Futurism

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring From the motorcar to the radio, modern technology radically transformed urban life by the first decade of the twentieth century. As one of Western Europe's least industrialized countries, Italy appeared impervious to such developments. It was this state of affairs at which the Futurist movement took aim. With its founding in 1909, the poet and impresario F.T. Marinetti called for a revitalization of aesthetic expression by means of "movement and aggression." A growing cadre of Futurist painters, poets, authors, and musicians exchanged Italy's cultural patrimony for new technologies, media, and metaphors, championing machine-propelled speed and its salutary hazards. Cubist painting, collage, and sculpture lent the Futurist campaign a revolutionary style to match its rhetorical fervor. Yet whereas Cubism remained a revolution of artistic form, Futurism sought to shatter the boundaries between art and life itself. Indeed, the movement's challenge to twentieth-century culture lay not in any specific set of images or objects, but a more comprehensive revolution of sensibility. By the mid-1910s there circulated several dozen Futurist proclamations on everything from men's clothing to set design, photography to film, dance to politics. That political impetus proved relentlessly paradoxical in origin and upshot. From its base in Milan, Futurist activity spread throughout the entire peninsula, while related movements emerged almost immediately in Moscow, Lisbon, Tiblisi, and Tokyo. Prefiguring and then propagandizing Fascist imperialism, Futurism also galvanized a range of progressive modernist phenomena. More than a century later, the “activist model” of the Futurist avant-garde remains deeply fraught in its historical implications. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring From the motorcar to the radio, modern technology radically transformed urban life by the first decade of the twentieth century. As one of Western Europe's least industrialized countries, Italy appeared impervious to such developments. It was this state of affairs at which the Futurist movement took aim. With its founding in 1909, the poet and impresario F.T. Marinetti called for a revitalization of aesthetic expression by means of "movement and aggression." A growing cadre of Futurist painters, poets, authors, and musicians exchanged Italy's cultural patrimony for new technologies, media, and metaphors, championing machine-propelled speed and its salutary hazards. Cubist painting, collage, and sculpture lent the Futurist campaign a revolutionary style to match its rhetorical fervor. Yet whereas Cubism remained a revolution of artistic form, Futurism sought to shatter the boundaries between art and life itself. Indeed, the movement's challenge to twentieth-century culture lay not in any specific set of images or objects, but a more comprehensive revolution of sensibility. By the mid-1910s there circulated several dozen Futurist proclamations on everything from men's clothing to set design, photography to film, dance to politics. That political impetus proved relentlessly paradoxical in origin and upshot. From its base in Milan, Futurist activity spread throughout the entire peninsula, while related movements emerged almost immediately in Moscow, Lisbon, Tiblisi, and Tokyo. Prefiguring and then propagandizing Fascist imperialism, Futurism also galvanized a range of progressive modernist phenomena. More than a century later, the “activist model” of the Futurist avant-garde remains deeply fraught in its historical implications. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This volume offers a unique and fresh perspective on Italian Futurism by approaching it, for the first time, through the lens of microstoria . In this 'history from below' of what is one of Europe's most famous and important avant-garde movements, large-scale questions on the history of Futurism are explored by focusing on objects, practices and situations as diverse as The Church, Puppets, The Letterhead or Gymnastics. With contributions from fifteen renowned international scholars, the book offers an exciting, kaleidoscopic view of Futurism and its multiple artistic, political and societal connections. The final chapter of the book is an interview with G nter Berghaus, one of Futurism's most dedicated and prolific scholars today, to whom the book is dedicated. Sascha Bru is Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the University of Leuven; Luca Somigli is Professor of Italian at the University of Toronto; Bart Van den Bossche is professor of Italian Literature at the University of Leuven.