"Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!" -Futurist Manifesto, 1909
Futurism was born during a time of rapid, radical change. Several new technologies appeared which fundamentally altered every day life, from travel and communication to warfare. Futurism was more than anything else an artistic response to the exhilaration of accelerating technological progress.
The author of the Futurist Manifesto, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, wrote it in collaboration with friends during the Autumn of 1908. It recounts a night during which their discussions of technological progress, the future and humanity electrified them such that they piled into their automobile for a reckless joyride. It ended in a crash, which did not even dampen their spirits, consumed by euphoria as they were.
It was the feeling of being young. Of witnessing sudden, amazing changes. The exhilaration of speed, of powerful machines, a sort of manic excitement to find out what could possibly still be on the horizon if such incredible developments were already upon them at the time of writing.
Thus, the Futurist artistic movement came into being. Glorifying then-modern machines like the airplane, the locomotive, the automobile and radio, it also glorified themes like speed and warfare. Anything loud, fast, and powerful. Themes which lent themselves very naturally to the budding fascist movements of the period.
Futurism was a big influence both on the Italian Blackshirts, and later on the National Socialist movement. It is not difficult to identify the ideological parallels between those political movements and the Futurist Manifesto. It exalts masculinity, speaks disdainfully of femininity, frames war as necessary for the nourishment of the human spirit and as a form of social hygiene.
The human form, typically male and muscular, is frequently a focal point of futurist art. The angular jumbled lines convey chaos, speed and change. It shouts "new", if newness is possible to convey by abstract forms. Fast, new, shiny, powerful. Qualities which enamor the superficial mind.
It is much easier to appreciate Futurism for its artistic merits if you separate it from the bloodshed it had a hand in inspiring, thought admittedly it's very difficult to quantify exactly how much responsibility it could reasonably be said to bear.
Futurism's obsession with modernity is as tiresome as its maniacal, exhilarating qualities are compelling. Even for a neutral party, if such a thing can exist, it offers much to like and much to dislike. I don't mean to come down firmly on either side here, just to present examples of futurism and give a feel for what it was all about.
Futurism appeals principally to young men who are still in love with aggression. Whose idealized self image is that of a powerful, skilled warrior. At that age, the fact that not everybody is a young man doesn't enter consideration.
The ideal society for such a person is Sparta, or something like it. The existence of women, children, the disabled and elderly is forgotten as they undermine the comic book narrative of powerful heroes waging legendary battles against evil foes.
Testosterone is a hell of a drug, isn't it? A trip that you gradually come down from as you grow older. The beauty of gentleness dawns on you, the importance of organization, of community and caring for the less fortunate.
Perhaps evolution shaped our brains such that we are intoxicated by violent ideation during the age when we are most physically suited for tribal defense? Then becoming more focused on nurturing in time for fatherhood.
For that reason Futurism is simultaneously obnoxious and nostalgic. It brings back memories of when I was twenty. When I came at every problem with inexhaustible energy, when I thought I was invincible and could dominate the world with the proper resources. When social factors were irrelevant to me, and every challenge I faced was an engineering challenge, human element be damned.
But life cannot be all fire, hatred and speed. It isn't sustainable. Thank goodness for that. The madness of war, which destroyed much of Europe, eventually subsided. Like a fever dream made real. The mothers, most of them now widows, were left to pick up the scraps of their old lives, which were incinerated in the wildfire of World War 2.
So much for the bravado of the men who started it. So much for their ambition, their obsession with machines and power. All it accomplished was to reduce once thriving cities to flaming rubble and to wound, kill or traumatize their vulnerable loved ones. How intoxicating speed, power, fire and war can be! But how easy it is, in that manic mindset, to forget that it has a steep human cost attached.
For me, the legacy of Futurism is untainted by the war. It would be unfair to tie the two together like that. It speaks to me of the exhilaration of being alive during a time of unprecedented rapid change. Of excitement for the future, a spirit which is as compelling now as when the Futurist Manifesto was first published.