Manifesta "Manifestos" Marina Aleksinskaya August 14, 2014 0 Culture "Saving Russia from Obscurantism" in the Hermitage From June 28 to October 31, the Hermitage hosts "Manifesta 10" - a biennale of contemporary art. This event, this global project (at the expense of the St. Petersburg treasury) has already

18.7. Manifesto of the Opposition The last of the oppositions examined covered a number of regional branches of the party and resulted in the release in 2009 of the “Manifesto for the Renewal of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation” by this opposition. In 2010, its second edition was released (but not updates, but modernizations - the update sounds

Preface: from “national futurism” to the “technosense of the Russian idea” The bad faith is that which is professed out of duty. It’s bad when you are ordered from above to believe in the greatness and great future of Russia, but something completely different reigns in your soul. In 2014, a turning point came. Those great chances that

Futurism was born on February 20, 1909, when the Italian poet and writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his “Futurist Manifesto” in the pages of the French newspaper Le Figaro.

Lyubov Popova - Portrait

“With this manifesto we are establishing Futurism today, because we want to free our land from the fetid gangrene of professors, archaeologists, talkers and antiquarians. For too long, Italy has been a country of ragpickers. We intend to free it from the countless museums that cover it like so many cemeteries. Museums are cemeteries!.. Museums are absurd slaughterhouses of artists and sculptors, mercilessly killing each other with blows of color and line in the arena of walls! We, young and strong futurists, do not want to have anything to do with the past! Set the library shelves on fire! Turn the canals so that they flood the museums!.. What a delight to see the famous old paintings floating, swaying, having lost their color and crawling apart!..

Kazimir Malevich - Portrait of the Artist Mikhail Vasilyevich

Take pickaxes, axes and hammers and destroy, destroy without pity the gray-haired venerable cities! The oldest of us is 30 years old, so we have at least another 10 years to complete our business. When we are 40, others, younger and stronger, may throw us like unnecessary manuscripts into the trash - we want it to be so! They will rage around us, choking with contempt and anguish, and then they will all, enraged by our proud fearlessness, attack to kill us; their hatred will be the stronger the more their hearts are intoxicated with love and admiration for us. We stand on top of the world and challenge the stars again!”

Gino Severini - Pan-pan dance in Monico

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti called for the overthrow of the old culture, the rejection of traditional morality, classical literature and academic art and the creation of a new art - daring, aggressive and energetic. “A racing car... is more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace...” wrote Marinetti, who later also became the author of the novel “Mafarka the Futurist,” which brought him scandalous but widespread fame.

Luigi Russolo - Insurrection

Marinetti insisted on destroying libraries and museums. He argued that it was even necessary to abandon the generally accepted syntax - the use of qualitative adjectives, adverbs, punctuation marks, conjunctions - and transform the language, make it fast, lively, concise. According to Marinetti, such statements were supposed to produce a real cultural revolution that would embrace literature, music, cinema, architecture, photography and even fashion and cooking

Umberto Boccioni - Street Power

Umberto Boccioni - State of Mind

Matthew Gale.

“Futurists are distinguished primarily by their interest in street life, everyday reality, the excitement that they felt from this everyday reality - and precisely at the moment when the explosion of technological progress was transforming this reality. They thus managed to attract a much wider audience - those who traveled by trains and cars or went to cabaret shows. The Cubist paintings were a giant step forward in the analysis of form, but they - beautiful, restrained, severe - remained just purely pictorial exercises in still life and the nude. Futurists were interested in the dynamism of everyday life - this is their main theme,” says Matthew Gale.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italian :Filippo Tommaso Marinetti; December 21, 1876, Alexandria - December 2, 1944, Bellagio) - Italian poet, writer and playwright, best known as the founder of Futurism. He founded a number of futurist magazines (Lacerba, Poesia) and a publishing house (Poesia). Marinetti owns most of the manifestos (the first manifesto - 1909), defining futurism as an artistic and political movement.

Biography

Born on December 21, 1876 in Egypt (Alexandria), into a wealthy Italian family of lawyer Enrico Marinetti. He spent his childhood in Paris, where he studied at the College of Saint-François Xavier. It was there that Marinetti founded his first literary magazine, Papyrus, and was subsequently expelled for clandestinely distributing banned books. Having completed his education at the University of Genoa (Faculty of Law) in 1899, Marinetti chose literary work over a legal career.

In August 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War, Marinetti enlisted as a volunteer in the Lombardy battalion and conducted propaganda for Italy's entry into the war, giving the futuristic magazine Lacerba a political orientation for this purpose. The “Directorate of the Futurist Movement” in Milan gradually turned into a combat headquarters. In September, she organized demonstrations with the public burning of the Austrian flag, for which Marinetti was arrested and imprisoned. But in May 1915, Italy entered the war on the side of the Entente and Marinetti countries, volunteered to go to the front with other futurists, and was awarded a medal as an armored car commander for the Battle of Vittorio Veneta.

After the First World War, the political wing of futurism was organized. A political party of Futurists was created, headed by Marinetti, and a corresponding manifesto was published, dividing the functions of the party and the direction in art of the same name. The newspaper “Futuristic Rome”, founded by Marinetgi, Setgimelli and Carli, became the organ of the political party of the Futurists.

During this period, Marinetti began to advocate radical nationalist positions, and in 1919 he joined the Fascist Party. “Our futuristic revolutionism adores Italy and longs to revive it at all costs, to cleanse it, to make it more intelligent and prosperous,” he said back in September 1918.

It is worth noting that early Italian fascism owes a lot to two national literary geniuses of that time - Marinetti and D'Annunzio, not only in the field of formation of ideology and slogans, but also in the field of “direct action”: Marinetti played a large role in the formation of fascist militant groups , personally participated in the dispersal of demonstrations and the attack on the editorial office of the newspaper Avanti, “wishing to assert the absolute right of four million soldiers to govern the new Italy.” Volunteers led by Gabriele D'Annunzio occupied the city of Fiume in September 1919 and staged a magnificent futuristic evening there. In November 1919, at the parliamentary elections, the names of Marinetti and Mussolini appeared side by side on the ballot, but the fascists did not win the elections (after which both were arrested on charges of illegal possession of firearms. Mussolini leaves immediately, Marinetti twenty days later).

However, already in May 1920, Marinetti and a group of fellow futurists committed another avant-garde provocation: protesting against Mussolini’s compromises with clerical and monarchical circles, they left the fascist party. At the same time, Marinetti remains a “non-party fascist” until the end of his days. In 1922, after Mussolini came to power, he dedicated an enthusiastic article to the Minister-President: “The Italian Empire is in the fist of the best, most capable Italian!”

On March 18, 1929, Mussolini inducted Filippo Tommaso Marinetti into the Italian Academy of Sciences.

In 1942, Marinetti traveled to the USSR as part of the Italian expeditionary force, where he became seriously ill. He died in Bellagio at the Hotel Excelsior on Lake Como on December 2, 1944, after a heart attack.

Creation

His usual themes are machines, speed - the foundations of modern industrial culture, war, a strong personality, stars and the sea as a symbol of the super-terrestrial "Conquest of the Stars" (La conquête des étoiles, 1902), "Destruction" (1903), "Monoplane of the Pope" (Le Monoplane du pape, 1912), etc. In Marinetti’s drama, the satirical tragedy “The Revelry King” (Le roi bombance) stands out, where a satire is given on humanity and the social revolution. Most of the works are written in French.

Based on the slogan “We will celebrate the growing triumph of the machine,” Marinetti creates a new aesthetics of the car - “A racing car is more beautiful than the statue of the Samothrace Victory.”

Marinetti’s political and economic propaganda of the industrialization of Italy (in manifestos) is also associated with the poetic industrial theme. Venice, for example, the dead city of the Doges, was proposed to be transformed into the industrial center of the Adriatic.

Military prose also occupies a significant place in Marinetti’s work. These are “The Battle of Tripoli” (La bataille de Tripoli), a frank apotheosis of Italian expansion into Africa, “Zang, tumb, tumb” (The Siege of Adrianople), war poems that depict the industrialization of war (poem “The Foundry of the Battle”) and a number of other literary works about the world war.

Marinetti, at the head of the Futurists, fought against the “opportunism” of Italian foreign policy long before Italy’s withdrawal from the Triple Alliance; he demanded war with Austria in the name of Italy’s undivided dominance in the Adriatic Sea, which had a certain propaganda value when Italy entered the world war.

Marinetti's attempts to create a dynamic form led him to reform verse and prose. In 1906, Marinetti organized the “International Questionnaire on Free Verse.” Marinetti's formal innovations affected the field of prose. In Marinetti's program there is a deformation of syntax, saturation of it with emotionality, arrangement of words without restrictions of grammatical logic. Auxiliary parts of speech that delay the transmission of thoughts, adjectives meaning pauses are discarded; punctuation marks are excluded. Prose is based on nouns and verbs, which are combined with conventional mathematical and musical signs. A telegraph style is created. Marinetti’s specific imagery is based on metaphors, the boldness of which (the remoteness of analogies) is justified by the slogan about “wireless imagination and free words.” Typographic editing of the text is typical.

Marinetti’s “Synthetic Theater” (Teatro sintetico), written in collaboration with Corra, Settimalli and others, is also distinguished by formal innovation. In recent years, Marinetti has been promoting “tactilism” - the art of touch, trying to create a new type of art - “objects of art perceived by touch.” To this end, Marinetti developed a “tactile table of sensations.”

The entire line of Marinetti’s work led him to the camp of fascism - (“Futurism and fascism” - “Futurismo e fascismo”, “Democratia futurista, dinamismo poetico” - “Futuristic democracy, political dynamism”), of which he was the harbinger.

Futurism as a matrix of fascism

Dmitry ZHVANIYA, Candidate of Historical Sciences

“The source of fascism,” according to the German researcher Ernst Nolte, “were: nationalists under the leadership of Enrico Corradini, legionnaires led by D’Annunzio in his Fiume adventure, and former Marxists who broke away from the socialist party and led by Mussolini... Of these three elements, Mussolini’s movement ... was the most important." Nolte believes that “Marxism was not just a whim of the youth of the fascist Duce, who disappeared without a trace, the “finalita” of Marxism (the ultimate goal - D.J.) always continued to live in him, although outside his consciousness.”

“On March 23, 1919, in bustling Milan, in the small hall of a trade school on Piazza San Sepolkro, several dozen people gathered: Arditi, legionnaires, ex-combatants. They were inspired by feelings of patriotic anger, hatred of allies, contempt for their own government, and the will for a national-people's revolution; most of them came from the left - from the socialists and syndicalists. These were the first fascists. They were led by Mussolini. “The first fascists were a handful,” he recalled about this meeting five years later. They organized the “Union of War Participants” for a new struggle - Fascio di combatimento,” reports Nikolai Ustryalov in his book on fascism.

Marinetti participated in a rally organized by Benito Mussolini in Piazza San Sepolcro on March 23, 1919, at which the creation of the Italian Union of Struggle was proclaimed. The poet sang this event in “The Poem of San Sepol Cristi” (“Il poema dei sansepol cristi”). The founder of futurism wrote it in a special futuristic style, which was later, by analogy with “aeropainting,” called “aeropoetry.” In form, this poem by Marinetti is a type of prose poem. Its “aero-features,” as Marinetti explained, consist of long phrases, like an air flight, not interrupted by punctuation marks, for “stones, ruts and potholes are characteristic only of land roads, and waves, rapids and reefs are characteristic only of waterways,” and also in the use of the infinitive - the indefinite form of the verb, because “from above everything is seen in general terms.

“Duce in the foreground Duce power radiating solid elastic body ready to shoot without weight continue to think wish decide to capture crush reject accelerate to a new light

His fist holds together practical ideas and courage, the irreplaceable geometry of his speeches makes elegant the enthusiasm of a chisel into a crack to melt and his voice continues to whip ironic or cutting analysis in pure synthesis

Threats and fury around the square to stop Mussolini’s, that the bureaucratic ceiling was shaken by the ancient prudence and meticulous avarice of plans,” Marinetti wrote in “The Poem of San Sepolcrist”

In March 1919, Marinetti was elected to the Central Committee of the Fascist Party. Back in December 1918 - January 1919, the first fascist-futurist clubs opened in Rome, Ferrara, Taranto and Florence. Coincidentally, at the same time, in January 1919, an organization of communist futurists (comfutists) was founded in Petrograd.

Researcher Igor Golomshtok believes that “if Mussolini’s movement was the main source of Italian fascism, then one of the sources of this movement itself was Italian futurism.” Mussolini made too sharp a leap from revolutionary Marxism and at first had very vague ideas about the ideology of the movement he was creating. For him, fascism was not some kind of dogma or philosophy, but a principle of revolutionary action - a method of achieving power. And he adopted many of the ideas of his eccentric friend, Marinetti. Between March and July 1919, Futurists dominated the Milan branch of the Union of Struggle (fascio). As for the ideas of the futurists, they easily turned into a guide to action. “Anyone who has a sense of historical consistency can find the ideological sources of fascism in futurism - in its readiness to take to the streets to impose its opinion and silence those who disagree with it, in its lack of fear of battles and riots, in its a thirst to break with all sorts of traditions and in that admiration for youth that marks futurism,” explained the great Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce.

On April 15, 1919, Marinetti personally led an attack on the editorial office of Mussolini's former newspaper - the main organ of the socialist party Avanti! - "wishing to assert the absolute right of four million soldiers to govern the new Italy." The defeat of the editorial office of Avanti! Duce called "the first real achievement of the fascist revolution."

“Fascism in 1919 immediately appears with screaming national revolutionary slogans. Mussolini tries to emphasize that he, like Garibaldi, still combines a nationalist and a revolutionary republican. He expresses the will and feelings of the front-line soldiers: “It is necessary,” he insists, “to impart social content to the war, and not only reward the masses who defended the fatherland, but also, for the future, unite them with the nation and its development.” The program of the ordinary front-line soldier is clear: saving the nation, strengthening its dignity, ensuring its happiness and “providing the heroes of the trenches, the working people, with the opportunity to take advantage of the revolutionary fruits of the revolutionary war,” writes Ustryalov.

When in May 1919, near Milan, workers occupied the factory during a violent strike and raised not a red, but a national flag over it, the fascist newspaper “Popolo d’Italia” declared that it fully supported the workers.

When the Republic of Fiume appeared in September 1919, led by the poet, writer and aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio, Marinetti, despite the fact that he did not like D’Annunzio, considering him a representative of an outdated tradition, hurried to the “city of Fire”. Speaking to the brave fighters (arditi), he called for the spread of the Fiume revolution throughout Italy. Futurism had a distinctly anti-D'Annunzian character. One of Marinetti’s first books bears the title: “Les dieux s’en vont, et D’Annunzio reste” (“The gods leave, but D’Annunzio remains”). But during the war, the political programs of Marinetti and D’Annunzio coincided in everything. As for D’Annunzio, he never spoke publicly about futurism.

In the fall, Marinetti's name comes second after Mussolini on the list of fascist candidates for elections to the Italian parliament. True, the fascists did not enter parliament. “In the parliamentary elections in the fall of 1919, Mussolini and Marinetti collected only 4,700 votes in Milan. Of course, this meant complete failure. “You must have the courage to admit,” Mussolini later said, “that throughout 1919 the number of Italian fascists did not reach ten thousand,” reports Nikolai Ustryalov in his book on fascism.

It was the futurists who developed the ideology of fascism. To justify the idea of ​​​​transferring full power to the leader of the nation, they - those who declared a complete break with the past - turned to the Italian political tradition. “A political weekly has recently been founded in Milan under the title II Principe, which supports or attempts to support the same theories that Machiavelli preached for Italy in the Cinquecento, i.e., that a state of struggle between local parties, which leads the nation to chaos, could be eliminated by an absolute monarch, a new Cesare Borgia, who would behead all the leaders of the fighting parties, says Antonio Gramsci. - The magazine is run by two futurists - Bruno Corra and Enrico Settimelli. Marinetti, although in 1920 he was arrested in Rome during a patriotic demonstration for his most energetic speech against the king, collaborates in the same weekly.”

It is strange that such an intelligent person as Gramsci did not understand that this was not about a banal strengthening of the power of the king, but about the transfer of full power to the leader of the nation - the Duce. “The Italian futurists saw in Mussolini the builder of their futuristic future, a fighter for the cause of the workers, who had recently promised to “raise the red flag of the revolution over the Potsdam Palace,” that is, the same fiery revolutionary that the Russian futurists saw in Lenin,” believes Igor Golomshtok. However, in May 1920, Marinetti and a group of his Futurist comrades, protesting against Mussolini’s compromises with clerical and monarchical circles, left the fascist party. At the same time, Marinetti remains a “non-party fascist” until the end of his days.

In October 1922, during the “March on Rome,” the Futurists marched alongside the Blackshirts (squadristi). “The coming to power of fascism means the implementation of a futuristic minimum program,” Marinetti explained. “The prophets and predecessors of the great Italy of today, the futurists, are happy to welcome a wonderful futurist figure in the person of our prime minister, who has not yet reached 40 years old.” “The Italian Empire is in the fist of the best, most capable Italian!” - the poet rejoiced. “The minimum age limit for deputies should be lowered to 22 years. A minimum of deputies from lawyers (always opportunists) and a minimum of deputies from professors (always retrogrades) ... Instead of a parliament of incompetent speakers and disabled scientists, we will have a government of syndicates of agricultural, industrial and workers,” this is how the leader of the futurists wanted to see the new government.

Fascism absorbed futurism, and futurism became the matrix of fascism. This can be seen in the maxims of the fascist code of honor, which are literally copied from futurist manifestos:

“Ardisco ad ogni impresa” - “Courage in every endeavor”;
“Boia chi molla” - “The scumbag who gives up”;
“Chi osa vince” - “He who dares wins”;
“Chi si ferma è perduto” - “Whoever stops loses (loses)”;
“Chi non è pronto a morire per la sua fede non è degno di professarla” - “He who is not ready to die for his faith is not worthy of confession”;
“Credere, obbedire, combattere” - “Believe, obey, fight”;
“Datevi all’ippica” - “Start getting busy”;
“Dvx meat lux” lat. - “The leader is my luminary”;
“Fedeltà è più forte del fuoco” - “Loyalty is stronger than fire”;
“È l'aratro che traccia il solco, ma è la spada che lo difende. E il vomere e la lama sono entrambi di acciaio temprato come la fede dei nostri cuori” - “It is the plow that outlines the furrow, but it is the sword that protects it. Both the opener and the blade are both made of hardened steel, like the faith of our hearts”;
“Fermarsi significa retrocedere” - “To stop means to retreat”;
“Fino alla vittoria” - “Until victory”;
“Marciare non marcire” - “Move on, not rot”;
“Meglio lottare insieme che morire da soli” - “It is better to fight together than to die alone”;
“Meglio vivere un giorno da leone, che cento anni da pecora” - “It is better to live one day as a lion than a century as a sheep”;
“Me ne frego” - “I can’t be intimidated (I’m not afraid. And I don’t care)”;
“Molti nemici, molto onore” - “More enemies, more honor”;
“Non basta essere bravi bisogna essere i migliori” - “It’s not enough to be good, you need to be the best”;
“Non siamo gli ultimi di ieri ma i primi del domani” - “Not the last yesterday, but the first tomorrow”;
“O con noi o contro di noi” - “Either with us or against us”;
“Se avanzo seguitemi, se indietreggio uccidetemi, se mi uccidono vendicatemi” - “If I move forward, follow me, if I stop, kill me, if I was killed, take revenge”;
“Se il destino è contro di noi...Peggio per lui!” - “If fate is against us... It’s worse for her!”;
“Sposi della vita, amanti della morte” - “Married to life, in love with death”;
“Vincere e vinceremo” - “We have won and we will win.”

“For us fascists, the most important thing is not to live long, but to live actively. This is the mysticism of fascism,”- written in “The First Book of a Fascist.” Isn't this the philosophy of futurism?

Anyone who has a sense of historical consistency can find the ideological sources of fascism in futurism - in its willingness to take to the streets to impose its opinion and silence those who disagree with it,” wrote the philosopher Benedetto Croce

The phallic aesthetics of industrialism set the futurists in an anti-feminist mood. “We will destroy museums, libraries, educational institutions of all types, we will fight against moralism, feminism, against all opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice,” Marinetti proclaimed in the Futurist Manifesto.

He did not hesitate to admit his contempt for the woman. To a greater extent, he did this out of outrageousness - out of a desire to contrast futurism with that cultural tradition, which, as written in the “Futurist Manifesto,” “praised thoughtful stillness, ecstasy and sleep,” and indeed the entire Italian culture, literally saturated with love bliss. Since the Middle Ages, the image of women has been exalted in literature and other forms of art. Only the French “damned poets,” and after them the young Emile Zola, tried to show the unsightly sides of female nature (in this sense, they can be considered the forerunners of noir). Futurists believed that a woman with her eternal dream of a little personal happiness and vulgar ideas about beauty is a brake on progress. Hence their anti-feminism.

“The woman of the present is a relaxed female,” Marinetti argued. - She is disgusting to us with her spicy love. Today's love has been devalued thanks to the world-increasing luxury of women. Today's woman loves luxury more than love.<…>The influence of a woman is destructive, and therefore we, futurists, have a negative attitude towards her.”

The fascists raised the anti-feminism of the futurists to their shield. In Fascist Italy, the polite form on Lei would even be prohibited due to its feminine origin: Lei - she. For example, when wanting to politely ask a person what his name is, Italians say: “Come si chiama Lei?” During the reign of the Duce, it was forbidden to scrape around like that.

In a letter from 1922, Gramsci convinced Trotsky that “the futurist movement in Italy after the war has completely lost its characteristic features,” and “Marinetti devotes extremely little activity to the movement. He got married and prefers to devote his energy to his wife.” But the facts show that Gramsci's irony was unfounded. In the 20s, Marinetti devoted his energy not only to his wife. However, the communist reported interesting details: “At present, monarchists, communists, republicans, and fascists are taking part in the futurist movement.”

Even though Marinetti became a prominent figure in the fascist movement, Italian socialist and communist workers continued to respect him. “Before my departure, the Turin section of the Proletcult invited Marinetti to an exhibition of futurist painting in order to explain its meaning to the workers, members of the organization at the opening,” says Gramsci in a letter written by him in 1922. “Marinetti very willingly accepted the invitation and, after visiting the exhibition together with the workers, expressed his pleasure that he was able to convince himself that the workers were much better versed in matters of futuristic art than the bourgeoisie.”

Back in the summer of 1920, speaking to the Italian delegation at the Second Congress of the International in Moscow, Bolshevik People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky called Marinetti “the only intellectual of the revolution in Italy.” And this was after Marinetti commanded the pogrom of the editorial office of Avanti!... “An unheard of, terrifying, colossal event has occurred that threatens to undermine the entire prestige of the Communist International and confidence in it,” Antonio Gramsci sneered at those communists who were shocked by the fact that Lunacharsky called Marinetti a “revolutionary.” “The philistines from the labor movement are completely scandalized, and it is clear that to the old former curses - “Bergsonianism, voluntarism, pragmatism, spiritualism” - we will now add new and even more abusive ones: “futurism”, “Marinetteism”!” For Gramsci, as for Lunacharsky, the revolutionary character of futurism was beyond doubt, for any destruction in the field of bourgeois politics, life and culture for them was the first stage of the proletarian revolution. In turn, Marinetti, not approving of communism, which, from his point of view, “can only be realized in cemeteries,” welcomed the revolutionary steps of the Russian communists: “I was delighted when I learned that all Russian futurists are Bolsheviks and that, in general, futurism is official Russian art. On May Day last year (1919 - D.Zh.), Russian cities were decorated with futuristic paintings. Lenin's trains were decorated on the outside with vibrant, dynamic shapes very reminiscent of Boccioni, Balla and Russolo. This honors Lenin and is welcomed by us as one of our own victories.”

The assertions of the fascist regime forced Marinetti to make certain compromises with reality. Having been an ardent anti-clerical in his youth, in the 20s, like all fascists, he made peace with the Catholic Church, justifying himself by the fact that Jesus was also a futurist. On March 18, 1929, Mussolini appointed Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to the Italian Academy of Sciences. Spiteful critics were quick to declare that “the troublemaker had died,” but soon, at an academic conference in Budapest, Marinetti, instead of the expected report, read his new poem “The Everyday Life of a Fox Terrier.” The fifty-four-year-old academician barked, squealed and bit. Entering into a rage, he, imitating a dog, raised his leg against the wall. The professors fell into a stupor.

In the same 1929, he, together with futurist artists Gerardo Dottori, Tato, Tulio Crali, Enrico Prampolini and some others, published the “Manifesto of Aeropainting” in the Gazetta del Popolo ( Manifesto dell'Aeropittura).

Futurism, war and relations with fascism

Back in 1913, during the Italo-Libyan military campaign, where Marinetti, according to him, was studying the possibilities of agricultural use of Libyan land, he gave a speech at the Verdi Theater in Florence. Shouting over the indignant cries of those gathered, Marinetti threw slogans into the crowd: “Italy is the absolute master!.. The word Italy must subjugate the word “freedom”! Let there be all freedoms, all types of progress, but within the ideal confines of one futuristic Nation! An anti-clerical and anti-socialist Nation ... So, all efforts and all types of violence, all money and all blood for the energetic and practical completion of the Libyan campaign. This completion now consists of the Colonial Futurism of Italy. Long live Libya!"

In the book “War as the only hygiene of the world” (Milan, 1915) he combined several speeches and proclamations Marinetti, such as “The Battle of Trieste” and “Speech to the Triestines”, an excerpt from the dying speech of the “futurist” Mafarka, futuristic appeals to the Venetians, Spaniards, and British “Against Passatist Rome”, “Against the Professors”, “Electric War”, “War as the only hygiene of the world,” etc. All these documents are a natural manifestation of a futuristic orientation towards civic and social activity in conditions when Italian political circles interested in the world war fanned nationalist hysteria and openly conducted militaristic propaganda. In his book, Marinetti included futuristic slogans of ideological and political content that were heard in the first manifestos. “We affirm that the absolute principle of Futurism is the constant formation and endless movement of man forward, both physiologically and intellectually,” says the article “War as the only hygiene of the world.” In the system of futuristic utopia of total renewal of the world, such slogans fit well into the ideologization of the cult of youth and strength, fundamental to futurism, and the overthrow of “passatism.”

However, along with the pathetic picture of a realized utopia, one cannot help but notice politically targeted motives in the propaganda of Italian pride and strength. For example, in the following passages from the article “Electric Warfare”: “Having provoked all the foreigners who admire our past and despise us as serenade writers, beggars or swindlers, we have forced them to admire us as the most gifted race on earth.<...>Thanks to us, Italy will cease to be a “love nest” for the cosmopolitan world. That is why we began to promote courage and optimism as a counterbalance to the epidemic of baseness and chronic pessimism. Our hatred for Austria; our burning desire to fight; our thirst to strangle pan-Germanism - they crown our futuristic theory!.. And you are silent, fools! We, like a pistol, will aim at you our torn out hearts, clutched in our fingers, our hearts, filled with hatred and insolence.<...>And we are also calling a strike on young grave diggers. Enough is enough, we don’t need graves! Let the corpses bury themselves, and we enter the great City of Futurists, which has aimed its terrifying battery of factory pipes against the army of the Dead, and we walk along the Milky Way."

"Manifesto of Italian Pride" (1914) and public actions organized by Marinetti under the slogan "Down with Austria!" with the burning of Austrian flags, were accompanied by performances and exhibitions of futurist artists. Some of them were openly interventionist in nature. Thus, K. Carr’s manifesto “Guerrapittura” (1915) interpreted war as a powerful stimulus and source of inspiration for the artist, because in it the various potentialities of human nature manifest themselves most spontaneously; the artist Balla created sketches of "anti-neutralist" red, white and green men's suits (the colors of the Italian flag) and organized demonstrations of such clothing on the streets.

To be fair, it should be noted that not all futurists succumbed to the ardent militaristic propaganda of leader Marinetti. Some were attracted to his banner by the desire to find different options for the synthesis of expressive means of different arts, to experiment with their simultaneous use. Thus, the artist Ardengo Soffici, who was closer than others to the pictorial traditions of the 19th century, enthusiastically creates compositions that use collages and various typographic fonts, and writes an aesthetic manifesto “The First Principles of Futurist Aesthetics” (1920), asserting in it his own purely aesthetic understanding the artistic task of such innovative painting. Like a futurist Soffici shares the opinion that letters and numbers, various objects and materials carry certain plastic or chromatic qualities and experiments with them can attract the artist; however, he is also confident that in themselves they do not have an independent expressive function and remain in collages an inert element of technology until the artist spiritualizes these expressive means and gives them a lyrical or symbolic meaning.

In other documents of futurist aesthetics, artistic issues are more openly connected with militaristic ones. Marinetti, B. Corra and E. Settimelli in 1915 released the manifesto “Synthetic Theater of Futurism”, beginning with the words: “Foreseeing our long-awaited war<…>We Futurists want to influence the artistic feelings of the Italians in order to prepare them for the great hour of greatest danger.<...>We believe that the only way to influence the warlike spirit of Italians is now through theater. Futuristic theater must be synthetic, that is, the shortest: to contain in a few minutes, in a few words and gestures, an infinite variety of situations, feelings, ideas, sensations, facts and symbols. It must be dynamic, simultaneous, that is, born in improvisations, instant intuition,<...>and not at a desk." In a word, his aesthetics, as is clear from the provisions of the manifesto, should be similar to paroliberism. This is also evidenced by Marinetti's manifesto "Futurist Cinematography" (1916), where the author puts forward the principle of "polyexpressiveness", proving that cinema can "to give movement to words in freedom and thereby allow them to go beyond the boundaries of literature, getting closer to music, painting, the art of noise and, thus, throwing a wonderful bridge between the word and the real object." In the "Manifesto of Futurist Dance" (1917) Marinetti calls by means of rough, aggressive dance, to inculcate the ideal of the “Multiplied Body”, supplemented by a motor; for such a dance, a “music of noise” is needed (its aesthetics were developed by L. Russolo and B. Pratella, author of the “Manifesto of Futurist Musicians”); since “noise accompanies every manifestation life", in wartime the orchestra should combine mechanical noises such as "roar, explosion, blows on metal, wood, stone", etc., and the "paroliberist" dance should imitate the flight of shrapnel, the firing of a machine gun, the take-off of an airplane into the sky.

Futurist artists Boccioni and Sant'Elia died in the First World War; Marinetti himself, who participated in the formation of battalions of volunteer cyclists, was wounded. The year 1919 was a time of sharp confrontation between democratic and socialist circles and the rise of Mussolini’s authority. Marinetti had known the future Duce since 1915. At the end of 1918 - 1919, under the leadership of Marinetti, Settimelli, P. Bolzon, E. Rocca, Bottai, Calderini and M. Carli, the first “Political Futurist Fascias” and the “Association of Italian arditi" (ardito - daredevil), with a program that affirmed Italian heroism, the struggle for a new Italy and social justice. All these demands, close to the futurists, were included in the program of fascism, only the image of the national enemy, always present in the futuristic utopias of a “renewed Italy,” now began to acquire a clearer political face. Futurists, fascists and Arditi declared their right to take unlimited power and rule the country. On September 21, 1918, the newspaper "Futurist Rome" was published, in which Marinetti announced the creation of the Italian Futurist Party with a program of "pathetic education of the proletariat", the destruction of the "passatist" parliament and the creation of a Technical Youth Government. In the same issue, M. Carli (editor of the Iron Head newspaper) published the proclamation “Come to me, Black Lights!”, addressed to the Arditi brigades. Their task was formulated as follows: “to kill our external and internal enemies who threaten the Motherland.” In 1919, Marinetti gave a speech at a meeting of fascists in Milan at the La Scala theater calling for an anti-socialist “patriotic revolution of the fighting.” The armed clash on Via Mercanti on April 15, 1919 ended with the arson of the editorial office of the socialist Avanti! by the Socialists. Clashes with Catholics, preaching of “anti-Bolshevism” and “liberation from the Vatican”, populist slogans of “arditism” - reliance on youth, expulsion of professors from schools... All this turned out to be just right for the rising fascist movement.

In the 20s, Marinetti, M. Carli and Settimelli published the manifesto “Italian Empire” (1923), dedicated directly to “Benito Mussolini, Head of Italy.” This, in general, is another repetition of what the futurists have been proclaiming for 14 years, but in the manifesto Marinetti still perceives Mussolini as he was at the time of his ideological rapprochement with futurism. He calls Mussolini's new government futuristic and convinces him to strengthen pan-Italian ambitions, but only so that Italy is futuristically strong and free. With the call to “walk, not rot!” he conjures the Italian youth (again this ineradicable futurist focus on youth!) to “conquer the Italian Empire, namely the Italian one, for our peninsula<…>has all the rights to rule the world. The assertion of this right will be an act of faith and strength, a bold young improvisation, a miraculously emerging work of art. The Italian Empire will be anti-socialist, anti-clerical, anti-traditional, but with all the freedoms and progress that absolute patriotism will provide it with. The Empire is in the hands of the best of Italians. He will rule without Parliament, with the help of the Technical Youth Council." This was followed by national honors for Marinetti and greetings to the Futurist Congress (November 23, 1924 in Milan), and response messages from the flattered Marinetti addressed to the "old comrade" Mussolini, who admitted at the Congress, that “without futurism there would be no fascism”...

All this is evidence that the utopian civilization conceived by the futurists did not see a contradiction in the fact that someone strong and organized helps it quickly put an end to the old culture and establish the futuristic dream of a “new” consciousness with the help of very specific government measures. But at the same time, it is also obvious that, while rising to power, Mussolini did a lot to encourage, “fasten” to the rising fascism, and even simply use for his own purposes precisely those aspects of the futurist ideology where it was most closely related to nationalist propaganda. On the initial path of his rise, it was also beneficial for Mussolini to demagogically encourage and, for the time being, rely on the propaganda rage of the Futurists, their utopian belief that, with the help of their extravagant actions, ultra-new stylistic discoveries or persistent calls to create a new, great Italy, the mistress of the world, they are capable of truly reshaping the consciousness of the masses and creating a civilization never seen before with Italy at the center.

It seems that the pessimistic meaning of the allegories and symbols that filled the ending of the novel “The Invictus,” written in 1922, indicated that Marinetti himself still had doubts about this. Pessimistic notes, unusual for Marinetti, vaguely flickering images of hell and the motive of Christian compassion are also found in Marinetti’s last dying composition - the prose poem “A Quarter of an Hour of Poetry X MAS (Music of Feelings)”, published by his wife Benedetta in January 1945. To the dying poet who survived the inglorious end of Italian fascism and its military adventures (Marinetti died at the end of 1944), he seems to be admonishing young “aeropoets” sitting in military trucks: the associations flowing one after another in the imagination of the sick poet are far from those noisy, crowded the sounds of the battle of pictures with which he had previously filled his words in freedom. His imagination paints pictures of destruction, “the cemeteries of the great Italians, which will inevitably be blown up, and the dead will fly into the air.” But the soul of the futurist Marinetti does not see the tragedy in this apocalypse. "Let's go, trucks!" The master of futurism is still convinced that cultural tradition and continuity are the enemies of movement, the heroism of youth, and the progress of Italy. “And you, masters of building all sorts of bridges, you who slow down the movement and want to bury the spring enthusiasm of glory, tell me: you are pleased that you were able to drive to the very bottom of your ideological dung pit the fragile and lovely wounded Italy that does not die.” In the last lines, the poet sees a temple destroyed by an explosion, which with prayer pulls scraps of torn bodies towards Jesus. “We will become, yes we have already become, kneeling machine guns, whose barrels shake with prayers. Again and again I kiss the guns, loaded with thousands and thousands and thousands of hearts that have been burned by the heat of eternal oblivion.”

In the 1910s, Italian futurism united poets, writers and artists who were passionate about the search for imagery of the new century, both in the purely artistic and in the socio-ideological spheres.

Futurism boldly and categorically announced the exhaustion of Italian and European culture in general. He became the herald of a new system of life values ​​(worldview, moral, aesthetic, religious, social, even linguistic) - a noisy, unceremonious herald, resorting to strong doses of shocking. The aesthetic program of Italian Futurism reveals its claims to the role of a pioneer of unprecedented artistic spheres. By “killing,” “burning,” and “burying” the previous ideological, stylistic models, syntactic and grammatical norms, the futurists proclaimed total freedom of personal expression. There is a connection between the futuristic impulses into the Unknown, the Impossible, the Absolute and the irrationalistic tendencies of symbolism and decadence of the end of the century with their cult of primitivism. The connection between futurist aesthetics and the aspirations of the French Cubists to master the “new reality” of the new century with the help of new “synthetic” imagery is also obvious. It is important, however, not to lose sight of the fact that futurism made a claim not to a purely formal, but to global rebellion in three spheres at once - in ideology, creativity, and life-building. This only compensated, for example, for the isolation of the cubists of the beginning of the century on formal searches: futurism decisively brought under the modeling of the synthetic figurative language of the new century the “total truth”, alluring with its integrity, which should have been sought in the synthesis of “physics” and “ideas”, rational and irrational, technology and aesthetics, various forms of dynamics (movement, speed, force) and social progress.

At the same time, from the moment of its appearance, Italian futurism demonstrated a clear aesthetic design, thanks to which, for several years, numerous and verbose futurist manifestos united around a variety of avant-garde-minded Italian writers and artists. The manifesto became for a long time perhaps the main aesthetic product of futurism. These manifestos contained avant-garde eccentricity and categorical negativism in relation to both the “exhausted” national culture and the entire “dilapidated” civilization in general. They accumulated the pathos of rebellion and “transformation of the world by the power of the human spirit,” and futurism welcomed both the rebellion and fortitude of an individual superhuman hero, armed with youth, the power of mechanisms and the energy of machines, and the rebellious energy of the crowd, inspired by its unity with the will of the leader. The inglorious end of futurism as the herald of a new militarized civilization alienated many of its former adherents, who later switched to other avant-garde banners.

Typically, the image of Italian futurism in the minds of the mass reader is determined by its shocking nihilism and aggressive slogans. But Italian futurism was fully characterized by the ambivalence and antinomic binary nature of creative attitudes noted by researchers of avant-garde culture. Thanks to this, the king in Italian literature turned out to be less deplorably unambiguous.

“Killing the moonlight,” wanting to turn Venice into a military port and a dock for submarines, glorifying the engine of an airplane, the roar of a cannon and the speed of a car, trying to rationally decompose and record in futuristic pictures the running speed of a dog or the rotation of a ballerina’s leg, the futurists in their very first manifestos declared that they “discarded reason like an ugly old skin” and longed for the victory of the irrational. "We want to become the prey of the Unknown,<...>fill the bottomless wells of the Absurd", "break open the mysterious doors of the Impossible". In the "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature" (1912) and the adjacent manifestos of 1912-1916, the principle of free "wireless" imagination, "words in freedom" that should liberate intuition from any logical connections. With the help of intuition, expressing itself in a stream of illogical, irrationally arising associations, Marinetti intended to revive the “Latin” principle in futurism (“divine intuition is the characteristic gift of the Latin race”) and teach it to penetrate into the secret life , properties and laws of the real world: matter, earth, stone, metal, human flesh and his very death. For Marinetti, this penetration into the irrational seemed to be a necessary stage in the creation of a “mechanical man with replaceable parts,” divided by a new harmony, i.e., an ideal man , whose task will be the creation of a new culture and a new history of mankind, the implementation of a futuristic utopia, in a word.

Therefore, it is Italian futurism, with all the popular naivety and flashy eccentricity of its forms and formulations, that not only opens the history of avant-garde movements in Europe, but also becomes the Italian version of the avant-garde: it defines its paradigm both in terms of the total scale of avant-garde nonconformism and in terms of aggressiveness avant-garde methods of self-promotion. The Italian futurists were the first to formulate many of the fundamental principles of avant-garde creativity and found models of imagery that the German expressionists and French surrealists were looking for at the same time. These models remained productive for a long time for the various supporters of the avant-garde in Italy, who initially united under the ideological banner of futurism, but then broke with it and established other poetic “syntheses” of the avant-garde in Italian literature.

The Italian futurists, with their characteristic drive, were the first to begin to master the main problems of the new era, associated with the crisis situation of the change of centuries and cultural traditions. The social optimism inherent in the avant-garde, its negative attitude towards the spiritual values ​​of the past and the utopian confidence that with the advent of technical civilization the human consciousness and all the foundations of society will be rebuilt, received eccentric expression in Italian futurism. The futuristic mythologization of energies of any kind - from electrical and mechanical to creative and sexual - was clothed in exaggerated, primitive and sometimes grotesque forms. Italian futurism to a large extent stimulated both that explosion of formal innovation and that ideologically colored social utopianism, which became an important part of the poetics of the entire 20th century.(1919, co-author)

Links

1. Alyakrinskaya N. R. Marinetti in the mirror of the Russian press // Bulletin of Moscow University; episode 10: “Journalism” - 2003, No. 4. P. 77‒89.

Umberto Boccioni. The street enters the house. 1911

On February 20, 1909, the First Manifesto of Futurism was published.
Futurism (from Latin futurum future) is the general name of the literary and artistic avant-garde movements in art of the 1910s - early 1920s. This movement originated in Italy, was theoretically substantiated and became widespread in Europe, as well as in Russia. On February 20, 1909, on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro, a text was printed in the form of a paid advertisement entitled “Rationale and Manifesto of Futurism,” signed by the famous Italian writer and poet Filippo Tomaso Marinetti (1876-1944).


Founder and main ideologist of Futurism Filippo Tomaso Marinetti

From this date it is customary to count the history of futurism - one of the largest movements in European art of the early 20th century. The manifesto of Futurism, which became the fundamental document of this avant-garde movement, stated its “anti-cultural, anti-aesthetic and anti-philosophical” orientation.
The founder of the movement and the main ideologist of Futurism, Marinetti, stated that “The main elements of our poetry will be: courage, audacity and rebellion.” The manifesto consisted of two parts: an introductory text and a program, which included 11 fundamental points-theses of the futurist idea. It proclaimed the cult of the future and the destruction of the past; the desire for speed, fearlessness, and unusual forms were praised; fears and passivity were rejected; All logical and any syntactic connections and rules were denied. The main goal was to scare and shake the average person: “There is no beauty without struggle. There are no masterpieces without aggressiveness!” Assigning itself the role of a prototype of the art of the future, futurism as its main program put forward the idea of ​​​​destructing cultural stereotypes and instead offered an apology for technology and urbanization as the main signs of the present and the future.

Antonio Sant'Elia. Urban drawing

Marinetti proclaimed the “world-historical task of Futurism,” which was to “spit every day on the altar of art.” Futurists preached the destruction of the forms and conventions of art in order to merge it with the accelerated life process of the 20th century. They are characterized by a reverence for action, speed, strength and aggression; exaltation of oneself and contempt for the weak; rapture of war and destruction. The text of the manifesto caused a stormy reaction in society, but, however, marked the beginning of a new “genre”. Futurism quickly found like-minded people - first in the literary environment, and then in almost all areas of artistic creativity - in music, painting, sculpture, theater, cinema and photography - both in Italy itself and far beyond its borders.

Giacomo Balla. The Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

In principle, any modernist movement in art asserted itself by rejecting old norms, canons, and traditions. However, futurism was distinguished in this regard by its extremely extremist orientation, building the “art of the future” while denying all previous artistic experience and traditional culture with its moral and artistic values. Futurism began with manifestos and declarations, and soon became an important political movement. Very quickly, new manifestos appeared in literally every circle of futurists from different directions of art in Italy, Russia and other European countries. And shocking techniques were widely used by all modernist schools, since futurism needed increased attention. Indifference was absolutely unacceptable for him; a necessary condition for existence was an atmosphere of scandal.

Giacomo Balla. Speed ​​of a motorcycle, 1913

The first significant exhibition of Italian futurist artists was held in Paris in 1912 and then traveled throughout all the art centers of Europe. Everywhere she was a scandalous success, but did not attract serious followers. The exhibition did not reach Russia, but Russian artists at that time often lived abroad for a long time, and the theory and practice of Italian futurism turned out to be in many ways consonant with their own quests.

Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi. Airport portrait of the Duce, 1930

In 1913, the Italian Futurist artist Luigi Russolo wrote the Manifesto "The Art of Noises", which was addressed to another prominent Futurist, Francesco Balilla Pratella.
In his manifesto, Russolo described the possibility and necessity of using various noises when creating music. Russolo did not stop at the theoretical formulation of the question and, unlike the same Balilla Pratella, who remained rather conservative musically, began to construct noise generators, which he called “intonarumori”.

Italian futurism was well known in Russia almost from its birth. Marinetti's manifesto of futurism was translated and published in the newspaper "Evening" on March 8, 1909. The Italian correspondent of the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti" M. Osorgin regularly introduced the Russian reader to futurist exhibitions and speeches. V. Shershenevich promptly translated almost everything that Marinetti wrote. Therefore, when Marinetti came to Russia at the beginning of 1914, his performances did not create any sensation. The main thing is that by this time, Russian literature had its own futurism, which considered itself better than Italian and independent of it. The first of these statements is indisputable: in Russian futurism there were talents of such a scale that Italian futurism did not know.
In Russia, the direction of futurism was called kybofuturism; it was based on a combination of the principles of French cubism and pan-European principles of futurism. Russian futurism was very different from its Western version, having inherited only the pathos of the builders of the “art of the future.” And given the socio-political situation in Russia in those years, the seeds of this trend fell on fertile soil. Although for most Cubo-Futurists “software opuses” were more important than creativity itself, the Russian avant-garde artists of the early 20th century went down in cultural history as innovators who revolutionized world art - both in poetry and in other areas of creativity.

David Davidovich Burliuk. Heads, 1911

1912-1916 was the heyday of futurism in Russia, when hundreds of exhibitions, poetry readings, performances, reports, and debates took place. It is worth noting that Cubo-Futurism did not develop into a holistic artistic system, and this term denoted a variety of trends in the Russian avant-garde.
Members of the St. Petersburg "Youth Union" - V. Tatlin, P. Filonov, A. Exter - called themselves futurists; poets - V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky, E. Guro, V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh, Burliuk brothers; avant-garde artists - M. Chagall, K. Malevich, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova.

Vladimir Mayakovsky. Roulette

David Burliuk. Portrait of futurist song fighter Vasily Kamensky

Kazimir Malevich. Life in a big hotel

Lyubov Popova. Man + air + space, 1912