FUTURISM AND SUPREMATISM

People are often curious about the role machines will play in the future. We've become so dependent on technology that many wonder if it will someday take over our lives. In the early twentieth century, the machine was a wondrous new part of life, but the world of machinery had a darker side as well, even then.

OBJECTIVES

• Explain the philosophical influence of Friedrich Nietzsche.

• Describe characteristics of Futurist paintings.

• Identify features of Futurist sculpture.

• Discuss the theory of Suprematism.

VOCABULARY

PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS AND ART

Artists do not work in a vacuum. They are affected by political events, intellectual movements, scientific discoveries and religious doctrines, as well as by things that happen in their personal lives.

For many centuries, religion dominated the production of art, but you have seen that religious authority waned in the nineteenth century with the rise of the influence of science and technology. When Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, his scientific explanation of evolution and natural selection, many people started believing that the church might not have all the answers. So where were the answers to be found?

One thinker of the nineteenth century who was to have a profound influence on the twentieth century was a German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche. When Nietzsche was five, his father, a church preacher, died from a brain disease. This seemed a terrible injustice to young Friedrich. Perhaps it is not a surprise then, that as an adult, Nietzsche made the dramatic pronouncement that "God is dead" as declaration that, for him, religion no longer had any relevance in modern life. This idea was balanced by the notion that there should be absolute freedom of all humanity.

But Nietzsche was not alone in his feeling that something had changed in the world. While many people retained their faith, others found that the old religious ideas were no longer useful. Nietzsche believed that science and a society that no longer relied on God for direction had effectively "killed" the Christian God. Nietzsche attempted to create a philosophy that would fill the void.

Nietzsche's thoughts are far more complex than we can effectively convey here, but we can distill a few of his most important points:

• The will to power is stronger than the will to live. In other words, what people really want is power, and they will die for it.

• Every person should be a god unto himself or herself. Nietzsche believed in the idea of the "superhuman" — a god-like being that decides his or her own fate.

• Individuals should live their lives in such a way that they would be happy to live it over and over again.

• Every person should think for him- or herself.

Nietzsche once wrote that objective truth cannot be found within religious points of view. He believed that to find truth, each person must search for themselves.

After his death, Nietzsche's ideas became popular and influenced artists and political leaders of the early twentieth century. Although Nietzsche was not an anti-Semite, nor did he support the idea of government rule over the individual, his ideas were later taken out of context and adopted by fascist leaders such as Hitler.

Fascism did not develop in Italy until after World War I, but its fascination with war, power, and machines can be seen in the art movement of Futurism a decade earlier.

FUTURISM

The Italian Futurists developed as part of a political movement, heralded by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti and the Futurists hated the past and believed that war was a useful method of cleaning the world. The works of the Futurists were a manifestation of the authoritarian politics that would soon dominate Italy. They looked toward the future for glory, and in their art the Futurists embraced speed, movement and modern technology.

The notable Futurist artists include:

• Giacomo Balla

• Gino Severini

• Umberto Boccioni

The Futurist artists tried to recreate action through the depiction of several actions at the same time and the look was similar to that of a person moving under a strobe light.

Although the Futurism movement lasted only a few years, it influenced many subsequent 20th century artists such as Duchamp, Léger, and Delauney. It was also an integral part of Fascism’s ideology and doctrine.

Giacomo Balla (1871-1958)

Gino Severini (1883-1966)

Severeni, a founder of Futurism, had a style that incorporated cubism, simulated motion, and fragmented lines and shapes. He was a huge influence outside of Italy, often writing books on art theory and working in other mediums such as mosaic and fresco.

Click on the link to see Blue Dancer by Severeni and make note of the Futurist style. 

Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916)

In 1910, Boccioni authored the book Technical Manifesto of Futuristic Painting. In the book, he tried to influence artists to embrace the foundations of Futurism (movement and speed) and to move away from traditional forms of art and thought.

Perhaps the most remarkable Futurist work was produced by Boccioni.

Boccioni's bronze sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space shows how a solid work of art can appear to be in movement. He creates the sense of a blurred photograph. It shows that Boccioni was fascinated not with the construction of the body, but with the action of the body.

Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website to learn more about Boccioni. In particular the sculpture Antigraceful.

RUSSIAN SUPREMATISM

A startling new movement in art was introduced at the 1915 0-10 exhibition in St. Petersburg, Russia. Perhaps as a foreshadowing of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russian artists began a revolution in art. Initially influenced by Cubism, Kasimir Malevich, the founder of Suprematism, wrote: "nothing is real except feeling." He believed that the only thing that mattered was pure human feeling.

Malevich stressed the supremacy of pure feeling in art over art's objectivity. In other words, the "object" was not important, and neither were ideas. The only thing that mattered was feeling. To express this feeling, he composed simple geometric forms (squares, triangles, and lines) into designs on the flat surface of the canvas. These designs create the sensation of speed, flight, and rhythm, and, to Malevich, the awe of religious experience.

Go to the WebMuseum web page featuring paintings by Malevich, read the text there.

LET'S REVIEW!

In this lesson, you have covered the following concepts:

• The early twentieth century was a time of searching — politically, philosophically and artistically.

• In Italy, the Futurists, a group of artists with a political agenda, strove to create work that expressed movement and speed.

• In Russia, the Suprematists created increasingly abstract works in an effort to create nonobjectivity in their work and to emphasize feeling.

Complete the quiz before moving on.