sign in sign up
<<
Home , Carlo Carra, Manifesto of Futurism

Futurism and the Avant-Gardes 329

Chapter 16 and the Avant-Gardes

Selena Daly

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded the Futurist movement in 1909, infa- mously celebrating war as the ‘sole cleanser of the world,’1 and in 1911 he spoke of the Futurists’ ‘restless waiting for war.’2 The arrival of the First World War fulfilled their most heartfelt desires but was also a traumatic and transforma- tive event for the avant-garde movement. In Futurist criticism, the years of the First World War were long considered an endpoint to the movement. The so- called ‘heroic’ period of Futurism concluded in 1915/16, with the deaths of two of the movement’s protagonists, the painter and the archi- tect Antonio Sant’Elia, and the distancing of two other key figures, and , from Marinetti’s orbit. In 1965, Maurizio Calvesi, one of the pioneers of Futurist criticism, wrote that ‘Futurism is extinguished at its best’ in 1915/16.3 Marianne W. Martin’s foundational study, Futurist Art and Theory, of 1968 also stopped in 1915: she commented that the death of Boccioni and Sant’Elia while serving in the Italian Army and the injuries of Marinetti and in 1917 brought ‘their final joint venture to a tragically heroic end.’4 Although today the idea that Futurism ended in 1915 is untenable (the movement would continue in various forms until Marinetti’s death in 1944), the presentation of the First World War as a dramatic conclusion to the move- ment’s first phase has persisted.5 The war has been blamed for ‘destroy[ing]

1 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Foundation and (1909),” in Marinetti, Critical Writings, ed. Günter Berghaus, trans. Doug Thompson (New York, 2006), pp. 11-17, here p. 14. 2 Marinetti, “Electric War: A Futurist Visionary Hypothesis (1911),” in Marinetti, Critical Writings, pp. 221-225, here 225. 3 Maurizio Calvesi, “Profilo del futurismo (1965),” in Studi sul futurismo, vol. 1 of Le due avan- guardie (Bari, 1971), pp. 47-51, here 51. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are by the author. 4 Marianne W. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 1909-1915, 2nd ed (Oxford, 1968; New York, 1978), p. 204. Citation refers to the 1978 edition. 5 On the historiography of the movement’s development, see Walter L. Adamson, “Contexts and Debates. Fascinating Futurism: The Historiographical Politics of an Historical Avant-Garde,” Modern 13: 1 (2008): 69-85.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363724_018 330 Daly their movement by realizing their ideals.’6 In a similar vein, Walter L. Adamson has stated that with the outbreak of the war ‘Futurism’s original myth has, arguably, been realized. The war is no longer a mythic projection into the but a present reality. [...] If the founding myth has been realized, the rationale for the movement no longer exists.’7 And yet, the movement did continue to exist and function throughout the war years, altering its focus and interests to face the new reality, and culminat- ing in the involvement of Marinetti and other Futurists in the establishment of Benito Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento in March 1919. The drastic shifts the movement underwent during the war are usually attributed to a generational change: the deaths of Boccioni and Sant’Elia made room for new, younger Futurists, such as Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli, and Primo Conti, to lead the charge resulting in a change of perspective.8 In contrast to this dominant view, however, I argue that the change in Futurism came about not as a reac- tive response to these events, but rather occurred as part of a strategy adopted by Marinetti in 1915 to revitalize a movement whose avant-garde provocations were becoming less effective. Borrowing a phrase coined by Marinetti in 1915, but never fully articulated as a vision for the movement, I identify his wartime approach as one of ‘futurismo moderato’ or ‘moderate Futurism.’9 From late 1915 onwards, Marinetti deliberately set out to broaden the movement’s reach and used the Futurists’ status as soldiers and war veterans to achieve this aim in the fields of theatre and publications, at the expense of some of the most extreme aspects of its literary and artistic ideology. Before considering the Italian war years, which officially began in May 1915, it is necessary to address the interventionist period, which lasted from August 1914 to May of the following year. The dominant narrative of Futurist interven- tionism is the version of events that was constructed by the Futurists them­

6 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918, 2nd ed (Cambridge, MA, 2003), p. 299. 7 Adamson, “The End of an Avant-Garde? Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Futurism in World War 1 and its Aftermath,” in The History of Futurism: The Precursors, Protagonists, and Legacies, eds. Geert Buelens, Harald Hendrix and Monica Jansen (Lanham, MD, 2012), pp. 299-318, here 304-305. 8 This generational argument has been made, for example, by Claudia Salaris, “The Invention of the Programmatic Avant-Garde,” in Italian Futurism 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe, ed. Vivien Greene (New York, 2014), pp. 22-49, specifically 42. See also, among others, Enrico Crispolti, Storia e critica del futurismo, 2nd ed (Rome, 1987), p. 21. 9 The phrase appeared in the manifesto ‘L’unica soluzione del problema finanziario’ (The only solution to the financial problem) of December 1915, Collezione ‘900 Sergio Reggi, Archivi della Parola, dell’Immagine e della Comunicazione Editoriale, Università degli Studi, . It subsequently appeared in Vela Latina, 19 February 1916, 1.