Volume 33, Number 13 · August 14, 1986
The Futurist Past
By John Golding
Futurismo & Futurismi October 12, 1986
catalog of an exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, May 3 to, organized by Pontus Hulten
Bompiani (Milan), 638 pp., 48,000 lire
It is ironic that the grandest exhibition of Futurism ever to be mounted has opened in Venice, for the Futurists held Venice in particular contempt. On the evening of July 8, 1910, Marinetti, the movement's commander in chief, together with a group of Futurist painters, placed themselves in a strategic position on the Clock Tower overlooking the Piazza San Marco, armed with eighty thousand copies of their manifesto Contro Venezia Passatista. These they hurled at a crowd of astonished Venetians who had just alighted from the ferry from the Lido and were crossing the square on their way home to supper. The manifesto accused Venice, among other things, of being a 'jeweled hip-bath for cosmopolitan courtesans' and 'a great sewer of traditionalism.' 'Let us fill the stinking little canals with the rubble of the tottering infected old palaces. Let us burn the gondolas, rocking chairs for idiots, and raise to the sky the majestic geometry of metal bridges and smoke-crowned factories, abolishing the sagging curves of ancient buildings.'
Review, 7235 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |