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Critical Writings: New Edition
The Futurist movement was founded and promoted by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, beginning in 1909 with the First Futurist Manifesto, in which he inveighed against the complacency of "cultural necrophiliacs" and sought to annihilate the values of the past, writing that "there is no longer any beauty except the struggle. Any work of art that lacks a sense of aggression can never be a masterpiece." In the years that followed, up until his death in 1944, Marinetti, through both his polemical writings and his political activities, sought to transform society in all its aspects. As Günter Berghaus writes in his introduction, "Futurism sought to bridge the gap between art and life and to bring aesthetic innovation into the real world. Life was to be changed through art, and art was to become a form of life." This volume includes more than seventy of Marinetti's most important writings―many of them translated into English for the first time―offering the reader a representative and still startling selection of texts concerned with Futurist art, literature, politics, and philosophy.
584 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 2006
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About the author
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
185 books81 followersFilippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor, and founder of the Futurist movement.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 17, 2017
"Come on! Let's go!" I said. "Come on, my lads, let's get out of here! At long last, all the myths and mystical ideas are behind us. We're about to witness the birth of a Centaur and soon we shall witness the flight of the very first Angels! . . . We shall have to shake the gates of life itself to test their locks and hinges! . . . Let's be off! See there, the Earth's very first dawn! Nothing can equal the splendor of the sun's red sword slicing through our millennial darkness, for the very first time!"
Italian Futurism, spearheaded by F.T. Marinetti, was one of the most fascinating artistic and political movements of the early 20th century. It celebrated technology and hyper-industrialisation and hated all forms of traditionalism; it was in love with speed and progress and loathed nostalgia and history. For an ancient country like Italy, which is forever doomed to stand in the shadow of the Roman Empire, and with the knowledge that their Golden Age passed almost a millennia ago, Futurism offered a, to say the least, radical solution. Question: If we stand on the shoulders of giants, how can we ever hope to surpass them? Answer: We kill the giants. Marinetti wanted to flood Italy's museums, burn down the libraries and put a wrecking ball to all the ancient ruins. The philosophy of Futurism was to eradicate the past in order to recklessly hurl themselves into the future. All established rules, myths and traditions were to be annihilated. Youth was to be worshipped and old age to be scorned. They wanted to completely free art from the shackles of academia and snobbishness, to the point where they were ready to abolish all syntax and established grammar in writing.
In politics, as in art, they wanted a complete rebirth of Italy. Marinetti's political vision was as full of absurdities and contradictions as his artistic vision. They supported a radical individualism rooted in anarchist egoism but were simultaneously ultranationalists and collectivists. They were pro-women's suffrage, but only because they thought women would corrupt and completely destroy the loathsome democratic system. They flirted with anarchists, syndicalists, communists and socialists but poured scorn on them all for being anti-war and anti-patriotic. More than anything they loved war, "the sole cleanser of the world". They viewed The Great War as the ultimate expression of Futurist art, and cast themselves into the fire of Europe, many prominent futurists dying on the battlefield. One can say many things against the futurists, but at least they weren't hypocrites when it came to war.
Today the Futurists are commonly remembered as being proto-Fascists, and for influencing and aiding the rise of Benito Mussolini. But the Italian Fascist Party embraced nostalgia and reactionary aesthetics, and Marinetti and his friends became increasingly isolated and alienated from both art and politics. The ultimate irony came when, after the Futurists were instrumental in their influence on the spirit of Fascism, Hitler wanted to display Italian Futurist artworks in his "Degenerate art" exhibition. The modernist movement of Futurism, which wanted to tear down the old and embrace the new, had essentially birthed a reactionary ideology which burned modern books and prohibited modernist art as "degenerate". Clearly, Futurism had outstayed its welcome and had been thrown in the dustbin of history.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading many of these essays, manifestos and writings by Marinetti. He was perhaps, a propagandist first and an artist second, but his bombastic and agitating prose style still makes for very enjoyable reading. He is the kind of writer who ends every sentence with an exclamation point (even when he doesn't). His writing is filled with the positivity and optimism which contains the very spirit of Futurism. Some of his ideas are so bizarre that they become entertaining, and all of them are fascinating to read about. I had a good laugh at some of his suggestions on how to improve the theatre going experience for the audience: literally glue people to their seats, sell the same seat ticket to 10 people and watch the confusion and eventual brawl unfurl, give free tickets to asylum patients and madmen etc. etc. No matter your opinion on Marinetti or Futurism, he makes for some highly entertaining reading. He certainly wasn't known as "the caffeine of Europe" for nothing.
Italian Futurism, spearheaded by F.T. Marinetti, was one of the most fascinating artistic and political movements of the early 20th century. It celebrated technology and hyper-industrialisation and hated all forms of traditionalism; it was in love with speed and progress and loathed nostalgia and history. For an ancient country like Italy, which is forever doomed to stand in the shadow of the Roman Empire, and with the knowledge that their Golden Age passed almost a millennia ago, Futurism offered a, to say the least, radical solution. Question: If we stand on the shoulders of giants, how can we ever hope to surpass them? Answer: We kill the giants. Marinetti wanted to flood Italy's museums, burn down the libraries and put a wrecking ball to all the ancient ruins. The philosophy of Futurism was to eradicate the past in order to recklessly hurl themselves into the future. All established rules, myths and traditions were to be annihilated. Youth was to be worshipped and old age to be scorned. They wanted to completely free art from the shackles of academia and snobbishness, to the point where they were ready to abolish all syntax and established grammar in writing.
In politics, as in art, they wanted a complete rebirth of Italy. Marinetti's political vision was as full of absurdities and contradictions as his artistic vision. They supported a radical individualism rooted in anarchist egoism but were simultaneously ultranationalists and collectivists. They were pro-women's suffrage, but only because they thought women would corrupt and completely destroy the loathsome democratic system. They flirted with anarchists, syndicalists, communists and socialists but poured scorn on them all for being anti-war and anti-patriotic. More than anything they loved war, "the sole cleanser of the world". They viewed The Great War as the ultimate expression of Futurist art, and cast themselves into the fire of Europe, many prominent futurists dying on the battlefield. One can say many things against the futurists, but at least they weren't hypocrites when it came to war.
Today the Futurists are commonly remembered as being proto-Fascists, and for influencing and aiding the rise of Benito Mussolini. But the Italian Fascist Party embraced nostalgia and reactionary aesthetics, and Marinetti and his friends became increasingly isolated and alienated from both art and politics. The ultimate irony came when, after the Futurists were instrumental in their influence on the spirit of Fascism, Hitler wanted to display Italian Futurist artworks in his "Degenerate art" exhibition. The modernist movement of Futurism, which wanted to tear down the old and embrace the new, had essentially birthed a reactionary ideology which burned modern books and prohibited modernist art as "degenerate". Clearly, Futurism had outstayed its welcome and had been thrown in the dustbin of history.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading many of these essays, manifestos and writings by Marinetti. He was perhaps, a propagandist first and an artist second, but his bombastic and agitating prose style still makes for very enjoyable reading. He is the kind of writer who ends every sentence with an exclamation point (even when he doesn't). His writing is filled with the positivity and optimism which contains the very spirit of Futurism. Some of his ideas are so bizarre that they become entertaining, and all of them are fascinating to read about. I had a good laugh at some of his suggestions on how to improve the theatre going experience for the audience: literally glue people to their seats, sell the same seat ticket to 10 people and watch the confusion and eventual brawl unfurl, give free tickets to asylum patients and madmen etc. etc. No matter your opinion on Marinetti or Futurism, he makes for some highly entertaining reading. He certainly wasn't known as "the caffeine of Europe" for nothing.
May 15, 2014
An excellent written trail of art gone mad and down the rabbit's hole into the abyss of nearly abolishing, all the cultural heritage of Italy in an attempt for social re-engineering right down to the very detail for abolishing knives and forks with the only condiments allowed, a selected poetry piece or music to refine the senses and flavours of food in meditated silence. Language was not immune for restructuring.
One really needs to have at least a rudiment of Futurist Art prior to being hit continuously on the reader’s senses. Otherwise every page or so, the flow of the reading has to stop to look for some known markers for it to make sense in context.
Saying this, it is an enjoyable and clear book to read, to how many things we recognise today; vitamin foods, super heroes, personal fitness, minimal music, automatic writing, cells, protons, electricity, velocity, television, teletactile, telesmells (the later waiting for science to catch up), etc.....
The dark side to this was from the automatic writings, dreams, utopian visions by an artist, who creates an art movement to celebrate everything modern upon the rubble plinth of history. With beckoning the destruction of museums, archaeology, historical sites, all art, church, schools, middle classes, family nucleus, army etc... to be substituted by the individual. The strong and creative to prostrate for the good of a strong society where the democratic values to be extended only to the winners. With these philosophical measurements, they pushed the Italian government into the first World War, welcoming war as a necessity cleansing for a strong society.
The residue from the Futurists branched out into various forms – in Italy to the Fascists black shirts of el Duce for social structuring; In Germany into social engineering away from altruistic visions and narrowed down against selective individual groups of people by the Nazis; In America the ideas of Superman, diet pills, mechanisation of the home started to take off; In Russia, Mexico and lesser extent Spain, the social art continued and morphed in Russia, ‘Russian Constructivism’. The rest of western Europe, shell shocked and sickened from the World War I, didn’t want to celebrate art that danced to not just mechanical innovation but the violence of the new.
Marinetti himself not only insults everybody with his fellow ‘artists’ as being superior to everyone else, was a loose cannon of nuts, as a Daliesque showman with Wagnerian pretentions and William Blake’s visions; not too big to organise street fights as good as the Fight Club combined with Football Hooligans to have his exulted spiritual art illustrated in a manly world.
This book really delves to clarify the manifestos by the Futurists. A must for anybody interested in art and social history.
Sadly a real mad hatter's tea party seapping out from the subconscious into the real world.
One really needs to have at least a rudiment of Futurist Art prior to being hit continuously on the reader’s senses. Otherwise every page or so, the flow of the reading has to stop to look for some known markers for it to make sense in context.
Saying this, it is an enjoyable and clear book to read, to how many things we recognise today; vitamin foods, super heroes, personal fitness, minimal music, automatic writing, cells, protons, electricity, velocity, television, teletactile, telesmells (the later waiting for science to catch up), etc.....
The dark side to this was from the automatic writings, dreams, utopian visions by an artist, who creates an art movement to celebrate everything modern upon the rubble plinth of history. With beckoning the destruction of museums, archaeology, historical sites, all art, church, schools, middle classes, family nucleus, army etc... to be substituted by the individual. The strong and creative to prostrate for the good of a strong society where the democratic values to be extended only to the winners. With these philosophical measurements, they pushed the Italian government into the first World War, welcoming war as a necessity cleansing for a strong society.
The residue from the Futurists branched out into various forms – in Italy to the Fascists black shirts of el Duce for social structuring; In Germany into social engineering away from altruistic visions and narrowed down against selective individual groups of people by the Nazis; In America the ideas of Superman, diet pills, mechanisation of the home started to take off; In Russia, Mexico and lesser extent Spain, the social art continued and morphed in Russia, ‘Russian Constructivism’. The rest of western Europe, shell shocked and sickened from the World War I, didn’t want to celebrate art that danced to not just mechanical innovation but the violence of the new.
Marinetti himself not only insults everybody with his fellow ‘artists’ as being superior to everyone else, was a loose cannon of nuts, as a Daliesque showman with Wagnerian pretentions and William Blake’s visions; not too big to organise street fights as good as the Fight Club combined with Football Hooligans to have his exulted spiritual art illustrated in a manly world.
This book really delves to clarify the manifestos by the Futurists. A must for anybody interested in art and social history.
Sadly a real mad hatter's tea party seapping out from the subconscious into the real world.
December 19, 2016
Great analysis of Futurist artist and founder F.T. Marinetti's relationship with one of the most insane men who ever lived: Benito Mussolini. They were best buds for most of their adult lives until Mussolini was running EVERYTHING in Italy. Then he found Marinetti's antics to be embarrassing instead of revolutionary.
July 1, 2007
I'm reading through this slowly, picking it up every so often for an essay or two.
September 22, 2007
Is this where it all started? Modernism. And all that rot. It doesn't manner because Marinetti is a fantastic writer - and yes, he's twisted but an extremely well-dressed man.
February 9, 2013
fun coconut juice of the future.
May 11, 2020
This edition is very readable. My stars reflect my developing opinion of Marinetti as a result of reading this book. I'm glad I probed deeper into a movement and a personal history of someone who had such an impact on Europe, but as with anything that's had a human hand in it, he/futurism is deeply flawed.
December 24, 2018
Repetitive, monotonous, dull. Unless you have a good reason to study these pieces, it's really not worth the trouble. Just read the first two manifestos and perhaps War, the Sole Cleanser of the World.
June 18, 2013
F.T. Marinetti writes extensively on the goals of the Futurist movement in early 20th century Italy. This collection of his work is written with passion and is quite beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews