GROUP ASSIGNMENT NO.

-2
ART 106A
Elements of Visual Representation.

FUTURISM

GROUP MEMBERS

Giacomo Balla, Abstract Speed Sound,

19131914

INTRODUCTION- Futurism is a
early 20th-century artistic movement
centred in Italy that emphasized the
dynamism, speed, energy, and power of the
machine and the vitality, change, and
restlessness of modern life. During the
second decade of the 20th century, the movements influence radiated outward across most of Europe,
most significantly to the Russian avant-garde. The most significant results of the movement were in the
visual arts and poetry.
Futurism was first announced on Feb. 20, 1909, when the Paris newspaper Le Figaro published a
manifesto by the Italian poet and editor Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti coined the word
Futurism to reflect his goal of discarding the art of the past and celebrating change, originality, and
innovation in culture and society. Marinettis manifesto glorified the new technology of
theautomobile and the beauty of its speed, power, and movement. Exalting violence and conflict, he
called for the sweeping repudiation of traditional values and the destruction of cultural institutions
such as museums and libraries. The manifestos rhetoric was passionately bombastic; its aggressive tone
was purposely intended to inspire public anger and arouse controversy.

FEATURES OF FUTURISM-The Futurists were fascinated by the problems of

representing modern experience, and strived to have their paintings evoke all kinds of sensations - and
not merely those visible to the eye. At its best, Futurist art brings to mind the noise, heat and even the
smell of the metropolis.
Unlike many other modern art movements, such as Impressionism and Pointillism, Futurism was not
immediately identified with a distinctive style. Instead its adherents worked in an eclectic manner,
borrowing from various aspects of Post-Impressionism, including Symbolism and Divisionism. It was
not until 1911 that a distinctive Futurist style emerged, and then it was a product of Cubist influence.
The Futurists were fascinated by new visual technology, in particular chrono-photography, a predecessor
of animation and cinema that allowed the movement of an object to be shown across a sequence of
frames. This technology was an important influence on their approach to showing movement in painting,
encouraging an abstract art with rhythmic, pulsating qualities.

CARLO CARRA
PAINTING
Italian painter
1913 painting
The red horseman

BIRTH

OF

FUTURISMIn 1909 the most important newspaper in the world of the Arts was the Parisian journal Le Figaro . In the
edition of the 20th February 1909 readers were shocked to read the The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism
which vigorously denounced the Passeists (being all the artists and poets of the past) and announcing the creation
of a new tradition, that of the Futurists. The tone was beautiful, poetic, intense and insane. Marinetti set forth
an eleven point plan which called for aggression, conflict and struggle, the praise of youth, speed and technology.
we will glorify war the worlds only hygiene militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the freedom
bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women.
In this, point nine of the Futurist Manifesto we can clearly see the political influence on the movement.
Patriotism, war and militarism are taken from the creeds of the Nationalist movements from whom Mussolinis
Fascism was to develop, yet also pay homage to the ideologies of the opposite extreme of the political spectrum.
The phrases about beautiful ideas worth dying for and destructive gestures of freedom bringers seems a direct
reference to Laurent Tailhades famous quote on the French anarchist Ravachols nail bombing of a Cafe
What do the victims matter if the gesture be beautiful?
Violent, shocking and disturbing, this first manifesto appeared on the front page of Le Figaro It was a bluff by
Marinetti; at this time there was no Futurist movement only himself and his ideas. It set the tone for what was
to come, however it succeeded in attracting several like-minded souls to the cause. Instead of quietly passing
through a phase of germination and debate, Futurism was born out of the international newspapers in a brilliant
media event alien to all that had come before. Those who were attracted by this brash statement swiftly joined
forces with Marinetti Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carra, Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini all responded to the
bait and Futurism suddenly had adherents amonst the artistic community. Herein we see Fillipo Marinettis
great genius, manipulation of the media being his greatest ability except perhaps for his skill as a self publicist.
He intended to bring about the End of all Past Art, and the creation of a New Art in much the same way another
media manipulator Malcolm Maclaren was to attempt to bring about the End of Pop Music by his creation of
Punk-rock some seventy years later..

GIACOMO BALLA
1913
Swifts, Paths of Movement And
Dynamic Sequences.
(Oil ON Canvas)

THE GROWTH OF FUTURISM (1909-15).

Futurism was hence born in a wave of publicity and scandal, and Marinetti continued as he
began. Polemics denounced the Passeists, and their tone can be gauged by a quotation from
the Founding Manifesto:-..because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of
professors, archeologists, ciceroni and antiquarians. For too long has Italy been a dealer in second
hand clothes. We mean to free her from the numberless museums that cover her like so many
graveyards.
The newspapers were used to publish full page advertisements and Marinetti set up a private
publishing house and began to run off large editions of futurist books which he largely gave
away.His novel Mafarka the Futurist (1910) featured a hero with a nine metre penis which he
was forced to keep wrapped around his waist when it was not in use, which was fortunately
rare. This adolescent voyage of sexual adventure did have one long lasting effect on Futurism.
Marinetti was arrested charged and ultimately fined for obscenity amidst colossal publicity. A t
once a new weapon was added to the Futurists arsenal and from then on being arrested was
used whenever possible to promote the movement. It was a sign of triumph, a declaration that
the Passeists were on the defensive.Another media that was used to draw attention to the
movement and its aims was The Futurist Evening. This took place in a large regional city
amidst a fanfare of publicity, and involved Exhibition of painting and sculpture, poetry readings
and above all else polemical insults designed to provoke a riot and arrests, in which the Futurists
frequently succeeded. The anarchist idea of Propaganda of the Deed was translated from the

realms of politics and bombings to the realms of artistic controversy and verbal violence. One
such incident is reported by Tisdall.
Marinetti and colleagues climbed the roof of the San Marco basilica in Venice and met the pious
leaving mass with a torrent of abuse for Venice and its piety, and an announcement of Futurism,
heralded by three apocalyptic blasts on a trumpet!
Futurism went beyond all the accepted parameters of an artistic movement. Not content with
his own publishing house Marinetti realized that the newspapers had been the great strength of
his movement from its inception. Not content with appearing in them, Futurists bought
out Lacerba, a cultural newspaper, and made it into the voice of Futurism. What was more
surprising is that this newspaper continued to sell, and mainly to the industrial workers of Milan
and Turin! The paper was produced from 1913-1915, initially bi-weekly, and later weekly, and
emphasized Futurism as a political movement. It is hard to imagine an Impressionist party with
a programme that appealed to the workers in the same way!
Futurism is probably best remembered today for its influence on the field of visual arts, and the
developments in this field were reflected by a certain degree of critical regard. An Exhibition in
Paris was later transferred to Berlin and London, and a distinctive style developed that took its
ideas from the philosophical basis of Futurism. Movement not Stasis embodies the spirit of this
painting, and in Part 2 I will attempt to define what Futurist Art actually was, and as
importantly what Futurism is today. It is ironic that Futurism defined itself by a series of
manifestos that cover everything from Poetry, Sculpture and Painting to Lust and Cookery, and
hence became a tradition as entrenched and defined as the Passeists. The end of Futurism
however was expected from Marinettis very first Founding Manifesto. When Marinetti first
published his Manifesto in 1909, stating that he didnt want any part of the past, the concept
of futurism was born.
The group of Italian artists that eagerly joined him loved everything that represented the triumph
of human intelligence over nature, like planes, cars, speed and technology.
They created some beautiful motion paintings. Unfortunately, they also took a liking on youth,
violence and nationalism, getting quite close to the Fascist party during the 1920s and 1930s.

UMBERTO
BOCCIONI (1910)
Medium canvas.
Sketch of the City Rises.

ITALIAN
FUTURISM.
The instigator of Futurism and its
chief theorist, was the Italian
writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
(1876-1944). It was he who
launched the movement in an article published in the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dell'Emilia and the French
paper Le Figaro, in February 1909. This general Manifesto was followed in February and April 1910 by two
further bulletins: the Manifesto of Futurist Painting and Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. As well as
Marinetti, they were signed by the painters Carlo Carra (1881-1966), Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) and Gino
Severini (1883-1966), the sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), and the painter and musician Luigi Russolo
(1885-1947). There was also a Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, written by Antonio Sant'Elia (1886-1916).

CONCEPTS AND STYLES:

The Italian group was slow to develop a distinct style. In the years prior to the emergence of the movement, its
members had worked in an eclectic range of styles inspired by Post-Impressionism, and they continued to do so.
Severini was typical in his interest in Divisionism, which involved breaking down light and color into a series of
stippled dots and stripes, and fracturing the picture plane into segments to achieve an ambiguous sense of depth.
Divisionism was rooted in the color theory of the 19th century, and Pointillist work of painters such as Georges
Seurat.
In 1911, Futurist paintings were exhibited in Milan at the Mostra d'arte libera, and invitations were extended
to "all those who want to assert something new, that is to say far from imitations, derivations and falsifications."
The paintings featured threadlike brushstrokes and highly keyed color that depicted space as fragmented and
fractured. Subjects and themes focused on technology, speed, and violence, rather than portraits or simple
landscapes. Among the paintings was Boccioni's The City Rises (1910), a picture which can claim to be the first
Futurist painting by virtue of its advanced, Cubist-influenced style. Public reaction was mixed. French critics
from literary and artistic circles expressed hostility, while many praised the innovative content.
Boccioni's encounter with Cubist painting in Paris had an important influence on him, and he carried this back
to his peers in Italy. Nevertheless, the Futurists claimed to reject the style, since they believed it was too
preoccupied by static objects, and not enough by the movement of the modern world. It was their fascination
with movement that led to their interest in chrono-photography. Balla was particularly enthusiastic about the
technology, and his pictures sometimes evoke fast-paced animation, with objects blurred by movement. As stated
by the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting, "On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina,
moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like rapid vibrations in their mad career. Thus
a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular." Rather than perceiving an
action as a performance of a single limb, Futurists viewed action as the convergence in time and space of multiple
extremities

NATALIA
GONCHAROVA
(1913)
The Cyclist.

RUSSIAN
FUTURISM:
Russian Futurism was a movement
of literature and the visual arts. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was a prominent member of the movement.
Visual artists such as David Burlyuk, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich found
inspiration in the imagery of Futurist writings and were poets themselves. It has also a larger impact on the all
suprematism movement. Other poets adopting Futurism included Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksey Kruchenykh.
Poets and painters collaborated on theatre production such as the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, with
texts by Kruchenykh and sets by Malevich.
The main style of painting was Cubo-Futurism, adopted in 1913 when Aristarkh Lentulov returned from Paris
and exhibited his paintings in Moscow. Cubo-Futurism combines the forms of Cubism with the representation
of movement. Like their Italian predecessors the Russian Futurists were fascinated with dynamism, speed and
the restlessness of modern urban life .
The Russian Futurists sought controversy by repudiating the art of the past, saying
that Pushkin and Dostoevsky should be "heaved overboard from the steamship of modernity". They acknowledged
no authority and professed not to owe anything even to Marinetti, whose principles they had earlier adopted,
obstructing him when he came to Russia to proselytize in 1914.
The movement began to decline after the revolution of 1917. Some Futurists died, others emigrated.
Mayakovsky and Malevich became part of the Sovietestablishment and the Agitprop movement of the 1920s.
Khlebnikov and others were persecuted. Mayakovsky committed suicide on April 14, 1930.

GIACOMO BALLA
(1914)
Mercury Passing
Before the Sun.
PAINTING
AND
SCULPTURES:
Marinettis manifesto inspired a group of
young painters in Milan to apply Futurist
ideas to the visual arts. Umberto Boccioni,
Carlo Carr, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla,
and Gino Severini published several manifestos
on painting in 1910. Like Marinetti, they glorified originality and expressed their disdain for inherited artistic traditions.
Although they were not yet working in what was to become the Futurist style, the group called for artists to have an
emotional involvement in the dynamics of modern life. They wanted to depict visually the perception of movement, speed,
and change. To achieve this, the Futurist painters adopted the Cubist technique of using fragmented and intersecting plane
surfaces and outlines to show several simultaneous views of an object. But the Futurists additionally sought to portray
the objects movement, so their works typically include rhythmic spatial repetitions of an objects outlines during transit.
The effect resembles multiple photographic exposures of a moving object. An example is Ballas painting Dynamism of a
Dog on a Leash (1912), in which a trotting dachshunds legs are depicted as a blur of multiple images. The Futurist
paintings differed from Cubist work in other important ways. While the Cubists favoured still life and portraiture, the
Futurists preferred subjects such as speeding automobiles and trains, racing cyclists, dancers, animals, and urban crowds.
Futurist paintings have brighter and more vibrant colours than Cubist works, and they reveal dynamic, agitated
compositions in which rhythmically swirling forms reach crescendos of violent movement.
Boccioni also became interested in sculpture, publishing a manifesto on the subject in the spring of 1912. He is considered
to have most fully realized his theories in two sculptures, Development of a Bottle in Space (1912), in which he represented
both the inner and outer contours of a bottle, and Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), in which a human figure
is not portrayed as one solid form but is instead composed of the multiple planes in space through which the figure moves.
Futurist principles extended to architecture as well. Antonio SantElia formulated a Futurist manifesto on architecture in
1914. His visionary drawings of highly mechanized cities and boldly modern skyscrapers prefigure some of the most
imaginative 20th-century architectural planning.
Boccioni, who had been the most talented artist in the group, and SantElia both died during military service in 1916.
Boccionis death, combined with expansion of the groups personnel and the sobering realities of the devastation caused by
World War I, effectively brought an end to the Futurist movement as an important historical force in the visual arts.

SOME MAJOR FUTURIST ARTISTS.

Giacomo Balla, Italian painter

Filla, Italian artist
Nzm Hikmet, Turkish poet
Bruno Jasieski, Polish poet
Vasily Kamensky, Russian poet
Pyotr Konchalovsky, Russian painter
Aleksei Kruchenykh, Russian poet
Mikhail Larionov, Russian painter
Aristarkh Lentulov, Russian painter
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian poet, playwright, novelist, journalist & theorist
Mikhail Matyushin, Russian painter and composer
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russian poet & designer
Angiolo Mazzoni, Italian architect
Sante Monachesi, Italian painter
Alexander Mosolov, Russian composer
Almada Negreiros, Portuguese painter, poet and novelist
Alexander Osmerkin, Russian painter, graphic artist & stage designer
Aldo Palazzeschi, Italian writer
Umberto Boccioni, Italian painter, sculptor
Anton Giulio Bragaglia Italian artist
David Burliuk, Russian painter
Vladimir Burliuk, Russian book illustrator
Mario Carli Italian poet
Carlo Carr, Italian painter
Benedetta Cappa, Italian painter and writer
Ambrogio Casati, Italian painter
Primo Conti, Italian artist
Giovanni Papini, Italian writer
Emilio Pettoruti, Argentinian painter
Lyubov Popova, Russian painter
Enrico Prampolini, Italian Futurist painter, sculptor and scenographer
Luigi Russolo, Italian painter, musician,instrument builder
Valentine de Saint-Point, French performer, theoretician, writer
Antonio Sant'Elia, Italian architect
Jules Schmalzigaug, Belgian painter
Tullio Crali Italian artist Etc.

UMBERTO BOCCIONI
Style: Futurism
Lived: October 19, 1882 - August 16,
1916 (20th century)
Nationality: Italy
Umberto Boccioni was born on October 19,
1882 in Reggio Calabria. He studied art
through the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the
Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, beginning in
1901. He also studied design with a sign
painter in Rome. In 1902, Boccioni studied
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles in
Paris. During later 1906 and early 1907, he
took drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle
Arti. In 1901, Boccioni first visited the Famiglia Artistica, a society for artists in Milan. There he became
acquainted with fellow Futurists including the famous poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The two would later
join with others in writing manifestos on Futurism.
Boccioni was both a Futurist painter and sculptor. One of Umberto Boccioni's best known paintings is The street
enters the house (La Strada Entra Nella Casa) in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany which featured an
exhibition on futurism in 2001. Other important Boccioni works include the bronze scupture, Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space (1913) and the painting, The City Rises (1910). His first solo exhibition was held in 1910 at
the Galleria Ca' Pesaro in Venice.
Boccioni expressed the overarching beliefs of Futurism in his Techincal Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture. Other
works that he co-authored include Manifesto of the Futurist Painters and Techincal Manifesto of Futurist
Painting published around 1910. In 1912, Boccioni shifted to sculputre and published his Manifesto of Futurist
Sculpters. All of these writings call for young artists to intensely pursue living, dynamic, and original forms of
art. Traditional art techniques and styles were discarded and art critics ignored. Futurists glorified
transformations of the world brought on by science.
Boccioni died on August 16, 1916 in Verona after falling off a horse during a training exercise for World War I
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1913
by Umberto Boccioni
In Private Collection
In Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, the figure is aerodynamically deformed by speed. Boccioni
exaggerated the body's dynamism so that it embodied the urge towards progress. The sculpture may
reflect ideas of the mechanised body that appeared in Futurist writings, as well as the ''superman''
envisaged by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Considered the most successful of Boccioni's
sculptural experiments, this bronze casting was done posthumously in 1949, from the artist's original
plaster (which was never cast during his lifetime).

The end of Futurism? The First World War.

From the beginning Futurism had expressed themes of War and Conflict as social hygiene chilling sentiments
with hindsight
We will glorify war the worlds only hygeine.
Their creed of danger and love of conflict made it inevitable that as the First World War began they would
immediately call for Italys entry into the conflict, on the side of what they saw as the French and British worker
against Austrian and German imperial aggression. When Italy did enter the conflict in 1915 many Futurists
immediately entered the conflict, and as a result the movement lost some of its greatest names. Marinetti was
to say that thirteen leading Futurists died in the war, but the most tragic blow was the loss of Boccioni, always
the driving force besides Marinetti himself. By the end of the war the tragic implications of modern technology
and war were obvious to all, and much pre-war futurist rhetoric seemed empty and facile. Even Balla began to
stray, and Carra who had survived the war largely owing to his institutionalization as a lunatic by an army
doctor (who did not understand his painting or his enthusiasm and patriotism for the war) became increasingly
disenchanted. During the war years Boccioni and Carra had become interested in Cubism and the movement
began to drift apart. By the cessation of conflict in 1919 the first wave of Futurism was effectively over, exactly
as Marinetti had predicted in The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism when he wrote
The oldest of us is thirty: so we have at least a decade for finishing our work. When we are forty, other younger
and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastepaper basket like useless manuscripts- we want it to
happen!
In the event Futurism refused to lay down gracefully and die, and as soon as the war was over Marinetti set
about creating a new Futurism.
By 1914, Italian Futurism was in decline. Personal rifts and artistic disagreements between the Milan group,
comprising Marinetti, Balla and Boccioni, and the Florentine group, around Carra, Giovanni Papini (18811956) and Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964), led to ructions. In particular, the Florence group objected to the
leadership of Marinetti and Boccioni. Meantime, to the satisfaction of the nationalist Marinetti, war broke out:
an event from which Futurism never recovered. Both Boccioni and Sant' Elia perished, Carra was wounded and
turned to Metaphysical Painting (Pittura Metafisica), while Severini turned to Neoclassicism. After the war,
Balla, based in Rome, led a younger group of Futurists (il secondo Futurismo) including Fortunato Depero (18921960) and Enrico Pampolini (1894-1956) whose painting became increasingly abstract. Marinetti too remained
an active participant, though his political activities took centre stage, causing Futurism - somewhat unfairly to be associated with Fascism.