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The Manifesto of Futurism (Italian: Manifesto del Futurismo) is a manifesto written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published in 1909. [1] In it, Marinetti expresses an artistic philosophy called Futurism, which rejected the past and celebrated speed, machinery, violence, youth, and industry. The manifesto also advocated for the modernization and cultural rejuvenation of Italy.
Marinetti wrote the manifesto in the autumn of 1908, and it first appeared as a preface to a volume of his poems, published in Milan in January 1909. [2] It was published in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna on 5 February 1909, [3] and then in French as Manifeste du futurisme (Manifesto of Futurism) in the newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. [4] [5] [6] The April 1909 issue of Marinetti's Poesia focused on the manifesto, and the Italian and French versions were reprinted in March 1912 alongside the English version. [7] [8] In April 1909, the Madrid-based magazine Prometeo published the Spanish translation of the manifesto, which was translated by Ramón Gómez de la Serna. [9] [10]
At the end of the 19th century, the Futurists challenged the limits of Italian literature (see articles 1, 2, and 3). Their response included the use of deliberate excesses to demonstrate the existence of a dynamic, surviving Italian intellectual class.
During this period, when industry was becoming increasingly important across Europe, the Futurists sought to affirm that Italy was not only present but also possessed industry and the power to participate in new experiences. They believed Italy would find the essence of progress in major symbols like the car and its speed (see article 4). While nationalism was never openly declared, it was evident in their work.
The Futurists argued that literature would not be overshadowed by progress; instead, it would absorb progress as part of its natural evolution. They believed that progress must manifest in this way because man, through it, would unleash his instinctive nature. Man was reacting against the potentially overwhelming force of progress, asserting his centrality. Man would harness speed, rather than be dominated by it (see articles 5 and 6).
Poetry would help man embrace the idea that his soul is part of this transformation (see articles 6 and 7), introducing a new concept of beauty rooted in the human instinct for aggression.
The sense of history could not be overlooked, as this was a pivotal moment when many things were evolving into new forms and content. However, man would be able to navigate these changes (see article 8), carrying with him the essence of what has existed since the beginning of civilization.
In Article 9, war is described as a necessity for the health of the human spirit, a form of purification that promotes and benefits idealism. The Futurists' explicit glorification of war and its "hygienic" qualities influenced the ideology of fascism. Marinetti remained active in fascist politics until he withdrew in protest against the focus on "Roman Grandeur," which had come to dominate fascist aesthetics.
Article 10 states: "We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism, and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice." However, Futurism scholar Günter Berghaus argues that Marinetti's stance against "feminism" in Article 10 is unclear, especially when contrasted with his publication of works by women Futurists in the literary journal Poesia . [11]
This manifesto was published well before the occurrence of the 20th-century events commonly associated with its potential meaning. However, the political movements underlying these events were already well-established and undoubtedly informed Marinetti's thinking, while his publication subsequently influenced them. Most notably, the rise of Italian Fascism, which the manifesto is widely seen as a precursor to, and Mussolini, who often quoted Marinetti. [12] At the time of its publication, the manifesto was frequently cited as an "imagining of the future" for some of these political movements, glorifying violence and conflict, and calling for the destruction of cultural institutions like museums and libraries. [13] For example, the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the first successfully sustained revolution of the type described in Article 11, echoed these ideas. The earlier, smaller-scale peasant uprisings known as the Russian Revolution, which led to the creation of a Russian constitution by the State Duma in 1906, occurred just before the manifesto's publication.
The effect of the manifesto is even more evident in the Italian version. Not a single word is used casually; if not in their precise forms, at least the roots of these words evoke those more commonly used during the Middle Ages, particularly during the Renaissance.[ citation needed ]
The founding manifesto did not include a positive artistic program, which the Futurists aimed to establish in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (1914). [14] This commitment to a "universal dynamism" was intended to be directly represented in painting. In reality, objects are not separate from one another or their surroundings: "The sixteen people around you in a rolling motor bus are in turn and at the same time one, ten four three; they are motionless and they change places. ... The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn, the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it." [15]
Several women were active in the Futurist movement and contributed to its manifestos. Benedetta Cappa worked in ceramics, glass, paint, and metal to explore the concept of Aeropainting. [16] She also co-wrote the Manifesto of Tattilismo alongside her husband, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The manifesto asserts that art is meant to be touched and experienced with the body. [17]
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye de Créteil between 1907 and 1908. Marinetti is best known as the author of the Manifesto of Futurism, which was written and published in 1909, and as a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto, in 1919.
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures included Italian artists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. Italian Futurism glorified modernity and, according to its doctrine, "aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past." Important Futurist works included Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's 1913–1914 painting Abstract Speed + Sound, and Russolo's The Art of Noises (1913).
Umberto Boccioni was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach to the dynamism of form and the deconstruction of solid mass guided artists long after his death. His works are held by many public art museums, and in 1988 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City organized a major retrospective of 100 pieces.
Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings, he depicted light, movement and speed. He was concerned with expressing movement in his works, but unlike other leading futurists he was not interested in machines or violence with his works tending towards the witty and whimsical.
Italian futurist cinema was the oldest movement of European avant-garde cinema. Italian futurism, an artistic and social movement, impacted the Italian film industry from 1916 to 1919. It influenced Russian Futurist cinema and German Expressionist cinema. Its cultural importance was considerable and influenced all subsequent avant-gardes, as well as some authors of narrative cinema; its echo expands to the dreamlike visions of some films by Alfred Hitchcock.
Zang Tumb Tumb is a sound poem and concrete poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist. It appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist's book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople, which he witnessed as a reporter for L'Intransigeant. The poem uses Parole in libertà and other poetic impressions of the events of the battle, including the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The work is now seen as a seminal work of modernist art, and an enormous influence on the emerging culture of European avant-garde print.
"[The] masterpiece of Words-in-freedom and of Marinetti’s literary career was the novel Zang Tumb Tuuum... the story of the siege by the Bulgarians of Turkish Adrianople in the Balkan War, which Marinetti had witnessed as a war reporter. The dynamic rhythms and onomatopoetic possibilities that the new form offered were made even more effective through the revolutionary use of different typefaces, forms and graphic arrangements and sizes that became a distinctive part of Futurism. In Zang Tumb Tuuum; they are used to express an extraordinary range of different moods and speeds, quite apart from the noise and chaos of battle.... Audiences in London, Berlin and Rome alike were bowled over by the tongue-twisting vitality with which Marinetti declaimed Zang Tumb Tuuum. As an extended sound poem it stands as one of the monuments of experimental literature, its telegraphic barrage of nouns, colours, exclamations and directions pouring out in the screeching of trains, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, and the clatter of telegraphic messages." — Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzola
Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture born in Italy, characterized by long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion, urgency and lyricism: it was a part of Futurism, an artistic movement founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurism, in 1909. The movement attracted not only poets, musicians, and artists but also a number of architects. A cult of the Machine Age and even a glorification of war and violence were among the themes of the Futurists - several prominent futurists were killed after volunteering to fight in World War I. The latter group included the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, who, though building little, translated the futurist vision into an urban form.
Futurist meals comprised a cuisine and style of dining advocated by some members of the Futurist movement, particularly in Italy. These meals were first proposed in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Luigi Colombo (Fillìa)'s Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, published in Turin's Gazzetta del Popolo on December 28, 1930. In 1932, Marinetti and Fillìa expanded upon these concepts in The Futurist Cookbook.
Valentine de Saint-Point was a French writer, poet, painter, playwright, art critic, choreographer, lecturer and journalist. She is primarily known for being the first woman to have written a futurist manifesto. Additionally, she was also active in Parisian salons and the associated literary and artistic movements of the Belle Epoque. Her writings and performances of La Métachorie demonstrated her theory of "a total fusion of the arts." Performed veiled, it is an exploration of the body's relationship to nature and geometric archetypes that govern physical form and movement. Finding a similar universality in Islamic art, she converted to Islam and moved to Alexandria where she also became involved in Middle Eastern politics, writing prolifically as an advocate for Egyptian and Syrian independence from French rule. She died at the age of 78. Her Muslim name was Ruhiyya Nur al-Din and she is buried next to the Imam al-Shafii.
Gerardo Dottori was an Italian Futurist painter. He signed the Futurist Manifesto of Aeropainting in 1929. He was associated with the city of Perugia most of his life, living in Milan for six months as a student and in Rome from 1926-39. Dottori's' principal output was the representation of landscapes and visions of Umbria, mostly viewed from a great height. Among the most famous of these are Umbrian Spring and Fire in the City, both from the early 1920s; this last one is now housed in the Museo civico di Palazzo della Penna in Perugia, with many of Dottori's other works. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics and the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Fillìa was the name adopted by Luigi Colombo, an Italian artist associated with the second generation of Futurism. Aside from painting, his works included interior design, architecture, furniture and decorative objects.
Giovanni Lista is an Italian art historian and art critic, resides in Paris. He is a specialist in the artistic cultural scene of the 1920s, particularly in Futurism.
Aeropittura (Aeropainting) was a major expression of the second generation of Italian Futurism, from 1929 through the early 1940s. The technology and excitement of flight, directly experienced by most aeropainters, offered aeroplanes and aerial landscape as new subject matter.
Benedetta Cappa was an Italian futurist artist who has had retrospectives at the Walker Art Center and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her work fits within the second phase of Italian Futurism.
The Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto (1910) by Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was the first exposition of the theoretical underpinnings of Italian Futurist painting.
The Futurist Political Party was an Italian political party founded in 1918 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti as an extension of the futurist artistic and social movement. The party had a radical program which included promoting gender parity and abolishing marriage, inheritance, military service and secret police. The party was absorbed into the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919.
Růžena Zátková, also called Rougina Zatkova, was a painter and sculptor who has been regarded as the "only authentic Czech futurist." As a result of her Bohemian heritage and her decade-long residency in Rome, Růžena Zátková became an important artistic link between Russian and Italian Futurism. Zátková is considered one of the pioneers of kinetic art.
Ivo Pannaggi was an Italian painter and architect who was active in the Futurist movement and later associated with the Bauhaus.
Omero Vecchi, known by his pen name Luciano Folgore, was an Italian poet.
Prometeo was a monthly avant-garde magazine which existed between 1908 and 1912 in Madrid, Spain. The magazine was established by the avant-garde writer Javier Gómez de la Serna. Its subtitle was revista social y literaria.
