{"id":246,"date":"2006-02-02T12:57:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-02T19:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=246"},"modified":"2023-06-06T14:59:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T21:59:09","slug":"back-to-futurists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/back-to-futurists.html","title":{"rendered":"Back To The Futurists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Italian Futurists had an obsession with all things modern, the city, the automobile, the plane. They turned their backs on the past and set their sites on the technological future, hence their name. Their mania for speed, whether that of a fast moving car or a diving plane, was based upon a veneration of technology; they even came to identify the din of the city as &#8220;The Art of Noise,&#8221; the mechanical world\u2019s equivalent to bird song and the babbling brook.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16235\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16235\" style=\"width: 499px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-16235\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"499\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist.jpg 639w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist-300x303.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist-400x404.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16235\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Futurist ceramic tiles by Corrado Cagli and Dante Baldelli (1931) depicting Mussolini\u2019s rise to power.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Now a new Italian museum, <a href=\"https:\/\/palazzoducale.genova.it\/en\/the-wolfsoniana\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Wolfsoniana<\/a>, presents a major collection of Futurist works consisting of some 20,000 objects and 17,000 documents; which includes an original copy of &#8220;<em>The Futurist Manifesto<\/em>,&#8221; the influential proclamation written in 1909 by the movement\u2019s founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.<\/p>\n<p>However, while the Futurist vision of a machine world was brilliantly expressed aesthetically, it was doomed to ultimate failure because it was coupled with fascist ideology. Marinetti\u2019s angry manifesto heralded a new art movement but also prefigured the fascist takeover of Italy. In his original statement Marinetti proclaimed, &#8220;<em>We want to glorify war &#8211; the only cure for the world<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16237\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16237\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-16237\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"497\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_3.jpg 822w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_3-300x298.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_3-400x398.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_3-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_3-768x763.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16237\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Detail of tile by Corrado Cagli and Dante Baldelli.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In retrospect it\u2019s easy to be dismissive of the Futurists for their close connections to Benito Mussolini, but their rhetoric was remarkably similar in tone to things I hear and read today.<\/p>\n<p>How is our current infatuation with technology any different than theirs? It begs the question, &#8220;How do you know you are not a fascist?&#8221; Perhaps we\u2019ll find the answer by studying the Wolfsoniana collection of artworks prompted by Italy\u2019s bygone totalitarians.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16240\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16240\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-16240\" src=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"503\" srcset=\"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_2.jpg 825w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_2-300x302.jpg 300w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_2-400x402.jpg 400w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_2-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/futurist_2-768x773.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16240\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Detail of tile by Corrado Cagli and Dante Baldelli.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Italian Futurists had an obsession with all things modern, the city, the automobile, the plane. They turned their backs on the past and set their sites on the technological future, hence their name. Their mania for speed, whether that of a fast moving car or a diving plane, was based upon a veneration of technology; they even came to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}