The foundation and manifesto of Futurism

by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

The Manifesto of Futurism written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, initiated an artistic philosophy, Futurism, that was a rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry; it also advocated the modernization and cultural rejuvenation of Italy. Marinetti wrote the Futurist 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. It was published in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna on 5 February 1909, then in French as Manifeste du futurisme (Manifesto of Futurism) in the newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. This manifesto was published well before the occurrence of any of the 20th-century events which are commonly suggested as a potential meaning of this text. Many of them could not even be imagined yet. For example, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 were the first of the sort "described" by article 11 of the Manifesto, yet the first of those occurred eight years after the Manifesto's publication.

Genres: Politics

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor, and founder of the Futurist movement.

Reviews

[Mady Brown]

*1.5
reminds me of someone in power right now...

[abby murrill]

Son of a ditch was gold

[Taryn Allan]

'We stand upon the summit of the world and once more we cast our challenge to the stars!'

How the stars must have wept as that summit fell.

The Primitivists and the Futurists, mirror images of one another philosophically, seem now to portend the catastrophe that was to devastate the world. While the former looked back to a simpler time before the 'iron cage' of bourgeois capitalism ensnared the European spirit, the latter sought to embrace the future at the expense of that past, an amalgamation of machine and man striding across a landscape shaped by revolution.

The Avant-Garde of the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century might now be looked upon as a microcosmic rehearsal for the hitherto unimaginable carnage which would dominate the final century of the old millennium, where past and future would repeatedly collide in an absolute annihilation of the present.

'...(A) manifesto of violence, destructive and incendiary.' How depressingly prescient.

[Gabriel]

For how much I cemented myself in the history of European avant-garde movments lately, I've got to say that this expirience has left me quite preplexed (although I still appriciate Futurism) this book considering the hisorical context when it was written and the status of the movment after that, it is also a crazy story about opportunism for the sake of saving an art movment, maybe justified considering how its Russian counter-part got brutally disbanded in the Soviet Union

[Tara]

Not that I support futurism or anything, Marinetti without a doubt would drive a car without muffler and give titane 5 stars on letterbox.