Futurism and the Avant-Garde

Saturday 27 June 2009

This symposium explores the controversial status of Futurist movements in art history, and some of their 'avant-garde' practices. Speakers engage with various forms of Futurist art, performance and film, including the use of manifestos and demonstrations. Italian Futurism will be viewed in relation to other radical art practices across Europe. The Futurists' disdain for traditional values and their pursuit of an 'art of modern life' will be explored in relation to prevailing concepts of modernity and 'avant-garde' utopias.

Watch the Futurism and the Avant-Garde sessions on Tate Channel

Session 1: Futurism and The Avant-Garde

Speaker: David Cottington, Professor of Art History at Kingston University London, and the author of several books on the early twentieth century avant-garde.

It is a commonplace of art history to observe that Italian futurism was among the first movements of the artistic avant-garde. But these terms, and the implications for understanding both futurist art and its significance for western modernism, are not often examined. What was ‘the avant-garde’, why did it emerge when it did, and what influence did it have on the sudden appearance of futurism on the European cultural stage? These are some of the questions that this talk addresses, with particular attention to the impact of cubism on the development of futurist painting and sculpture, and to the ways in which its innovations were adapted, and re-exported, by the Italian artists.

Suggested Further Reading:

• Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (U of Minnesota Press, 1984)
• Raymond Williams, 'The Politics of the Avant-Garde', in his book The Politics of Modernism (London: Verso, 1989)
• David Cottington, Cubism (London: Tate Publishing, 1998)
• Richard Humphreys, Futurism (London: Tate Publishing, 1998)
• Norman Stone, Europe Transformed: 1878-1919 (London: Fontana, 1984)

Session 2: ‘The raging broom of madness’: making an exhibition of Futurism

Speaker: Matthew Gale, Curator (Modern Art) and Head of Displays at Tate Modern.

The presentation covers some of the ideas, issues and decisions that went into making Futurism at Tate Modern. It covers a range from conception to installation, including such concerns as how to present the manifestos and what happened to Balla's dog?

Session 3: Futurism: art and life and politics

Speaker: Alex Danchev, Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham.

The Futurist project was ambitious, not to say grandiose. It outran art to embrace life. It was also intensely political. This talk broaches the politics of Futurism—its connections with various other isms, including anarchism and Fascism, and its position on militarism, violence, and war.

Suggested Further Reading:

• Gunter Berghaus (ed), F T Marinetti Critical Writings (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006)
• Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Movement (Chicago UP, 2003)
• Christine Poggi, Inventing Futurism (Princeton UP, 2008)

Session 4: Vita Futurista

Speaker: Lutz Becker, director of political and art documentaries such as Double Headed Eagle 1972, Lion of Judah 1981 and Nuremberg in History 2006.

A new version of Becker's acclaimed film Vita Futurista is being released on the occasion of the 2009 Centenary of Italian Futurism. It covers the story of Futurism from its beginnings in 1909 till the 1930s. The exhibition presented by Tate Modern concentrates on the first phase of Futurism which ended with the death of Boccioni in 1916. The film continues the history of Futurism through its second phase. During the 1920s and 30s Marinetti, in an effort to re-establish Futurism, led a new generation of artists to develop concepts and projects of continuing significance. This new beginning was exemplified in the Manifesto ‘The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ signed by Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero. Fascism eventually usurped the modernising energy of the Futurists, which affected the historical reputation of the movement. Only now, with the distance of time, can Futurism be fully appreciated as one of the most important sources of essential concepts of modern art.

Session 5: Manifesting

Speaker: Mary-Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, Graduate School, City University of New York

A look at a selection of visual manifestos, in their relation to verbal ones—what sorts of crossover features might we determine (or invent), with our post-event imaginations running high, as in the original big and loud futurist ones? A quick dada/surrealist spin will be put on the whole thing, with additional thoughts after the Venice Biennale sneaking in.

Suggested Further Reading:

• Mary Ann Caws, ed. Manifestos: a Century of Isms (University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
• Mary Ann Caws, The Art of Interference: Stressed Readings in Verbal and Visual Texts (Cambridge: Polity, 1989)

Session 6: These panels are our only models for the composition of poetry, or, How Marinetti taught me how to write

Speaker: Tom McCarthy, his first novel, Remainder, won The Believer Book Award 2007 and is currently being adapted for cinema by Film4

Marinetti's proclamations about literature—what it should and shouldn't be, the operations that it should attempt and tendencies that it should shun—outline a vision whose scope goes far beyond the boundaries of the middle-brow novel. This talk, by a crossover novelist/artist, asks what characteristics a genuinely Marinettian contemporary literature might have.

Suggested Further Reading:

• JG Ballard, Crash
• Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
• William Burroughs, Nova Express
• Francis Ponge, La Partie Pris des Choses
• James Joyce, Ulysses