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Futurism and Photography...

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Futurism and Photography

Futurism was a literary and artistic movement that emerged in the 20th century. It is considered mainly an Italian school in the field of literature and art, but it was also adopted by artists from other countries, especially Russia. Futurism developed in almost all forms of art, painting, sculpture, poetry, music, theatre and photography. Futurism as a movement is placed in the period 1909-1920. The main figure of the movement was the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is also the creator of the famous founding manifesto of Futurism. It was first published in Milan in 1909. This manifesto was described by many as a beacon of speed and technological progress. In 1910, a second manifesto written by painters invited artists to depict its speed and effects, in relation to Etienne-Jules Marey's time-lapse photography. For artists who followed the tradition of 19th-century naturalism, the clarity of Eadweard Muy-Bridge photographs was preferable to that of Marey photographs. At the same time, there were artists who sought to shape a different reality by obscuring the exact identity of things. More specifically, they gave priority to the most abstract aspects of the reality of nature, to motion itself, and not to moving objects, to the fundamental rhythms and patterns of the universe. The technique used therefore resulted in time photographs that combined the virtues of both types of image, blurred and instantaneous. "Like the ripples in a pond when we throw a pebble, the phases of motion in these photos are scattered from a fixed point. "They give the impression of figures evolving over time," said Aaron Scharf. This desire to capture the impressions of the movement was a defining feature of Futurism, which in 1913 gained followers among photographers with the most remarkable brothers Anto Giulio Bragaglia and especially Arturo Bragaglia. At the same time, Anto Giulio Bragaglia in the manifesto of Fotodinamismo Futurista (Futuristic Photodynamics) laid the foundations for an approach to "Photodynamics", which analyzed motion in its constituent moments, which were rendered in blurred forms. At the same time, futuristic painters depict movement using imposing lines, in a way adopted by Cubist painting. For the first time, painters and photographers were interested in answering the same formal questions:

- How could motion and speed be translated into visual equivalents? - - Were there formal means specifically suitable for the performance of modern life?

According to the futurists, the convergence and merging of all the arts, literature, photography, painting, offered a strong solution. A solution that brought about significant changes in the artistic world. It was not until the 1920s, and with the influence of New Optics photography, that futuristic photographers embarked on the techniques of photomontage (see Ivo Pannaggi, Vinicio Paladini), double exposure (see Tato), optical distortion (see Giulio Pariso) as well as aerial photography (see Filippo Masoero). At the time, futuristic photography seemed like an attempt to undermine visual reality, as it presented it in unconventional ways and in this way influenced photographers working in very different contexts: from those of the Bauhaus such as T. Lux Feininger to the photographers of New Optics. For G. C. Argan "the futurist effort, though deliberately revolutionary, generally ends in vindictive extremism. Futuristic manifestos call for the destruction of historic cities (for example Venice) and museums, and applaud the new city, understood as a vast machine in motion. The revolution sought is in fact the industrial or technological revolution, that is, again a bourgeois revolution: in the new machine culture, artists-intellectuals must represent the spiritual impetus of "genius". Beneath the taste of scandal and contempt for the bourgeoisie lies an unconscious and unintentional opportunism, and this contradiction explains all the others. Futurists declare that they are anti-romantic and declare an art of expressive-expressive "mental states" intensely emotional. They exclude science and technology, but they want them to be deeply poetic or "lyrical". They declare themselves socialists, but do not care about the workers' struggles, as opposed to the vanguard intellectuals who see the aristocracy of the future. They are internationalists but they announce that the "Italian demon" will save world culture. "At the time of political choice, nationalism prevails: they want the war" for the health of the world "and participate in it voluntarily." Contradictions of substance to which A. Charalambidis justifiably adds the most obvious of all; the text of the founding manifesto of Futurism, which proclaimed the cultural revival of Italy was written in French. The first major futurist exhibition opened in late April 1911 in Milan. However, the big leap for the Italians took place again through France. Gino Severini (1883-1966), who already lived and worked in Paris, closely acquainted with the ever-emerging movements of the Avant-Garde, persuaded Marinetti to fund a, say, primarily educational, two-week trip for Umberto Boccioni ( 1882-1916), Carlo Carra (1881-1966) and Luigi Russolo (1883-1947). The direct contact with the work of the most prominent French, and not only, artists, and especially their acquaintance with the Cubism that was mediating at that time, was a revelation. They returned to Milan and worked

feverishly trying to incorporate new elements into their works and evolve what they saw in Paris. It is indicative that if Cubism had succeeded in fragmenting the forms into smaller and smaller individual forms and presenting the same object from different angles at the same time, Futurism wanted to extend this conquest by mobilizing the object itself and applying vivid colours. The speech for the Futurists pre-existed every action and with difficulty managed to express itself through the visual work of the representatives of the movement. The Futurists tried to bridge the gap between theory and practice with the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters and a little later with the Technical Manifesto signed by: Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini. Rebelling, as they say, against the tyranny of the words harmony and good taste, they declare: "Our ardent desire for truth can no longer be satisfied by the traditional meanings of form and colour. Movement for us is no longer a static moment of global dynamism: it will be decisive, the dynamic sense, in this sense that will be perpetuated. Everything moves, everything runs, everything changes quickly. […] A running horse does not have four legs: it has twenty, and their movements are triangular. […] To paint a figure we do not need to make it, we need to make its atmosphere. […] The construction of the paintings is foolishly traditional. Our painters always showed us things and faces placed in front of us. We will put the viewer in the centre of the table. […] The academic tradition must be replaced by a lively stream of individual freedom. […] In order to conceive and understand the new beauty of a modern painting, the soul must be cleansed again, the eye must be freed from the veil with which atavism and education covered it, so that it considers nature as the only control, not anymore. the museum! […] The art we praise is completely spontaneous and dynamic “. Both from their verbal and visual formulations, one easily realizes that they feel like heroes of the modern big city, who in the vortex of speed and constant evolution, want with their works to render not only its images, but also its feel and atmosphere. At the centre of course of all is the speed and performance of the movement, even in its different phases at the same time. The dynamic lines, the emphasis on the moving, twisting form, and the interpenetration of the levels, express the dynamism of the moving object itself, which in combination with the intense, unrealistic colours and the contrasts between them, are employed by the Futurists for to convey contemporary reality and everyday stimuli in a bold and revolutionary way.

Although Futurism quickly became known throughout Europe, it exerted a major influence on young Russian artists, who had formed a futuristic group as early as 1910. of Russian art in the field of Abstraction. As for the Italians, Futurism was the springboard for the revival of the long tradition in the arts, so for the Russians it was the occasion to break out of artistic isolation. After all, if in Italy the leading figure of Futurism was the otherwise mediocre poet Marinetti, Russia will bring out the inimitable Mayakovski. With the outbreak of World War I, Futurism weakened, and Boccioni was killed during an exercise by falling off a horse. War was not, after all, "the only hygiene in the world," as the Marinetti Futurists preached. The founder of the movement will appear as a candidate on the side of Mussolini. Despite the somewhat frivolous enthusiasm and connection with the rise of Fascism, Futurism put forward a genuine conception of the modern as we know it today and paved the way for new conquests in the field of art and aesthetic theory....