Il Giocattolo Futurista': Futurism and Fumetti (original) (raw)
BOOK AND GRAPHICS IN THE TIME OF FUTURISM
This essay summarizes the main features of Futurist books, by accounting for their complex originality. Since the early stages of their careers, Futurists employed books as a privileged means of experimentation both in terms of graphics and contents. Authors like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Francesco Cangiullo, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero and Ardengo Soffici explored the visual, graphic and onomatopoeic possibilities of written words in parolibere. These authors put into practice a typographic revolution, which aimed to subvert the usual order within a page, through the use of different characters and colours. In particular, Marinetti announced the birth of this peculiar expressive form in his manifests and set the grounds for a renewal of written expression.
This essay summarizes the main features of Futurist books, by accounting for their complex originality. Since the early stages of their careers, Futurists employed books as a privileged means of experimentation both in terms of graphics and contents. Authors like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Francesco Cangiullo, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero and Ardengo Soffici explored the visual, graphic and onomatopoeic possibilities of written words in parolibere. These authors put into practice a typographic revolution, which aimed to subvert the usual order within a page, through the use of different characters and colours. In particular, Marinetti announced the birth of this peculiar expressive form in his manifests and set the grounds for a renewal of written expression.
The Italian Futurist movement has come back into vogue with its centenary in 2009 and the landmark exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that ran through 2014. The cultural influence of this movement on the modern era is undisputed, whether we look at paintings, literature, poetry, sculpture, architecture, music, or advertising. It is also undisputed that this avant-garde movement was deeply involved in the politics of both liberal and Fascist Italy. Futurist politics were characterized by a pronounced nationalism and imperialism, and were known for the mantra that war was the 'world's only hygiene' .
Futurismo: Linking Past and Present through an Artistic Aesthetic
Theatre Topics
Ah Futurismo" shouts the recorded voice of F. T. Marinetti as the performers' stark, uplifted gestures arrest the descending light at the conclusion of Futurismo, a dance theatre production at Santa Clara University collaboratively created in 2013 by theatre artist Jeffrey Bracco and choreographer David Popalisky. This collaboration grew out of a mutual interest in the ideas, strategies, and values articulated in the pre-World War I foundational Futurist manifestos by F. T. Marinetti and how he and his collaborators implemented them through performance. Recognizing that the early Italian Futurists' embrace of speed through glorification of machines resonates with our present reliance upon technological innovation, we chose to use performance to critically investigate our relationship with speed and technology in the twenty-first century. This essay considers the implications for undergraduate students and ourselves as teaching artists of the creative choices employed in Futurismo. Our process, with its strengths and challenges, may prove useful for other artist-educators working in academic settings. What follows is a rationale for why the early avant-garde period of Futurism prior to World War I was most relevant to Futurismo's creation and thematic development. Next, we discuss how early Italian Futurist strategies and specific historical artifacts influenced the conceptualization of
Yale University Press, 2024
As the first comprehensive avant-garde of the twentieth century, Italian Futurism sought to integrate modern life with every imaginable aesthetic medium. The detached materiality of sculpture offered a singular proving ground for the drive to merge art and existence. Sculpture’s theory and practice offers a distillation of Futurism’s larger aims and frustrations: a will to mechanize haunted by the tradition of craft; the liberation of flight burdened by mass and gravity; the lyrical mutiny of form chastened by the exigencies of design; and a dream of totality splintered by the contingency of the fragment. Centered on avant-garde sculpture in Italy and other European countries between the world wars, Fragments of Totality ventures a new history of Futurism and its fraught ideological ambitions. Illuminating understudied works by prominent artists like Giacomo Balla, Enrico Prampolini, Fortunato Depero, and Bruno Munari alongside the efforts of many lesser-known figures, this first major study of Futurist sculpture opens onto wider questions: from labor and leftist Futurism, to the politics of aesthetic autonomy, to the intersections between race, imperialism, and materials. The medium—and the idea—of sculpture sets into relief the demands of any project of modern cultural totality. Futurism’s shifting definitions of “plasticity” underscore the volatile political economy not only of interwar Italy, but also perhaps of a wider Western epoch.
Futurism and Propaganda: Manifestos, Theatres, and Magazines
My dissertation argues that Italian Futurism, in twentieth century Europe, was able to gain widespread recognition because it modelled its methods of diffusion after the parliamentary styled campaigns of social movements. Futurism not only introduced a new style of art but also transformed the way in which art was promoted, politicized, and used as a tool for propaganda. Through an analysis of the Futurist communicative strategies - in particular the use of the manifesto, theatrical space, and literary magazines - the dissertation shows how Marinetti and the Futurists were able to bring together different methods of collective action with symbolic acts of self-representation. These elements coalesced into the Futurist campaign, which allowed the movement to spread throughout the world.
Futurist Conditions: Imagining Time in Italian Futurism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)
ISBN 9781501343124, 2020
Mather's scholarship demonstrates it was the camera--not the engine--that was the key invention against which many futurist ideas and practices were measured. Overturning some misconceptions about Italian futurism's interest in the disruptive and destructive effects of technology, _Futurist Conditions_ argues that the formal and conceptual approaches by futurist visual artists reoriented the possibly dehumanizing effects of mechanized imagery toward more humanizing and spiritual aims. Through its sustained analysis of the artworks and writings of Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, and the Bragaglia brothers, dating to the first decade after the movement's founding in 1909, Mather's account of their obsession with motion pivots around a 1913 debate on the role of photography among more traditional artistic mediums, a debate culminating in the expulsion of the Bragaglias, but one that also prompted productive responses by other futurist artists to world-changing social, political, and economic conditions.
The Futurist Manifestos of Early 1910: Dates and Editions Reconsidered
International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, 2022
This essay is the second part of my research devoted to Futurist manifestos from 1909 to 1911 and deals with the publishing history of the manifesto leaflets issued by Marinetti from February to the summer of 1910, when the founder of Futurism employed this print medium for the first time for a large-scale propaganda initiative. It discusses the first edition of the “Manifesto of the Futurist Painters”, the “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Paintings” and “Futurist Venice”, and investigates their variant printings and editions in Italian, French and English. My investigations extend to Marinetti’s parallel publishing activities and have brought to light a number of previously unknown facts which help to establish a more accurate timeline of the developments in early Futurism. In the conclusion, this essay addresses the concept of manifesto leaflets as a new means of communication, which gradually replaced the medium of the magazine and allowed Marinetti to introduce new ways of managing Futurist propaganda and the membership of the Futurist group.
2016
This article aims to reflect on the legacy of Italian Futurism in 20th-century art and culture, as well as to discuss over how aesthetics and futuristic ideology permeate the post-modern and globalized scenario of the present days. In seeking to demonstrate how the futuristic experience contributed to the development of a poetics of contemporary art, we intend to launch a look at Futurism as an aesthetic of time, a motion turned into a kind of archetype of future artistic experiences.
Lucio Fontana and Futurism after the Second World War
“International Yearbook of Futurism Studies”, 2018
In his writings and interviews, Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) always acknowledged his affinity with Futurism. This essay examines how this connection was articulated in Fontana's statements and creative works after the Second World War, considering his relationships with artists and artistic groups who rediscovered Futurism in the postwar period and appropriated some of its aims and methods. This analysis will reveal the influence of Marinetti's artistic movement on Fontana ever since the very beginnings of Spatialism, starting with the Manifiesto blanco (White Manifesto, 1946) launched in Buenos Aires and leading on to the programmatic texts Fontana wrote in Milan within the Spatialist movement. These observations will enable us to understand how themes previously explored by Futurism, such as scientific progress, plastic dynamism and the adoption of new media, re-emerged in Fontana's aesthetic and works, which responded to the most pressing issues of his day: from his 'holes' to his 'cuts', from his Spatial Environments to the cycle dedicated to New York. The essay will also explore in more detail specific phases in Fontana's oeuvre that demonstrate a particular wealth of connections with Futurism, like the fruitful meetings with Enrico Baj, Farfa and the Nuclear Art movement, all interpreters in their own way of Marinetti's and his associates' legacy. The same is true for Gruppo T, whose kinetic art and multi-sensory environments showed an engagement with Fontana's approach and engendered notable exchanges with the Futurist heritage.
"Le Futurisme mondial": Reception and Adaptation in International Futurism
Revista de história da arte 10 (April 2014): 182-189. F.T. Marinetti’s manifesto of 1924, Le Futurisme mondial, contained a list of 172 supposed members of an “international Futurist movement”. Undoubtedly, Futurism acted as a stimulant and exerted a fertilizing function in the lives of many artists outside Italy. But Marinetti’s notion of “influence” does not hold up in the light of a critical examination. This paper presents a broadly based picture of how Futurism operated in a worldwide network of the avant-garde. Rather than focussing on straightforward cases, where an artist would embrace the Futurist programme as outlined in the movement’s manifestos, I shall present examples, where Futurism was absorbed in a complex process of osmosis and creative adaptation. I will also discuss several artists and writers, who overtly rejected Futurism or took a detached attitude towards it, but still allowed significant aspects of Futurist aesthetics to filter through into their oeuvres. Thus, an image of Futurism emerges that is very different from Marinetti’s concept of a worldwide Futurism. At the same time, it reveals how the movement influenced the development of the historical avant-garde and how the inspiration received from Futurist aesthetics could give rise to a diverse and highly original range of modernist works of art.
From symbolism to futurism: Poupées électriques and Elettricità (2010)
Rivista di Studi Italiani, 2010
In this paper I examine how Filippo Tommaso Marinetti transformed his three-act drama Poupées Électriques (1909) into a one-act Futurist sintesi Elettricità (1913). Through the analysis of draft versions of Elettricità and of Futurist manifestos, both the process by which Marinetti enacted this textual transformation and the reasons behind the changes made to the French play in its passage to becoming an Italian playlet will be explored. A series of drafts for Elettricità, which are held at the F. T. Marinetti Papers Collection at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, uncover the progression from French original to Italian translation. Close textual analysis of the two plays will demonstrate how Marinetti sought to change elements of Poupées Électriques so that Elettricità would reflect his new Futurist world vision. The significance of many of the changes Marinetti made only becomes clear when Elettricità is contextualised within other developments in the Futurist ideology and to Marinetti’s manifesto output.
The Futurist movement presents a perfect example of the way politics come into play in a work of art and how those ideas can influence the style and content. In the present day Futurism is unequivocally associated with Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule due to the marrying of Marinetti’s ambition to spread his views with Mussolini’s recognition of the Futurists as allies and their ability to produce propaganda in his favour. However, Futurism is not explicitly a right-wing, fascist movement as it contained many left-wing artists also – as shown significantly by the emergence of Futurism in Russia in relation to Lenin.
This volume explores the fraught relationship between Futurism and the Sacred. Like many fi n-de-siècle intellectuals, the Futurists were fascinated by various forms of esotericism such as Theosophy and Spiritism and saw art as a privileged means to access states of being beyond the surface of the mundane world. At the same time, they viewed with suspicion organized religions as social institutions hindering modernization and ironically used their symbols. In Italy, the theorization of "Futurist Sacred Art" in the 1930s began a new period of dialogue between Futurism and the Catholic Church. The essays in the volume span the history of Futurism from 1909 to 1944 and consider its different confi gurations across different disciplines and geographical locations, from Polish and Spanish literature to Italian art and US-American music.
Welcome 2D Future: Comics and the Transmediatic Construction of the City of the Future
Once Upon a Place – Architecture & Fiction, 2013
“Welcome 2D Future - Comics and the transmediatic construction of the City of the Future” fits in the context of the broader research on the construction of urban utopia in comics and the mass media of the ongoing PhD Dissertation "The Dreamt Cities: The Voyage through Utopia, the Construction of the Imaginary" (School of Architecture. University of Navarra), which deals with two parallel targets: On the one hand, the mapping of the cross relationships between comics, cinema and architecture in the construction of the image of the city of the future; on the other, the development of an Atlas that groups, describes and catalogues an extensive selection of the futuropolises created in the comic books since the 1950s. This short essay develops a narrative of the phenomenon through the description three significant moments of the transmediatic construction of the urban imaginary of the future: Winsor McCay, Metropolis and panoptic vision; Métal Hurlant, Blade Runner and the advent of Cyberpunk; and Schuiten’s and Peeters' Cités Obscures. With this threefold narrative, the text seeks to establish, on the one hand, the fundamental role that comics have had in the visual construction of the city within the mass media and, through them, in the very conceptualization of urban space within disciplinary architecture. By ending with the alternative, ucronian universes of Les Cités Obscures, the essay will outline the role that a low-budget, low-tech (inevitably 'lowcult') and two-dimensional medium such as graphic narrative can still hold in a world ruled by the virtual reality of the digital media, and in providing alternative ways to the current widespread exclusively-high-tech vision of the future.