ART HISTORY ARTICLE SUMMARY

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is the most important work yet painted by a futurist. Movement is well rendered in this canvas, and since no optical fusion of colors occurs,

is in motion, as the artist wished. I am less fond of Severini's other canvases, which have been overly influenced by the neoimpres- sionist technique and by Van Dongen's forms.

Let us also mention Carra, who is a kind of Rouault but more vulgar than our artist, and who sometimes calls to mind the academicism of a forgotten painter, Merodack-Jeaneau.

Russolo is the one least influenced by the young French painters. One must look for his mentors in Munich or in Moscow. Someday we shall find him more interested in truly plastic problems.

The young futurist painters can compete with some of our avant- garde artists, but they are still nothing but the awkward pupils of a Picasso or a Derain; as for gracefulness, they have no idea it exists.

(L'lntransigeant, FEBRuARy 7)

Art News: The Futurists

M. Marinetti wants to play the same role in Italy today that St. Francis of Assisi played in times gone by. He wants to be a reformer of the arts.

II Poverel/o owed his power to his inspiring faith, which awoke the plastic sense of artists and the lyricism of poets all over the peninsul a. And it was this faith that inspired the mystical flagellants known as the giullari di Dio to wander all over Umbria, reciting dialogues in the public squares with a kind of holy frenzy. These dialogues are the oldest dramatic works in Italy after the decline of antiquity. The nature of St. Francis's life suggested to painters that they should strive for greater truthfulness in the expression of faces and attitudes. Great painting was born as a result of the efforts painters made to render the saintly beauty of the stigmatized saint.

For a long time now, Italian art has been immobilized in that academicism that is sometimes the slumber of Art and often its death.

After having Jed the world's artistic movements for such a long 200

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time, Italy, justly proud of its glorious past, fell behind France, Holland, England, Spain, and Belgium in the arts.

It was a long time ago that a Michelangelo could assert that to be a great painter, one had to be born in Italy! .. .

But here now is a young poet who is attempting to restore the arts and literature.

It seems to me that in Italy the arts are much more in need of restoration than is literature. This point of literary criticism, however, is not relevant to the present discussion. It is true that the arts on the peninsula have become mere exercises in professional skill. Even the divisionists maintained a vulgarly academic line, and their inspira- tion was idiotic.

F. T. Marinetti, a gallicized Italian, wants to change this state of affairs. He wants to awaken Italy from its torpor. He has taken France as his model because France is the leader in the arts and in literature; without telling his compatriots what he is up to, he is presenting them with France as an example.

He has found a number of poets, musicians, and painters to follow him. At present, th ere are five painters in the group: Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, Balla, and Severini.

Only Messrs. Boccioni, Carra, and Russolo have been futurists from the start.

They alone appeared, on 191o-a date that may become famous if futurism should become a great literary and artistic move- ment-on the stage of the Chiarella Theater in Turin. That was the third soiree organized by the futurists. The first one had taken place in Trieste, the second in Milan. In Turin, the leading futurists appeared along with M. Marinelli. They were Messrs. Boccioni, Carra, Bon- zagni, Russolo, and Romani.

Together they read their manifesto, which, according to their press release, "is a great cry of revolt against academic art, against museums, against the domination of professors, archaeologists, second-hand merchants, and antique dealers." At that point, a great uproar broke out in the theater. There were fist fights, duels with canes, the police were called, etc.

Since that day, the futurist painters have lost two of their members.

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Who will ever know the fate of Messrs. Bonzagni and Romani? Did the futurists realize, by chance, that the latter name was that of Mme. Juana Romani, a famous pompiere in her own right, who had infiltrated the fut urists' inner circle?0 Did M. Bonzagni make the mistake one day of admiring Tit ian? We lack information on all this. The fact is, however, that the fi ve original futurist painters have remained five. But two of the names have changed, without our being informed about the fate of their predecessors: Bonzagni and Romani have been re- placed by Balla and Severini.

It was the latter pair who signed a manifesto that, crammed as it is with banal antiplastic ideas, can nevertheless, by virtue of its violence, be considered a healthy stimulant fo r the debilitated artistic senses of the Italians. In a similar way, the invectives and poetic follies of a J acopone da Todi were able to awaken Italy's lyrical sense and call fo rth a Dante.

The most original aspect of the futurist school of painting is that it seeks to reproduce movement. This is a perfectly legitim ate quest, but the French painters solved the problem long ago, insofar as it can be solved .

In fact, the f uturist painters have to date had more philosophical and literary ideas than plastic ones.

They declare, with an insolence that might more aptly be called ignorance: "We can declare without boasting that this first exhibition of futurist painting in Paris is the most important exhibition of Italian painting ever to have been offered for the judgment of Europe."lO

This is sheer idiocy .... One does not even dare to pass judgment on so much foolishness. . ..

Further on, they add: "We have become the leaders of the E uropean movement in painting."

And as far as French painting is concerned, kn owing neither Corot, Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Seurat, nor Matisse, they im itate the painters who have most recently come to work in Paris:

Boccioni is above all under the influence of Picasso, who dominates the work of all young painters today, not only in Paris but the world over.

Carra seems to have seen a great number of Rouaults and Merodeck- Jeaneaus. Rouault is a powerful painter, toward whom I myself have

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often been very unjust. Carra could have chosen a considerably worse master.

Russolo seems to be more influenced by the painters of Munich, Berlin , Vienna, and Moscow. Let us hope that he takes good advantage of his current stay in Paris.

Balla has not yet sent in his painting. Severini is, together with Boccioni, the painter who appears to me

to have the most to say among the futurists. He is under the influe nce of Renoir, Van Dongen, and the neoimpressionists Signac, Cross, and Van Rysselberghe, but he does have originality and his large canvas, Pan-Pan at the Monico, is the most important and most finished work yet done by a futurist painter.

Well! These painters-so obviously influenced by the newest con- temporary painting that one of them could in all honesty call himself a pupil of Picasso, another a pupil of Rouault, a third a pupil of Van Dongen- these painters declare themselves to be absolutely opposed to the art of the French painters.

And the point on which they oppose the new French painters is precisely the point that, in my opinion, dooms futurist art.

The art of the new painters in France is distinguished from the academicism of the pompiers by its fierce, relentless observation of nature. The new painters scrutinized nature, they dissect it, they study it with infinite patience. One should not find it astonishing, therefore, that such pure plasticians are at all interested in the "subject" and that they now entitl e their pictures simply "painti ng," "study," or "landscape."

I have even been led to ask recently whether such purely plastic concerns would not lead to a totally new art that would be to painting what music is to Jiterature.u

The futurists, however, are scarcely interested at all in plastic problems. Nature does not interest them. Their chief concern is the "subject." They want to paint "states of mind ." That is the most dangerous kind of painting imaginable.

It will inevitably lead the futurist painters to become mere illustrators.

T he futurists do, however, include Gino Severini, who seems deter- mined to draw inspiration from realities that are strictly forbidd en by the futurists' declarations. He h as thus produced the most living work,

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in which colors are not blended and therefore produce the illusion of movement; the title of the work is Pan-Pan at the Monico.

Nevertheless, the exhibition of the futurist painters will teach our own young painters to be even more bold th an they have been up to now.

Without a good deal of boldness, the futurists would never have dared to exhibit works that are still so imperfect. The futurist ex- hibition will also allow our young painters to gauge how far ahead they are of their rivals in Italy, and indeed in the world as a whole.

It will also teach them how to choose better titles for their paintings. Here are Boccioni's titles: The Farewells, Those Who Go, Those Who Stay, The Noise of the Street Penetrates the House, The Laugh, The City Rises, Simultaneous Visions, Modern Idol , The Powers of a Street, and The Raid; Carra did not hesitate to reproduce an event he had witnessed: The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli; Gussolo has painted a canvas entitled The Revolt.

In contrast to the deliberately analytic canvases of most of our young painters, these titles contain some clues for a more synthetic kind of painting.

In short, the new art that is being fashioned in France seems until now to have limited itself to melody, and the futurists have taught us -by their titles, not by their works-that it can attain the fullness of a symphony.

Among the statements in the manifesto of the futurist painters, none appeared more foolish than this one:

"We demand, for ten years, the total suppression of the nude in painting."

And yet, this statement is the unconscious affirmation of an unin- tentional agreement among all modem artists. While the aged Renoir, the of our time and one of the greatest painters of all t1mes, 1s spendmg his last days painting wonderful and voluptuous nudes that will be the delight of times to come, our young artists are turning their back on the art of the nude, which is at least as legitimate an art as any other. . They are doubtless prompted by a desire to go beyond humanity, as 11 were, and not consider it, and it alone, as the criterion of beauty. 204

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One must admit, however, that modern art is dominated by an austereness unknown to any period until the present.

As for futurist art, it seems a bit silly in Paris, but it should not seem silly to the Italians; if it does, too bad for them.

(Le Petit Bleu, F E B R U A R Y 9)1 2

The Art World

The Salon de !'Ecole Frans:aise

Artists are by no means idle in winter. It is in winter that they show us what they did in the fall. It is certain, however, that the chilly season brings us too many collective whose characteristics are all the same. "Salon d'Hiver," "Ecole Frans:aise," etc.-they all seem to be the same salon. I personally think that the various winter salons will eventually be united, and that, as a result, the painters who exhibit in them will be in a more authoritative position than they now are. After this preamble, let us come to the Salon de !'Ecole Frans;aise, which has no lack of interesting exhibits. The small paintings by M. Leopold Delbeke, showing the interiors of the chateau of Versailles, are painted with a great deal of distinction and are bathed in a very agreeable golden light. (. . .] _ M·. Eugene D amblans is a painstaking painter who brings off some masterfully executed pieces, witness his Crouching Venus, with its very bold reds. I also want to mention the works of [ ... ] M. Weismann, whose well-painted Kippered Herri11gs reminded me of Charles eros's famous monologue: "A long . · • long ... long ... kippered herring."13 •

M. Guinier's illuminations artfully commemorate some famtly events: births, weddings ... It is a charming idea. M. Frans:ois Pillet, an enterprising architect, is exhibiting a project for renewal of the neighborhood surrounding the Ecole Militaire. M. Pillet knows how to be daring and modem, while conforming to the limitations imposed by the proximity of Gabriel's edifice. In concluding, I must cite a curious collection of glazed pottery by Messrs. Ponchelet and Leger, whose artful blending of metallic colors produces a delightful effect.

(L'Intransigeant, FE B R U A R Y 14) 205

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARTWORKS

Eugene Delacroix: Selected Letters, 1813-1863 edited and translated by Jean Stewart with an introduction by John Russell

Futurist Manifestos edited by Umbra Apollonio with a new afterword by Richard Humphreys

APOLLINAIRE ON ART Essays and Reviews 1902-1918 Guillaume Apollinalre

Edited by LeRoy C. Breunig

Transated from the French by Susan Suleiman

With a new foreword by Roger Shattuck

MFA PUBLICATIONS a division of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston