Page 42 - Studio Interantional - May 1967

Futurism = states of mind+ states of matter

'The Futurists' analysis of objects in motion, their reduction of solid forms to equations, the multiplication
of their sensations in order to create illusions of rhythm in time and space, had significant prototypes
in photography.'

Aaron Scharf

Even avant-garde artists and cnt1cs expressed a certain From that point of view, Blanche's aphorism, 'One can­
repugnance for the lack of structure and the new kind of not make an omelette with egg shells', is an apt appraisal
description in Futurist painting and sculpture. Despite of its pictorial means. Clive Bell, though he upheld their
their adulation of modern technology and the apparent political and social theories, believed the Futurists pro­
adaptation of new scientific principles to their work, the duced notable examples of descriptive painting which had
Futurists succeeded in alienating many contemporaries, nothing whatsoever to do with art. Their forms conveyed
including those who, like themselve , recognized the im­ information and ideas but did not provoke the necessary
portance of science and technology for modern artists. aesthetic emotions.
The primacy of form on which the Cubists insisted, Other critic were more direct-'Futurism is nothing
sometimes with marked puritanism, was invoked in pro­ more than the instantaneous photograph of a sneeze.'
test against the dissolution of object inherent in the less They were called 'photographers' and 'movie-makers',
tangible Futurist schemata. Apollinaire, who blew both and Severini's Pan-Pan at Nfonico's was described as
hot and cold in his support of the futurists, thought they revealing the cinematographic character of his painting.
had no conception of the meaning of plastic volumes and Delaunay, who was contemptuous of their ambition to
simply produced illustrations, while Jacques-Emile work like engineers and belittled the mechanical appear­
Blanche complained that Futurism was a mechanical ance of their forms, confided to his notebook: 'Your art
process, merely rendering the sen ations of dynamism and ha velocity as expression and the cinema as means.' The
obliterating the very objects which caused these sensations. supporters of Cubism warned that it was the greatest

Left Fig. 1 The Victory of Samolhrace (Marble) 4th century B.C.
Louvre

Fig. 2 Boccioni Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (Bronze)
1913. Museum of Modern Art, New York

244