Early 20th century

FUTURISM

Italy

Futurism, the context

Industrial revolution in Europe-early 1900s Aeroplane-1905 Innovations- electricity, x-rays, radio waves,

automobiles and airplanes Italy represented the past- Renaissance,

Baroque

Futurism, the movement

In the early 1900s, a group of young and rebellious Italian writers and artists emerged determined to celebrate industrialization. They were frustrated by Italy’s declining status and believed that the “Machine Age” would result in an entirely new world order and even a renewed consciousness. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the ringleader of this group, called the movement Futurism. Its members sought to capture the idea of modernity, the sensations and aesthetics of speed, movement, and industrial development

Objectives of Futurist Painters

• Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.

• Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.• Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.• Bear bravely and proudly the smear of "madness" with which they try

to gag all innovators.• Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.

• Rebel against the tyranny of words: "Harmony" and "good taste" and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin.

• Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.

• Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

Umberto Boccioni

"Let us fling open the figure and let it incorporate within itself whatever may surround it."

The city rises, 1912

The City Rises is often considered to be the first Futurist painting. Here, Boccioni illustrates the construction of a modern city. The chaos and

movement in the piece resemble a war scene as indeed war was presented in the Futurist

Manifesto as the only means toward cultural progress. The large horse races into the foreground

while several workers struggle to gain control, indicating tension between human and animal. The horse and figures are blurred, communicating rapid

movement while other elements, such as the buildings in the background, are rendered more realistically. At the same time, the perspective teeters dramatically in different sections of the painting. The work shows influences of Cubism,

Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism, revealed in the brushstrokes and fractured representation of

space.

Development of a bottle in space, Umberto Boccioni

Dynamism of a biker, Umberto Boccioni

Elasticity1912, oil on canvas100.06 x 100.06 cm 

Dynamism of the human body 1911, oil on canvas200 x 290.5 cm 

"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”

Giacomo Balla

Divisionism, painting with divided

rather than mixed color andbreaking the painted surface

into afield of stippled dots and

stripes.

Balla was fascinated by chrono-photography, a vintage technique whereby movement is demonstrated across several frames. This

encouraged Balla to find new ways of representing movement in painting,

and Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash is perhaps his most famous experiment. The work shows

a woman walking a small black dog, the movement collapsed into a single instant.

Displaying a close-up of the feet, Balla articulates action in process by combining

opaque and semi-transparent shapes.

Speed of a Motorcycle, G. Balla

Sculptural Construction of Noise and Speed, 1915, G. Balla

“This work exemplifies the Futurists' insistence that the perceived world is in

constant motion. These paintings illustrate light, speed and movement, which Balla

sought to break down to their simplest forms while moving closer to total abstraction.”

Carlo Carra

Carrà soon began creating still

Life paintings in a style he, along

with Giorgiode Chirico, called"metaphysical painting”

Anarchist Italian irredentist Fascist Motion and feeling(futurist) Form and stillness(cubist)

Interventionist Demonstration,

1914. Tempera and collage on

cardboard, 38.5 x 30 cm

Here, inspired by Cubist experiments in the same vein, Carlo Carrà introduces collage to the Futurist

repertoire technique. This piece blends Filippo Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto with innovative poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, resulting in a

disorienting composition. Collage elements crack the surface into various planes, creating new

perceptions of depth. The juxtaposition of phrases and vivid planes of color read as a kind of Futurist

propaganda.

Carlo Carra, 1912, Jolts in a cab

Carlo Carra, 1912, Concurrency, Woman on the Balcony

La Musa Metafisica“The metaphysical muse”Carlo Carra, 1912

“For us simultaneity is a lyrical exaltation, a plastic manifestation of a new absolute

speed.”

• http://www.mfah.org/exhibition.asp• http://www.artchive.com/artchive/f/futurist/elastic.jpg• http://xroads.virginia.edu/~museum/armory/galleryI/duchamp.240.html• http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/286.jpg• www.bridgemanartondemand.com

References

A presentation by:Ananya Kango 12623

Prateek Bandhu 12627Gaurav Chaudhary 12631

Rohit Patel 12632Abhishek Negi 12638

Thanks.

Simultaneous visionsUmberto Boccioni