Academic literature on the topic 'Futurism'

The Futurist movement was not only an artistic but also a social and political force for innovation, conceived as a total and permanent revolution encompassing all aspects of human life. One such aspect was food. Banquets had been a highly developed performative art in the Italian Renaissance and were again placed in a theatrical framework by the Futurists after the First World War. They founded three night clubs, where food and drinks were served in Futurist fashion, and opened several restaurants dedicated to a renewal of Italian culinary habits. In the 1930s, the Futurists focused on the creation of a new lifestyle called aerovita, which included cooking and dining as paratheatrical arts. Many of the recipes (or rather scenarios) in the Futurist cookbook La cucina futurista of 1932 derived from banquets that Marinetti, the driving force of Futurism, had organized as a kind of savoury-olfactory-tactile theatre accompanied by music and poetry recitations. The highly imaginative table scenery and food sculptures were complemented by inventive lighting effects and an amazing mise en scéne of interior decor, furniture, and waiters' garb. This essay describes and analyzes some of the Futurist experiments with culinary theatre, the manifestos dedicated to Futurist cuisine, and some of the Futurist concepts of dining as a performative art. Günter Berghaus is Reader in Theatre History and Performance Studies at the Drama Department, University of Bristol, and has published a dozen books and a large number of articles on theatre anthropology, Renaissance and Baroque theatre, dance history, and avant-garde performance. Directing a number of Futurist shows led to the publication of The Genesis of Futurism (1995), Futurism and Politics (1996), Italian Futurist Theatre (1998), and International Futurism in the Arts and Literature (2000).

The Italian futurist movement and its founder, F.T. Marinetti, have stimulated a vast historiography. Why has futurism fascinated so many and how, in particular, have the futurism-fascism and Marinetti-futurism relationships been conceived? To answer such questions, this article surveys nearly five decades of scholarship on futurism. It shows how futurism's fascist trajectory has polarised it and led scholars to a wide variety of positions. Some scholars limit themselves to the ‘heroic years’ up to 1916; others focus on ‘second futurism’ after 1915 without much reference to Marinetti; and still others treat futurism's ‘multiplicity’ using a centre-periphery model with Marinetti at the centre. Similarly, some insist on futurism's continuously ‘revolutionary’ character, others limit that claim, and still others deny it altogether. It is argued that recent biographical work on Marinetti has helped to clarify how one ought to approach and resolve these differences, but that scholarship on futurism nonetheless remains intensely politicised.

ResumenEn junio de este año el público limeño tuvo la suerte de ver una gran exposición titulada Futurismo y velocidad, auspiciada por la Embajada de Italia y el Instituto Italiano de Cultura en Lima, en el tradicional Museo Italiano, como si las obras hubiesen sido escogidas ad hoc para sus salas. Sinembargo, la extraordinaria colección solo reunía cuadros de una segunda generación de pintores futuristas, presentados por un acertado estudio de Maurizio Scudiero. Animado por esta circunstancia, decidí escribir unas notas sobre el primer futurismo, el de su creador F. T. Marinetti y sus seguidores, sus ideas estéticas, políticas y sus aportes, con el fin de dar al lector los datos para que establezca el puente entre las dos generaciones.
 Palabras clave: futurismo, pintura futurista, manifiesto, Marinetti, Mussolini 
 
 Abstract 
 In June of this year, the Lima public was lucky enough to see a large exhibition entitled “Futurismo y velocidad” (Futurism and speed”), sponsored by the Italian Embassy and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in the traditional Italian Museum, as if the works had been chosen ad hoc for their rooms. However, the extraordinary collection only brought together paintings by a second generation of Futurist artists, introduced by an accurate study by Maurizio Scudiero. Encouraged by this circumstance I decided to write some notes on the first futurism, that of its creator F.T. Marinetti, and his followers, his aesthetic ideas, policies and contributions, in order to give the reader the data to establish the bridge between the two generations.
 Keywords: Futurism, Futuristic Painting, Manifesto, Marinetti, Mussolini.

One of the names in Marinetti’s ranks of futurism’s predecessors is Émile Zola. The author of the famous J’accuse is one of those read by the undisputed leader of the futurist avant-garde in his youth, and is, if not constantly, fairly frequently present in his writings. Zola serves Marinetti as a basis for self-staging, that is as a practice to build pieces of his own identity, as well as a not secondary intertextual reference. Like Zola’s texts, those of Futurism provoke. The aim of the following contribution is to reconstruct the Marinettian path in respect to the French writer, especially regarding the still missing tiles of a mosaic that presents itself as an extraordinary kaleidoscope not only on Marinetti’s production. This can be evidenced, for example, by reading Flora Bonheur’s Diario d’una giovane donna futurista where, alongside the name of the father of the Futurism, that of the author of Nana appears. 
 Nella schiera dei predecessori del Futurismo compare in Marinetti anche il nome di Émile Zola. L’autore del famoso J’accuse rientra tra quelli letti già negli anni giovanili dal capo indiscusso dell’avanguardia futurista e diventa presenza, se non costante, abbastanza frequente dei suoi scritti. Zola serve a Marinetti come palcoscenico per la messa in scena di se stesso, come pretesto per costruire tasselli della propria identità e come rimando intertestuale. Alla pari dei testi di Zola poi, anche quelli del futurismo hanno spesso un intento provocatorio. Con il seguente contributo ci si pone di ricostruire il percorso marinettiano di fronte allo scrittore francese, riportando alla luce le tessere ancora mancanti di un rapporto sfaccettato e complesso che riguarda non solo la produzione di Marinetti, come testimonia, ad esempio, anche il Diario d’una giovane donna futurista di Flora Bonheur dove, accanto al nome del padre dell’avanguardia, compare ancora una volta quello dell’autore di Nana.

Abstract The controversy between the Futurists and the classicists over the Greek theatre of Syracuse remains largely overlooked within the scholarship concerned with the relationship between Futurism and Fascism. The Futurist movement launched a polemic against the staging of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers in 1921, counterposing Greek tragedy to new forms of drama drawing on Futurist performance aesthetics and Sicilian popular theatre which, according to the Futurists, could express the spirit of the modern age. In a similar vein, the manifesto that F. T. Marinetti addressed to the Fascist government in 1923 advocated for the staging of modern Sicilian plays in the theatre of Syracuse. Contrary to Futurism, Italian Fascism turned to Greek models in creating new forms of popular theatre. Mussolini’s state supported the production of ancient drama throughout the ventennio, as evidenced by the consolidation of the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico (INDA) in 1925. The theatre of Syracuse should be viewed as a field of antagonism between the different versions of modernism represented by Futurism and Fascism. By examining the convergences and divergences of Futurist and Fascist visions of theatrical renewal, this article highlights not only the Hellenic character of Fascism’s modernism but also the role of Fascism in transforming classical traditions.

Abstract In his 1913 manifesto “L'arte dei rumori” (The Art of Noises), Futurist painter Luigi Russolo exhorted readers to “walk across a great modern metropolis with ears more attentive than eyes.” For Russolo, attentive listening to the urban environment enacted a visionary aurality: the city was a mine for “new” noises, such as rumbling motors and jolting trams. However, Russolo's embrace of noise—much like that of Futurist painter Umberto Boccioni and Futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti—was undeniably a product of its time and place. This article excavates the sounds of 1913 Milan as a crucial location for the noises of early Italian Futurism. Not only was this city the Futurists' base, but it also inflected their representations of noise both through its symbolic architectural sites (above all the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele) and the buzz of its human multitudes. In this latter respect, late-nineteenth-century positivist crowd psychology can provide an illuminating context because it shares with Futurism the notion of modern, urban crowd united by a collective unconscious—one that could, moreover, be heard by the attentive listener on a city's streets. This article tracks this historical mode of listening from Russolo's manifesto until the reception of his first concert for an entire orchestra of newly wrought noise intoners—his “Gran concerto per intonarumori,” held at Milan's Teatro Dal Verme in 1914—and explores what was, in this case, a slippery (but critical) distinction between “audience” and “crowd.” Russolo's clamorously received premiere forced its listeners and performers to attend to off- (rather than on-) stage noises, thus raising still-vital questions about where to locate Futurism's noise, influence, and politics.

Nelson Morpurgo was born to a Histrian family in Cairo. Raised between Cairo and Milan, he met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and several other Futurists and, ultimately, helped secure a place for futurism in Cairo from the 1920s through to his departure in the 1940s. He organized theatrical performances, painting exhibitions, radio shows, cultural events and debates. My paper analyzes the cultural and linguistic bilingualism that this interstitial figure developed. Morpurgo’s activity is understood in three different ways: first, as the trans-national experience of a Futurist vanguard; second, as emblematic of the Italian community in Cairo; and third, as representative of the complexities of Egyptian cosmopolitanism. His writings allow us to reframe the relationships between the Egyptian arabophone scene and the often multi-lingual, eclectic foreign community. Morpurgo negotiates a position between the ideologically incongruous cultural lives of Marinetti and the local surrealist vanguard.

Literary history made a Futurist out of Palazzeschi, and he himself said about his manifesto, Il controdolore (published in Lacerba in 1914) that it represented his “modest and direct” contribution to Marinetti’s movement. This article situates Il controdolore among other mainly contemporary texts devoted to laughter. Referring to theories of manifestos, it looks at Palazzeschi’s text as a theatrical space, underlining its literary and non-pragmatic nature. I intend to show that, in this iconic work, we start to recognize certain recurring features and ideas that position Palazzeschi’s very anomalous avant-garde experience among the ranks of the Futurists, in a space of autonomous opposition to both poles of the binary Futurism/non-Futurism. As a matter of fact, his position, liminal, and somewhat anarchic, makes his work a convincing antecedent of avant-garde movements to come, especially Dadaism.