Futurism (disambiguation)
1. Futurism was a 20th century art movement begun around 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and others. The Futurists explored every medium of art, from painting to poetry to theater. Marinetti was the first among them to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909), first released in Milan and published in the French paper Le Figaro (Feb.20th). Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, which were a passionate loathing of nostalgia and a love of speed and technology. Futurists denigrated ideas from the past, both political and artistic, proposing instead to follow the sense of modern progress and irrationality. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all mythical for the Futurists, because they represented the technological prevalence of man on nature.
The painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed:
- We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums.
The Futurists' glorification of modern warfare as the ultimate artistic expression and their intense nationalism allowed those who survived World War I to embrace Italian Fascism. Nonetheless, their artistic works inspired other artists, namely Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian.
Futurist visual artists
Online link:
2. Futurism is a term referring to writers of speculative fiction, scientists, and philosophers who propose and promote alternative technologically-advanced lifestyles based on the latest scientific discoveries. They tend to share interests in life extension, cryogenics, the search for extraterrestrial life, and nanotechnology. Futurists often confront traditional ethical systems based on religion. (See Robert Anton Wilson, Buckminster Fuller, The Futurians, Vernor Vinge)