Vorticism

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), a painter who visually contributed and came from a highly intellectual group. Vorticism was created as an opposition to Rodger Fry and the Omega group. It has a similarity in oppositional nature of futurism. There is a fairly muted pallet in this work, which was only presented in one exhibition in 1914. In vorticism there was a minority of women but were presented, which is not the case in cubism or futurism.

Futurism

Futurism started as an Italian movement, I have emphasised on Europe. It is ideologically based and has a lot of literary content, such as poetry and manifestos.  Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1930) was a very controversial figure around the time of futurism; he was a poet and a pilot and he was a strong flamboyant person who was very politically motivated. D’Annunzio was strongly inspired by high speed transport and noise of the cities.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) was another artistic character, a poet who was seen as the founder of futurism and was another strong flamboyant person. Marinetti had a published manifesto in a French paper in 1909 after writing it a year earlier. He was very strongly opinionated and also wanted to disassociate with the past roman culture. In 1914 his poems broke the mould changing the orientation of the words showing them in vertical shape. His ’Zang Thumb Tumb’ book as an almost onomatopoeic cover and content; it is not a formal poem and uses the words as sounds. On the cover the ‘z’ has an angular, sharp and thin typeface to match the sound of the words. To contrast the word ‘thumb’ has a softer, thick and round aesthetic, these techniques give the text characters. The cover of this book shows noise, repetition and sounds, there are also ranges in the size to show amplification of the words as if someone has said them. The book consists of pictures within the poetry; this uses the negative space to create a silence accompanied by blocks of text and repetition.  Marinetti designed this book to shock giving an atmosphere of noise, speed and chaos. The peculiar angles forced him to revert back to hand block printing which is the traditional area that he wanted to avoid. Marinetti also worked with light and noise being very avant-garde.

Futurism focuses in values over aesthetics and function over form. It is modelled by contributors rather than critics and people that are not directly involved. Futurism contributors were fascinated with the industry, machines and transport. The high speed transport was a large part of this, with new motorcars, motorbikes and the noisy and exciting speed. The urban development in the excitement of metropolitan city enchanted the futurism movement.   Milan is an example if this urban very industrial city were futurism began out of the excitement.

Fortunato Depero (1892-1960) joined the futurists in 1915 bringing his different aesthetics and style. He showed experimentation of scales and orientation of text, he had a strong interest in typography. Depero also understood the power of advertisement in how it is able to persuade, the 1930 Vanity Fair poster was his work.

Some visual artists that aided in the fast becoming popular futurism movement were Carlo Carra (1881-1966), Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) and Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916). Boccioni came to this movement being aware of impressionism in Paris and he also wrote a manifesto on futurism in 1910. These artists visited Picasso and Braque in their studios, to educate themselves in cubism, this trip was funded by Marinetti and some of these artists work was repainted after the visit. In 1911 they had the first futuristic exhibition in Milan, after this in 1912 there was a tour of the exhibition internationally. On this tour Marinetti was very well received in Moscow which could be the similar views of anarchy. This tour made many cities aware of futurism, and also demonstrated the work teamed with cubism and some vorticism.

Futurism follows the persistence of movement in images from the excitement of photographs, these artists were fascinated with subject moving through space and time. This concept took the art away from the static aesthetic of cubism. It is shown in Giacomo Ballas work of a ‘Dog on a Leash’ (1912), there is strong repetition to infer movement in a single static image. Another example is the ‘Girl on Balcony’ as it is intended as one person moving through time and space.

Futurism was aggressive but focused with a high range of work from graphic typography, to cubist movements, to sound. It has a long term impact and was very strongly literary based. Through the conflict of ww1 the movement of futurism was ended.