Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [106]
Although Futurist art was fairly well received, the members’ public demonstrations caused an uproar. To provoke the passive public, Futurists climbed the bell tower of Venice’s St. Mark’s. As churchgoers exited, they bombarded them with outrageous slogans blasted through loudspeakers: “Burn the museums! Drain the canals of Venice! Burn the gondolas, rocking chairs for idiots! Kill the moonlight!” The rebels measured their success by the amount of abuse in the form of insults, rotten fruit, and spoiled spaghetti the crowd hurled back at them.
Boccioni’s most famous work is “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.” The charging figure is an answer to Marinetti’s belief that “a roaring racing car that seems to run on shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” Boccioni’s Futuro-Cubist Nike (see p. 13 for original) slices through space trailing flamelike flaps. “I am obsessed these days by sculpture,” Boccioni wrote. “I think I can achieve a complete revival of this mummified art.” After making good on his boast, he died in a riding accident at age 34. Boccioni and Marinetti founded a movement based on speed. With the death of its leading artist, Boccioni, Futurism died fast.
MAMA’S BOY
Throughout his life, Boccioni was close to his mother, who was the subject of many of his portraits. During World War I Boccioni volunteered for the cyclist battalion. His mother, nothing if not supportive, followed the racing bikers in a carriage shouting, “Long live the Futurists!”
Boccioni, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,” 1913, MoMA, NY. Boccioni celebrated the power and dynamism of modern life in this Futurist sculpture of a striding figure.
THE FUTURIST COOKBOOK
As part of their quest to overthrow all tradition, Futurists even advocated a new cooking style called Cucina Futuristica. Recipes used “completely new, absurd combinations” of ingredients, like a sauce made of chocolate, pistachio, red pepper, and eau de cologne. Buon appetito!
CONSTRUCTIVISM: SEEING RED.
Around 1914 the Russian avant-garde flourished with artists, called Constructivists, like Vladimir Tatlin, Liubov Popova, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Naum Gabo, and Antoine Pevsner. From Cubism the Constructivists borrowed broken shapes. From Futurism they adopted multiple overlapping images to express agitated modern life. These artists pushed art from representational to abstract.
Then the 1917 revolution converted Russian society from a feudal state to a “people’s republic.” Lenin tolerated the avant-garde. He thought they could teach the illiterate public his new ideology through developing novel visual styles. For a brief time, before Stalin cracked down and forbade “elitist” easel painting, Russia’s most adventurous artists led a social, as well as artistic, revolution. They wanted to strip art, like the state, of petty bourgeois anachronisms. They tried to remake art, as well as society, from scratch.
Tatlin, “Model for the Monument for the 3rd International,” 1920. Recreated in 1968 for exhibition at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Tatlin planned this revolving tower as a symbol of the momentum and unlimited potential of the Soviet Union.
THREE MODERNIST MOVEMENTS
About 1914 Tatlin (pronounced TAT lahn; 1885- 1953) originated Russian geometric art. He called this abstract art, which was intended to reflect modern technology, “Constructivism” because its aim was “to construct” art, not create it. The style prescribed using industrial materials like glass, metal, and plastic in three-dimensional works. Tatlin’s most famous work was a monument to celebrate the Bolshevik revolution. Intended to be 1,300 feet tall, or 300 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower, the monument was planned for the center of Moscow. Since steel was scarce, his idea remained only a model, but it clearly would have been