
{"id":4148,"date":"2018-01-17T21:29:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T21:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.uncc.edu\/aaron-toscano\/?page_id=4148"},"modified":"2019-10-17T16:38:49","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T16:38:49","slug":"futurism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/topicstoanalyze\/futurism\/","title":{"rendered":"Futurism Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Founding of Futurism<\/h1>\n<p>Unlike our discussion on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/pages.uncc.edu\/aaron-toscano\/genderdigital\/postmodernism-introduction\/\">postmodernism<\/a><\/strong>, which has no clear definitive definition, Futurism with a capital &#8216;F&#8217; refers to the movement established by the Italian poet F. T. Marinetti. When people use futurism with a lowercase &#8216;f&#8217;, they&#8217;re often referring to a loosely associated movement that attempts to predict the future. Both Futurists and futurists LOVE technology and generally see the future as solving problems of the present. We&#8217;ll focus on Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, but there were <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Futurism#Futurist_artists\">others in his movement<\/a><\/strong>. Also, we&#8217;ll focus on Italian Futurism, but there were other Futurist movements in the early part of the 20th Century: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Russian_Futurism\">Russian<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vorticism\">English<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Futurism_(literature)#Czechoslovakia\">Slovak<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>For dates, Futurism&#8217;s heyday was 1909-1916 (WWI pretty much ended the movement).<\/p>\n<h1>Major Themes in Futurism<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Technology<\/span>: Above all else, Marinetti looked to technology as a muse for Futurist art. Just as <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:American_progress.JPG\">John Gast&#8217;s &#8220;American Progress&#8221;<\/a><\/strong> painting shows technology as a force of civilization (and as good), Marinetti saw technology as a way for humans to evolve and harness more power over nature and progress from the past.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">War<\/span>: Along with consumer or everyday technologies (e.g., the automobile) Marinetti thought war and militaristic technologies (e.g., tanks, machine guns, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Airship\">dirigibles<\/a><\/strong>) were important to pursue to make Italy great.\n<ul>\n<li>Although we think of Italian culture (and, therefore, the nation of Italy) emerging from the Roman Empire, modern Italy as we know it wasn&#8217;t unified until 1870&#8211;that&#8217;s after the US Civil War.<\/li>\n<li>Not surprisingly, Italy was unified through battle, and these wars were relatively recent for F. T. Marinetti (born in 1876).<\/li>\n<li>Fascism&#8211;although Marinetti aligned himself with Mussolini, considering him to be &#8220;just another fascist&#8221; is short sighted. Like fascists, he was pro-military and nationalistic (believing in <em>panitalianismo<\/em>, Italian unification), but what do we call pro-military nationalistic citizens&#8230;patriots.<\/li>\n<li>Got a taste for the thrill of battle as a war correspondent when Italy invaded Libya during the pre-WWI push for European nations to colonize Africa and other parts of the world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Dynamism<\/span>: Art was to reflect constant motion or movement. Nothing was to stand still&#8211;kind of like this <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:%27Unique_Forms_of_Continuity_in_Space%27,_1913_bronze_by_Umberto_Boccioni.jpg\">sculpture<\/a><\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/italy-futurist-movement-techno-utopians\/\">Loved speed!<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Ahistoricity<\/span>: Forget the past. Marinetti wanted to be (metaphorically) reborn and detached from his own past. He lamented and chastised Italians&#8217; and foreigners&#8217; love of past Italian art.\n<ul>\n<li>Museums were worthless (ironically, Futurist artworks are in many museums)&#8211;art should be for the moment, avant-garde.<\/li>\n<li>Buildings shouldn&#8217;t use archaic styles of &#8220;the dead&#8221; past; instead, they should drop ornamentation and use &#8220;the straight line&#8221; as much as possible (e.g., Sant&#8217;Elia&#8217;s <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Casa_Sant%27Elia.jpg\">La Citt\u00e0 Nuova<\/a><\/strong> [1912-1914])<\/li>\n<li>Avant-garde movements are all short lived<\/li>\n<li>Ironically, they are credited for <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelocal.it\/20170317\/how-the-italian-futurists-shaped-the-aesthetics-of-modernity-in-the-20th-century\">shaping modernist art<\/a><\/strong> in the 20th century.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Parole in Libert\u00e0<\/span>: Marinetti wanted to free the bounds of everything he could think of&#8211;history, weak human bodies, and grammar. Yes, he wanted to promote a syntax without grammatical rules that he saw as inefficient.\n<ul>\n<li>Wireless Imagination&#8211;love Guglielmo Marconi&#8217;s wireless<\/li>\n<li>Typography as poem and visual art&#8211;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/arthistoryproject.com\/site\/assets\/files\/6976\/filippo-tommaso-marinetti---zang-tumb-tumb-1912-min.png\">Zang Tumb Tumb<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.arengario.it\/sync\/2013\/07\/ma1919-ottoanime1.jpg\">8 Anime in una bomba<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>&#8220;The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism&#8221;<\/h1>\n<p>Founding: Marinetti and friends are enamored with the technologies they see around them\u2014they seem to be the muses that inspire the group to take off on their quest. A few of the technologies (circa 1900):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cred-hot bellies of locomotives\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201chellish fires of great ships\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201croar of automobiles\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And not so pleasant but somehow inspiring\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cO maternal ditch, almost full of muddy water! Fair factory drain!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cfaces smeared with good factory muck\u2014plastered with metallic waste, with senseless sweat, with celestial soot\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are also many references to throwing off the \u201cchains\u201d of past intellectual values. Futurism tried to separate itself from any aesthetic ideas of the past:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cFor hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui\u2026\u201d (boredom with the past)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMuseums: cemeteries!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMuseums: absurd abattoirs of painters and sculptors\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe establish Futurism, because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archaeologists, ciceroni* and antiquarians.\u201d\n<ul>\n<li><em>*Ciceroni<\/em> (pl, pronounced chi-chair-o-knee) are learned folks, perhaps quasi-philosophers, who guide tourists through museums, ruins, and other cultural sites. It&#8217;s derived from <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cicero\">Cicero<\/a><\/strong>, the ancient Roman philosopher. It isn&#8217;t an insult <em>per se<\/em>, but, because Marinetti doesn&#8217;t like the idea that Italy is known for its past, he looks down on ciceroni for helping the world hold onto Italy&#8217;s past. Obviously, Marinetti wants to look to the future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Marinetti had a timeframe for this movement: roughly 10 years, when the members turned 40 and \u201cother younger and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts.\u201d There are many influences on Marinetti\u2019s aesthetics, but the era with its industrialization and technological advancement were major influences on his movement.<\/p>\n<h1>&#8220;Destruction of Syntax&#8211;Imagination without strings&#8211;Words in Freedom&#8221;<\/h1>\n<p>Marinetti would like to practice what he preaches, but even he recognizes that he needs to explain his \u201csynthetic lyricism, imagination without strings, and words in freedom\u201d using correct syntax and punctuation. He\u2019s still efficient, so that adheres to Futurism\u2019s aesthetics. Here\u2019s a good summary of why he\u2019s advocating these avant-garde aesthetics:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>Futurism is grounded in the complete renewal of human sensibility brought about by the great discoveries of science. Those people who today make use of the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the train, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the automobile, the ocean liner, the dirigible, the aeroplane, the cinema, the great newspaper (synthesis of a day in the world\u2019s life) do not realize that these various means of communication, transportation and information have a decisive influence on their psyches.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">Basically, because contemporary technologies of his time period appeared to speed up life and offer the world to newspaper readers, he felt humans needed to allow this new techno-mediated phenomenon to influence all communication.<\/span><\/strong> If there are wasteful phrases, syntactical structure, or burdensome grammar, we should get rid of it. He wants words to convey the essence of the objects they refer to.<\/p>\n<h1>Imagination without Strings (also translated as \u201cWireless Imagination\u201d)<\/h1>\n<p>In Italian it\u2019s \u201cImmaginazione senza fili,\u201d which is literally \u201cImagination without strings.\u201d During the decade before Marinetti\u2019s first Futurist Manifesto, Guglielmo Marconi was exciting the European public (and the overseas public) with his contributions to \u201ctelegrafo senza fili\u201d or \u201cwireless telegraphy.\u201d Marinetti was a HUGE admirer of Marconi and claimed his invention inspired his aesthetics.<\/p>\n<p>Marinetti gives us this summary of how to free objects by having their essence communicate without being bogged down in metaphors or analogies (i.e., personification) of the past:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>The imagination without strings, and words-in-freedom, will bring us to the essence of material. As we discover new analogies between distant and apparently contrary things, we will endow them with an ever more intimate value. Instead of humanizing animals, vegetables, and minerals (an outmoded system) we will be able to animalize, vegetize, mineralize, electrify, or liquefy our style, making it live the life of material. For example, to represent the life of a blade of grass, I say, \u201cTomorrow I\u2019ll be greener.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<h1>War, the World&#8217;s Only Hygiene<\/h1>\n<p>It\u2019s pretty obvious here that Marinetti is infusing a militaristic approach to his movement. As Italy contemplates getting into WWI, he and the Futurists are advocating Italy get involved. Ultimately, WWI ended the Italian Futurist movement. Marinetti was injured and several major members were killed. Into the 1920s and the rise of High Modernism, Futurism fizzled out and Marinetti was mainly considered a quack. His allegiance to Mussolini also hurt his reputation.<\/p>\n<p>Even though he\u2019s not placed in league with T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, he and his movement captured the time period&#8217;s moment of industrialization, militarization, and speed. As are all artists, he was a product of his era and saw things in the culture that ordinary folks didn\u2019t. He gave technology and science an artistic outlet, which is exactly what we say about science fiction\u2014technology and science are themes, characters, muses for writers.<\/p>\n<h1>Science Fiction<\/h1>\n<p>As I mentioned, he&#8217;s not usually considered a science fiction writer, but he&#8217;s engrossed in technology and does project <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">a techno-futurist vision where technologies are amplified to fuel the progress he considers inherent in technological advancement.<\/span><\/strong> The belief that technologies will progress is part of contemporary American culture&#8217;s consciousness&#8211;we believe technologies will get better. We just might not have the same techno-fever Marinetti displayed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Founding of Futurism Unlike our discussion on postmodernism, which has no clear definitive definition, Futurism with a capital &#8216;F&#8217; refers to the movement established by the Italian poet F. T. Marinetti. When people use futurism with a lowercase &#8216;f&#8217;, they&#8217;re often referring to a loosely associated movement that attempts to predict the future. Both Futurists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":598,"featured_media":0,"parent":2019,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4148","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2HAOx-14U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/598"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4148"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5579,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4148\/revisions\/5579"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}