Jul 10
Man and the Machine Age
As the nineteenth century came to a close, the world teetered on the brink of a global shift of consciousness, one so significant that it usurped the word “modern” to mean “the culture of the 1920s” rather than “the culture of the present day.” We begin our multi-session exploration of the Modern Age by looking at the role that machines played in this transformation.
Loving the Machine
In the years leading up to World War I, a group of Italian artists came together under the banner of Futurism. Whereas Art Nouveau sought compromise with modernity, reshaping metal and glass in soft organic curves, the futurists welcomed the hard edges and high speeds of machinery.
When conflict broke out in 1914, it was greeted with enthusiasm across Europe, but for most that excitement gave way to horror as reports filtered back from the front lines of the meat grinder of trench warfare. Paradoxically, the era’s powerful technologies—machine guns, artillery shells—produced stalemate rather than speedy victory. But while this experience left many determined to make the “Great War” the “War to End All Wars,” the Futurists remained enamored of both machinery and armed conflict, believing that violence could reenergize Italy. Unsurprisingly, in the years after the war’s end in 1918, they allied themselves with the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini.
Reading: “The Futurist Manifesto,” published in 1909 by Filippo Marinetti on the front page of the Parisian daily Le Figaro (Blackboard).
Viewing: examples of Futurist art:
- Luigi Russolo, The Revolt (1911)
- Luigi Russolo, Dynamism of an Car (1913)
- Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)
- Gino Severini, Memories of a Journey (1911)
- Gino Severini, Armored Train in Action (1915)
- Filippo Marinetti, In the Evening, Lying on Her Bed, She Reread the Letter from Her Artilleryman at the Front (1919)
Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:
- Point out a key contrast OR continuity in the Futurist art featured above.
- Point out a key contrast OR continuity between Marinetti’s 1909 manifesto and one of the Futurist artworks.
Photography and Motion
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge began his pioneering work into the study of motion in 1878. Using multiple cameras with high-speed film, Muybridge established for the first time the stride of a galloping horse, as well as a host of other motions too fast for the eye to follow. He changed the way we see the world. And, by breaking motion down into a series of static frames, his work beckoned the way to re-animation of static sequences as movies.
Around the same time, French photographer Étienne-Jules Marey perfected a method for superimposing multiple moments on a single photograph, as for example the image of a pelican landing.
Both photographers’ influence can be seen in one of the most famous works of Modernist Art, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, as well as Futurist works like Giacomo Balla’s 1912 Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash.
- Muybridge, Horse’s Gallop (1878)
- Marey, Pelican landing (1882)
- Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912)
- Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912)
The initial section of Modern Times
⤹Click the reply button just below.
The middle section of Modern Times
⤹Click the reply button just below.
The final section of Modern Times
⤹Click the reply button just below.
Futurist Art—Contrasts and Continuities
⤹Click the reply button just below.
Futurist Art vs. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto
⤹Click the reply button just below.