marinetti,in particular. Historically, Italy had once been the dominant force in the world of art but by the 19th century, if not before, it had cededits importance to Paris. Although they could at first ignore this change, by the early 20th century, Italian artists felt the need toreclaim their position at the center of the art world but they had to do this without resorting to the classical Italian tradition. Thechallenge, then, is to find some reconciliation with the French avant-garde while nevertheless asserting an Italian identity but anidentity which is free of tradition. That’s quite a challenge and the first response would appear to be made in print in an article ormanifesto published in a Parisian newspaper, Le Figaro, on Feb. 20, 1909. The manifesto calls on artists to reject the old and embracethe new:

artists should find inspiration in contemporary lifethey should rebel against tradition and bourgeois valuesthey should celebrate the worker, speed, and the "art" of war

The goal of glorifying war is certainly difficult to understand or accept. The problem, however, may lie in how literally we interpret war. Just as the goal of returning to the primitive was more important as a metaphor, the goal of celebrating war was significant in terms ofmetaphor. War in this manifesto not only stands for the destruction of the past and of mundane values and norms. War is also aspectacle, an art form in itself, as worthy a subject for art as the machine or the café. This is perhaps one of the most radical featuresof futurism: that futurism is an art which essentially makes the representation of war its primary subject and technique withoutnecessarily depicting battle scenes. Ultimately, we might consider this a war on previous styles, especially when we note the ways inwhich the futurists subverted most of the styles which formed their artistic inheritance.

Carlos Carra

Carra: Interventionist Manifesto (FreeWords), 1914

Carra: The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1911

The Interventionist Manifesto is a poster of words. Unlike Picasso, who used words as one element of his collages, this work is nothingbut words. The pinwheel swirling of these words, some of which can be read and some of which cannot be, may replicate theexperience of being drowned in a flood of words in print and spoken voices at the same time that it may replicate the opposite: theexperience of how words lose their meaning and become inaudible the farther away you get from them and as they are endlesslyrepeated by other people. Galli, referred to in the second painting, was killed in 1904 in a strike in Milan. Carra witnessed the riot athis funeral. the painting, a tumultuous rendering of violence and combat, is dominated by the networks of sweeping diagonal lines ofcolor. Galli is clearly not the real subject in this painting. We might want to consider, then, that just as the Funeral of the Anarchist Galliis more about velocity and movement than it is about war or a funeral, maybe the Interventionist Manifesto is likewise aboutmovement and not about words. Yet we don't want to ignore the fact that many of the words in the poster were real pronounceablewords, and the viewer of this poster might literally speak it aloud. We really can't experience its effect in a visual image.

Boccioni would undoubtedly have been the best of the futurist painters, if he hadn't died in WWI. He wrote The Futurist Manifesto ofPainting in 1910. He was also a sculptor, in fact, the only futurist sculptor. He addressed sculpture in another manifesto. Indeed, afterMarinetti wrote the first one, all the futurists began to write manifestos, generally addressing technique in addition to the grand,sweeping goals of the movement.

Boccioni: Riot in the Galleria, 1910 Boccioni: The City Rises, 1910

The fundamental premise of Boccioni's painting manifesto was the idea that painting had to render the sensation of movement or auniversal dynamism. In addition, he said, the futurist artist wanted to thrust the viewer into the center of the painting because only inthis way could the artist’s vision be seen as emanating from the center of society, and only in this way could the artist be an agent-provacateur. We see him beginning to do this in the transition from the more sedate, neo-impressionist Riot to the greater agitation

and more dynamic composition of the City Rises.

Boccioni's States of Mind triptych, 1911

States of Mind: Those Who Stay, 1911 States of Mind: Those Who Go, 1911

States of Mind: The Farewells, 1911

Increasingly, Boccioni was less interested in depicting anecdotal scenes of paintings about riots and more intereted in the interiorsubjective states of emotional experience. By 1911 he was working on a triptych depicting “states of mind” or the inner experiencesassociated with people traveling and the people who are left behind. When he started the series, he was working in a moreexpressionist style. Before he completed it, he went to Paris and after his return, he began to replace the expressionistic qualities withwhat he thought of as an emotional architecture. Boccioni's triptych makes reference to cubist qualities--the use of numbers, thearchitectonic "scaffolding"--but he consistently uses these references for reasons that are opposite to their use in cubist paintings. Ifhis technique can be seen as a rejection of cubism, then so can his subject (emotional states). But in fact, there might be said to betwo subjects to this triptych–the emotional states experienced by people during a leave-taking and the experience of movement. Thefuturists considered their particular contribution to modern painting to be the idea of “lines of force,” or lines radiating from thedepicted object to the spectator’s intuition, lines revealing the “vibrations” emitted by an object into its surroundings, and linesrevealing the decomposition of an object, with decomposition referring the way an object’s impact diminishes over time and space.

Carra: The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli,1911

Mikhail Larionov: Glass, 1912 Larionov: Domination of Red, 1912-13

Although the futurist idea of lines of force would appear to have a lot in common with the Russian artist Mikhail Larionov and hisconcept of rayism, Larionov's interest was in the rays of light which were emitted by objects. For Larionov, the subject of the paintingwas less important than the fact that these rays of light would lead to the fourth dimension.

Giacomo Balla

Balla: Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912 Balla: The Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

Balla: Mercury Passing in Front of the Sun,Seen through Binoculars, 1914

Balla: Abstract Speed and Sound, 1913-14

Balla, like the other futurists, began with a strong background in post-impressionist divisionism (the influence of Seurat). He becameincreasingly interested in the essence of movement, with the early ones revealing a rather mimetic approach to the creation ofmovement. Balla’s interest in movement was both kinetic or cinematic and an interest in the idea of emitted vibrations. The interestin vibrations is evident in a painting he made of an electric light. This is a new subject, and despite his use of divisionist technique,which is not new, his picture of the diffusion of light into the atmosphere is. The Dog on a Leash, and other paintings he did whichwere similar to this one, shows more of an interest in serial motion studies in photography, an interest shared by a number of artists atthis time, including Picasso. As he became more interested in movement per se, his paintings became increasingly autonomous orfreed of the object. The feeling of speed takes precedence over the physical object which eventually becomes little more than colors ofmovement.

Boccioni: Elasticity, 1912 Boccioni: The Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1912

Boccioni takes a similar step toward abstraction in these paintings. The exertion of the athlete was not a new subject or theme, butconsistently in Boccioni’s treatment the figure disintegrates into a “nucleus” of force lines or force forms. The centrifugal compositionin each case serves to pull the viewer into the vortex of the painting in an effort to reconstitute the figure. These paintings reflectanother interest of his – by 1912 and 1913, Boccioni was turning his attention to sculpture. Paintings such as these are actuallyderived from his consideration of three-dimensional space.

"Let us break open the figure and enclose the environment in it..."

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,1913

Unique Forms...(different angle)

Boccioni initially formulated his ideas about futurism in the form of a manifesto of architecture, although he dealt with painting andsculpture in this manifesto. In it, he called for the depiction of movement, the rejection of styles from the past and from “foreign”countries, he called for the use of bright colors, contrasting materials, and all kinds of shapes so that the house would no longer have auniform or even recognizable image. The city and the building both were to be conceptualized as an envelope of space, whereaspainting and sculpture would incorporate space into the design and in this way, destroy the separation between spectator and object,and, in fact, destroy the notion of a unitary representation of some independently existing object. In his manifesto on sculpture,Boccioni called for the “absolute and complete abolition of the finite line and closed sculpture. Let us break open the figure andenclose the environment in it,” were his words, and he begins to speak in terms of math, rather than emotions.

The Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) is a figure which challenges space and makes it into a battle field. The figure extends

into space and this act of extension becomes palpable, as real as the object itself. The area which surrounds the object is invaded bythe object but this space likewise invades the object -- hence, the phrase "militarized zone" which describes the space around thefigure.

Boccioni's contribution in sculpture comes from the way he explicitly incorporates time and space into his sculpture although thesculpture is not kinetic. His work also re-defines the idea of absolute knowledge as something which is inextricably tied to relativeknowledge. For Boccioni, knowledge is a fusion of the experience of relative motion and absolute motion, with the first relating tocontingent relationships and experiences of the object in space and in motion, and the second relating to core properties of thematerials of the object.

Futurist Architecture: the Citta Nuova and Antonio Sant'Elia

Sant'Elia: central station project for Milan, 1914 Sant'Elia: apartment tower project,

1914

Although Boccioni had written a manifesto about architecture, he never offered a vision of the futurist city. Antonio Sant’ Elia was theone to do this. In his “official” futurist manifesto of architecture, he declared that “architecture must ... begin again from thebeginning.” He called for an architecture of new materials, without ornament or decoration, and an architecture of oblique and ellipticallines. He abandons the traditional architectural presentation forms–plan and elevation and the emphasis on construction details–andrelies entirely on perspective drawings because they allowed him to convey the atmosphere of urban dynamism.

Sant’Elia and Boccioni were the most promising of the Futurists. Both were killed in the war, before providing an answer to the onequestion which can’t be answered: would the futurists have eventually chosen complete abstraction? It does seem likely that Boccionimight have gone in that direction. But at the same time, these were artists for whom the subject matter was of vital, if not political,importance. So the question remains unanswered and impossible to predict.