Italian Futurism: The Undead Art Movement?

When people say that an art movement or school “died out,” they usually don’t mean it literally. In the case of the Italian Futurists, however, you can specify the day the movement “died”—August 17, 1916, the day that artist Umberto Boccioni succumbed to injuries at the age of 33 after falling from a horse and getting trampled during Italian Army cavalry training for World War I. Boccioni exemplified the best parts of an art movement that celebrated modern technology aesthetically. His death registers today as another senseless death among millions during the “Great War.” In a different sense, however, Italian Futurism “lived on” for another three decades and one more world war in the person of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the movement’s chief manifesto maker and warmonger. The Guggenheim Museum’s new exhibition Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe, which runs through September 1, 2014, resurrects the good, the bad, and the ugly truths of an art movement that died in the culture and wars of the past yet still lives on, zombie-like, in our modern ones. How did Italian Futurism become the undead art movement? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Italian Futurism: The Undead Art Movement?"

Will the Failing Euro Bring Europe’s Art Heritage Down With It?

Americans too often forget just how young a country we still are in comparison to the countries of Europe. Like any other youth, we copied our elders growing up. Our government buildings and monuments mimic those of the Greeks and Romans. Before there was anything recognizable as American art, American art collectors cherished European works. If the Robber Barons at the turn of the 20^th century did nothing else for the good of their country, buying and carting to our shores what seems like half the Renaissance is more than good enough. After that long cultural love affair, it seems especially tragic that the global economic crisis begun in America might not only bring down Europe with it, but also the great cultural institutions of Europe as well. With stories of cultural sites pimped out for commercial purposes, robberies from poorly secured museums, burnings of paintings in protest, and even calls to close every other museum for good, it’s natural to ask if the failing Euro will bring Europe’s art heritage down with it? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Will the Failing Euro Bring Europe’s Art HeritageDown With It?"

[Image: Italian Euro coin designs. Top row, left to right: Dante Alighieri by Raphael, The Birth of Venus by painter Sandro Botticelli, and Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. Bottom row, left to right: Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius and Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni.]

Calling All Angels

The idea of war as a thrilling, almost religious force is often associated with men, but it was a woman, Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova, who created one of the first visionary works of art celebrating World War I. Born June 16, 1881, Goncharova has been dubbed by some as one of the "Amazons of the avant-garde" and, like her mythical namesake, didn’t hesitate to join the fray when nationalist heat reached fever pitch in 1914. Goncharova’s print A Christ Loving Host (above, from 1914) belongs to a suite of fourteen prints she titled Mystical Images of War. Russia and many other countries in the Great War saw it as an opportunity to wage holy war in the name of their faith (with God, of course, “on their side”). Led by the Russian Minister of Religion, the Russian Orthodox church worked with the Russian military to persecute Jews, Muslims, and Catholics in Russia and neighboring areas such as Poland and the Ukraine. Whether Goncharova was aware of this persecution is unclear, but there’s nothing unclear about her faith in the justness and even holiness of the Russian cause in the war as she places angels literally on the shoulders of soldiers marching into war. The simplicity of these prints illustrates their public nature as they were meant to advertise to the public why they needed to support the war if they wanted to be part of the “Christ-loving host,” too.

The Order of the White Eagle is a Polish medal of honor, but the Russian Tsars adopted the white eagle as a symbol for themselves as well. In another of her Mystical Images of War, Goncharova depicts The White Eagle (above, from 1914) swooping down and defeating a darker, more sinister bird in metaphorical combat. Adopting a totem animal such as the white eagle is part of Goncharova’s plan to use the myth and folklore of Russia itself to add symbolic weight to her modernist techniques. The slashing lines of her birds’ wings and talons convey a sense of the violence and speed of the fight. There’s a great sense of energy in this print, which is meant to thrill the viewer and incite participation in the war. The beginning of World War I in Russia saw a renaissance of the popular print broadside form known as the “lubki.” Although Goncharova works in the rarified air of the fine arts, her Mystical Images of War simultaneously get down in the streets with the people, whipping them into a frenzy to become avenging birds of prey as well.

Goncharova was well aware of the art movements prevailing in Europe at the advent of the war. In 1912, she exhibited with Der Blaue Reiter in Germany and corresponded with Kandinsky. She painted many works similar to those of the Italian Futurists that resembling the work of Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla. Goncharova’s Angels and Aeroplanes (above, from 1914) may be the most Italian Futurist of the Mystical suite, pairing the heavenly with the hellish instruments of war. She called her brand of Futurism Rayonism for the stylized rays radiating out in the images as well as radiating out a message to the masses of war and technology as a hope for the future. The angels’ wings spread out in Angels and Aeroplanes both in a protective fashion and to echo the wings of the planes, as if the planes were God’s instruments on Earth. Aside from being a fascinating document of the Russian avant-garde, Goncharova’s Mystical Images of War is a rare work of fine art celebrating war done by a top-notch artist rather than a propagandist hack. For someone as intelligent and sensitive as Goncharova to be swept up in the apocalyptic war mania, the impulse to call all angels into the service of her country’s cause must have been irresistable.

Those Who Stay

A whole generation of Europe literally died on the battlefields of World War I. The Italian Futurists, more than any other art movement of the time, lost many of their brightest stars to that conflict, perhaps none brighter than Umberto Boccioni. Born October 19, 1882, Boccioni is best known for his 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, which Italy chose to place on the reverse side of the Italian 20 cent euro coin, testifying to Boccioni’s enduring place in Italian art despite the shortness of his career and life. I’ve always found Boccioni to be as fascinating a painter as a sculpture, especially in such mysterious works as States of Mind III: Those Who Stay (above, from 1911). Borrowing heavily from the conventions of Cubism, which Boccioni learned firsthand from Pablo Picasso when the two artists met in Paris that same year of 1911, Boccioni explodes the bodies of the figures and tries to paint them from every angle at once. He complicates the issue by immersing the figures in a murky, blue-grey fog. Are these figures shuffling off to the afterlife or living beings caught up in the tempest of worldly events beyond their control? In retrospect, States of Mind III: Those Who Stay seems especially haunting in light of Boccioni’s tragic death in 1916 while training for combat, as if the artist saw himself as headed into a murky, indeterminate future.

Boccioni and fellow Futurist Gino Severini studied under Giacomo Balla just after the turn of the century. Years later, Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti united these artists under the banner of his Futurist Manifesto to worship at the altar of technology and relentless, mechanized speed. Works such as Elasticity (above, 1912) illustrate how Boccioni saw the twentieth century as a huge explosion of energy and expansion. The duty of the modern artist was to celebrate that technology and give it artistic form. Just as the religious artists of the past painted saints and saviors to teach the unlettered masses, Boccioni and his fellow Futurists would paint and sculpt the works that would teach the masses of modern Europe to bow down before the gods of industry and technology. The color and energy found in Boccioni’s works are simply too infectious for me to resist, so it’s easy to judge their contemporary appeal. Faith in the future, when the past lay scattered behind them beneath a sea of disappointment, seemed the logical next step in a world that had yet to taste mechanized, large-scale destruction.

It’s tempting to condemn the Futurists for helping spur on the Great War, just as it’s tempting to say that they got what they deserved in their own destruction. (Marinetti, ironically, survived almost to the end of World War II, immune to the war-faring fever he may have contributed to.) Pushing all the politics aside, however, you cannot deny the creativity behind such a work as Boccioni’s The Street Enters the House (above, 1911). Equal parts Cubism, Futurism, and even Surrealism, The Street Enters the House depicts a believable home invasion in which the outside becomes the inside and all boundaries are erased. What kind of artist a post-war Boccioni would have been is a great guessing game to play, but ultimately unanswerable. Boccioni is much more than just Futurism or Cubism, so forcing an older Boccioni to continue along a similar path denies the expansiveness of his life and art. Boccioni couldn’t stay long enough to demonstrate everything he could do, but he remained long enough to give us enough to remember him by.

Tempted by an Apple

When Natalia Goncharova’s painting Picking Apples (above, from 1909) sold for £4,948,000 (or $9,801,988 USD) at Christie’s London in 2007, setting a record for a female artist, the New York Sun, along with a lot of other people, asked “Who Was Natalia Goncharova?” Born June 16, 1881, Goncharova mixed with some of the greatest figures of the avant-garde of early twentieth century Russia and Paris not only in painting and sculpture but also in visual arts and ballet set design. Unfortunately, as some of those names lived on in popular memory, such as Pablo Picasso and Sergei Diaghilev, Goncharova’s name faded, slipping into the shadows as just another Cubist or just another Futurist not worth top-tier status by talent (or, perhaps, by gender). For once, the fact that money talks does some good, giving Goncharova a voice once again to be heard. The beautiful blues, violets, and greens of Picking Apples along with the primal, Cubist modeling of the women announce Goncharova as a unique visionary of that vibrant period.

Like so many others, Goncharova lapped up the new Cubist ways of seeing reality. Her decorative bent, however, kept her from the dour browns of Cubism ala Picasso and Georges Braque. That love of color and energy led her to Cubism’s child—Futurism. The Cyclist (above, from 1913) holds up nicely with the best work of the Italian Futurists such as Umberto Boccioni . Goncharova and the Russian Futurists shared a fascination with the new world of mechanized speed that, sadly, led the Italian Futurists into the gaping maw of World War I, which literally killed off the movement in Italy. Along with her husband Mikhail Larionov, Goncharova organized the 1912 Donkey's Tail exhibition that brought modern European art to Russian and returned the favor by exhibiting with countryman Wassily Kandinsky and the Der Blaue Reiter in Germany that same year. Such internationalism makes Goncharova a pivotal figure of the period.

Between the wars, Goncharova and Larionov continued to pursue their unique brand of abstraction, which they called Rayonism. In Composition with Trees (above, from the early 1920s), Goncharova straddles the worlds of Cubism and pure abstraction, not yet ready to let go of reality entirely. While in Paris, Goncharova’s talents helped set the stage for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, providing visuals to accompany the ground-breaking ballet repertoire. Americans Gerald Murphy and Sara Murphy sought out Goncharova and asked to assist her in painting sets, which soon became the springboard from which Gerald developed his own take on Synthetic Cubism (see more about him here). In the long, overly masculine history of modern European art, it’s nice to see some space finally given to Natalia Goncharova and her work. Now that some tastemakers have noticed her (and put their money where their mouth is), it’ll be interesting to see if they can’t resist more than one bite from the apple.

Dynamism and Continuity

My favorite artist of the Italian Futurists, Umberto Boccioni, was born on this date in 1882. Few artistic movements captured so well the sense of speed and movement as the Futurists, and Boccioni stood at the head of that class with works such as Dynamism of a Soccer Player (above, from 1913). Futurism took the Cubist idea of seeing an object or person from all three dimensions at once and added the fourth dimension of movement. Whereas Picasso’s and Braque’s Cubist works freeze their subjects as if in a brownish amber, Boccioni frees his subjects through a warp-driven frenzy of movement and color. It’s easy to forget the dark side of Futurism, i.e., their glorification of the machine and, hence, the machines of war, looking at Boccioni’s fun, flying footballer.

Boccioni studied under the painter Giacomo Balla with his friend Gino Severini, learning the divisionist style. All three later met up with the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti around 1910, forming the Futurist group, who spat out manifestos the way most people breathe. While Marinetti supplied the philosophical underpinnings of the group, Boccioni and the others supplied the actual art. Development of a Bottle (above, from 1912) shows how Boccioni’s skills as a sculptor soon overtook his ability as a painter. Boccioni charges even an inert bottle with his explosive energy, sending it spinning within his sculpture, seemingly unraveling before your eyes in a ribbon of glass. As thrilling as this image appears, the element of danger persists, again casting up memories of Futurism’s deal with the devil of warfare. Boccioni’s The City Rises of 1910 shows his vision of a Futurist city caught in this same sense of tumult, the birth pangs of the new mechanized utopia of the Futurists. Unfortunately, the Futurist utopia of perpetual motion also meant a perpetual future of unsettled anxiety, a rollercoaster that never ends.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (above, from 1913) remains Boccioni’s signature work and perhaps the greatest of all Futurist artworks. The sense of movement of the figure is so dynamic, so real that it seems alive. Duchamp comes close in his Nude Descending a Staircase, but Unique Forms trumps Duchamp in realizing this movement in three-dimensional sculpture. As beautiful as I find Unique Forms, I also find it chilling. The moving figure here is an automaton, moving with no personality or individuality, a relentless, robotic machine presaging the relentless march to death of the generation that World War I would feast upon. Boccioni followed his Futurist ideals and volunteered for the Italian army in 1915. A little over a year later, he was dead. Most of his fellow Futurists followed shortly thereafter. Boccioni’s paintings and sculptures seduce us even today with their promise of power and speed, the hot Italian sports car of the stereotypical male’s mid-life crisis, but like that sports car, brings the potential for tragedy as well as ecstacy.

Representin’

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the European Union, each country in the union has been asked to select an artist to represent their country. The choices have been a hot topic of debate. Here’s a short list of some of the representatives:

England: J.M.W. Turner (his The Arrival of Louis Philippe at Portsmouth, 1844; shown above)
Italy: Titian
France: Rodin
Austria: Egon Schiele
Germany: Albrecht Durer
The Netherlands: Piet Mondrian

Spain: Diego Velazquez

Turner seems a no-brainer to me for England. I have a book about Turner subtitled “Painting the Nation,” and for much of his career he did exactly that, and better than any other British painter since. Austria’s choice of Schiele is the boldest choice to me, over Gustav Klimt, and with a risqué nude, no less. Rodin seems a compromise choice over the scores of Impressionists France had to choose from. Velazquez represents Spain beautifully, but either Goya or Picasso would have done just as well (or perhaps even better if one of their works on warfare in the past were chosen to comment on the warfare of today).

The two most befuddling are Titian for Italy and Mondrian for The Netherlands. Italy had perhaps the toughest field, with Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and so many others to choose from. I would have put Titian behind those three (and maybe a few more). Mondrian, although significant to modern art, simply cannot stand up to Rembrandt or Van Gogh, at least in my mind.

It seems as if different countries used different criteria for their selections, with some going more modern and others more “old school.” Perhaps Italy could have avoided the whole Renaissance and gone modern as well, choosing Umberto Boccioni, the finest artist from the Italian Futurist school of the early 20th century, Italy's only truly homegrown modern art movement. They’ve already put his best work, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, on a coin.

Who would America have sent? I would nominate Thomas Eakins, but I may be biased by my love of his work and his ties to Philadelphia. Jackson Pollock? Edward Hopper? Thomas Kinkade? OK, that last one was a joke.

Feel free to leave in comments who you think would best represent America. As the kids say today, "Gotta represent."