Post by art4net on Jan 11, 2002 5:45:23 GMT -5
Literary and poetic in origin, the Futurist movement burst violently onto the European cultural scene on 20 February 1909 when the French newspaper Le Figaro carried on its front page the aggressive and inflammatory Founding and Manifesto of Futurism. It was written by the polemical Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a highly inventive firebrand and a master of public relations. In fact, at this stage, Marinetti was the movement’s only member but soon gathered a literary and artistic coterie around him. <br>
Within a year the doyen of the group, Giacomo Balla, with Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini co-signed The Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Indeed, Futurism was to be characterised by the huge number of wide-ranging manifestos issued in its name and used to promote it to a mass audience. In fact, the tenets of Futurism across the arts were invariably defined in words of manifestos long before they appeared in the arts themselves.
Futurism was a far-reaching Italian movement that included poetry, literature, painting, graphics, typography, sculpture, product design, architecture, photography, cinema and the performing arts and focused on the dynamic, energetic and violent character of changing 20th century life, especially city life. It particularly emphasised the power, force and motion of machinery combined with the contemporary fascination with speed while at the same time denouncing the 'static' art of the past and the passéist or old-fashioned establishment. On the downside it also glorified war, apparently denigrated women, initially favoured Fascism and vilified artistic tradition wanting to "…destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind…".
Of all the art forms embracing Futurism it was possibly painting that made, and still makes, the greatest mark. The Futurists’ prime concern was the expression of their ideas on culture and contemporary events. Stylistically widespread and lacking a defined, cohesive visual style, Futurist painting owes some debts to Italian Divisionism and much Futurist painting is often dismissed as a Cubist derivative. Specifically, the hard geometric lines and planes that characterise much of the early Futurist work of, for example, Balla, Carrà, Boccioni, Ardengo Soffici and Severini is related closely to the contemporary Cubist movement. Conversely, Futurist representations, of speed and motion especially, had some reciprocal influence on Cubism and on the Russian Constructivists.
Similarly, many Futurist pictorial experiments in capturing the path of movement – for example Balla’s Rhythms of a Bow (1912) – clearly owe much to work such as Marcel Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase (1911). This, in turn, paid homage to Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 studies of movement using time-lapse photography.
However, much Futurist work, especially in dynamically capturing the effects of movement, speed and light, is highly innovative. The first phase of Futurist art, during the early 1910's, was grounded in artistic experiment and was an "analytic" phase. During the latter half of the 1910's, Futurist art entered the "synthetic" stage - initially investigated and formulated by Balla with Depero and Prampolini. Often, while attempting to interpret through paint on canvas the tenets of their manifestos, these artists achieved truly astounding works that eventually demonstrated, through the invention and application of their new techniques, the validity of the Futurist hypotheses - a truly avant-garde art.
Futurism officially ended with the death of Marinetti and the fall of Italy in 1944. In 1950 Marinetti's widow, the artist Benedetta, called a reunion of surviving Futurists (Acquaviva, Andreoni, Benedetta, Buzzi, Crali, Masnata, Mazza and Munari) in Milan with a view to resurrecting the movement. While there was some agreement, the plans came to nothing although a few, such as Crali, continued to paint in Futurist style until well into the 1980's.
Following the Second World War Futurism was heavily tainted, both at home and abroad, because of its close links with Fascism. In retrospect however, with the benefit of detachment that time gives us, it can be seen that the impact and legacy of Futurism across the arts was enormous. There is no doubt that Futurism was the first 'modern' attempt to reorganise art and society around technology and the machine ethic and, as a common ancestor of most 20th century art, there are intrinsic vestiges of Futurism to be found throughout avant-garde art during the whole of the twentieth century.
FUTURISM and FUTURISTS:
www.futurism.org.uk/
Within a year the doyen of the group, Giacomo Balla, with Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini co-signed The Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Indeed, Futurism was to be characterised by the huge number of wide-ranging manifestos issued in its name and used to promote it to a mass audience. In fact, the tenets of Futurism across the arts were invariably defined in words of manifestos long before they appeared in the arts themselves.
Futurism was a far-reaching Italian movement that included poetry, literature, painting, graphics, typography, sculpture, product design, architecture, photography, cinema and the performing arts and focused on the dynamic, energetic and violent character of changing 20th century life, especially city life. It particularly emphasised the power, force and motion of machinery combined with the contemporary fascination with speed while at the same time denouncing the 'static' art of the past and the passéist or old-fashioned establishment. On the downside it also glorified war, apparently denigrated women, initially favoured Fascism and vilified artistic tradition wanting to "…destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind…".
Of all the art forms embracing Futurism it was possibly painting that made, and still makes, the greatest mark. The Futurists’ prime concern was the expression of their ideas on culture and contemporary events. Stylistically widespread and lacking a defined, cohesive visual style, Futurist painting owes some debts to Italian Divisionism and much Futurist painting is often dismissed as a Cubist derivative. Specifically, the hard geometric lines and planes that characterise much of the early Futurist work of, for example, Balla, Carrà, Boccioni, Ardengo Soffici and Severini is related closely to the contemporary Cubist movement. Conversely, Futurist representations, of speed and motion especially, had some reciprocal influence on Cubism and on the Russian Constructivists.
Similarly, many Futurist pictorial experiments in capturing the path of movement – for example Balla’s Rhythms of a Bow (1912) – clearly owe much to work such as Marcel Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase (1911). This, in turn, paid homage to Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 studies of movement using time-lapse photography.
However, much Futurist work, especially in dynamically capturing the effects of movement, speed and light, is highly innovative. The first phase of Futurist art, during the early 1910's, was grounded in artistic experiment and was an "analytic" phase. During the latter half of the 1910's, Futurist art entered the "synthetic" stage - initially investigated and formulated by Balla with Depero and Prampolini. Often, while attempting to interpret through paint on canvas the tenets of their manifestos, these artists achieved truly astounding works that eventually demonstrated, through the invention and application of their new techniques, the validity of the Futurist hypotheses - a truly avant-garde art.
Futurism officially ended with the death of Marinetti and the fall of Italy in 1944. In 1950 Marinetti's widow, the artist Benedetta, called a reunion of surviving Futurists (Acquaviva, Andreoni, Benedetta, Buzzi, Crali, Masnata, Mazza and Munari) in Milan with a view to resurrecting the movement. While there was some agreement, the plans came to nothing although a few, such as Crali, continued to paint in Futurist style until well into the 1980's.
Following the Second World War Futurism was heavily tainted, both at home and abroad, because of its close links with Fascism. In retrospect however, with the benefit of detachment that time gives us, it can be seen that the impact and legacy of Futurism across the arts was enormous. There is no doubt that Futurism was the first 'modern' attempt to reorganise art and society around technology and the machine ethic and, as a common ancestor of most 20th century art, there are intrinsic vestiges of Futurism to be found throughout avant-garde art during the whole of the twentieth century.
FUTURISM and FUTURISTS:
www.futurism.org.uk/