“Luigi Russolo is increasingly being recognized as an important figure in 20th century art and music, and his work deserves to be better understood. Chessa’s archival research and readings of esoteric or otherwise little-known texts are impressive, and he offers a convincing account of the influence of the occult on Russolo and the Futurists in general. This book alters our conception of Russolo, Futurism, and the early artistic avant-garde.”—Christoph Cox, Hampshire College “This book is timely, and merits the attention of a wider audience. Luigi Russolo, futurista makes a compelling argument that radically revises our views on a major creative figure of the twentieth century. Luciano Chessa provides vast amounts of information on the ideas and trends that influenced the Futurists, and offers a wealth of insight and observations that point the way for further research on avant-garde music and art in the twentieth century.”—Paul DeMarinis, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University

The music and noise manifestos of the Italian Futurists formed a blueprint for sonic warfare waged against traditionalism, a radical new agenda played out with machines primed for maximal acoustic destruction and aimed at the negation of all existing value systems. THEe ^ARTe ^OFe ^NOISE collects together these and other writings for the first time in English, showing how the origins of modern noise music actually date from a century ago, forming an invaluable insight into Futurist thought and its most enduring and relevant legacies, and revealing how an understanding of noise-art is key to a complete comprehension of Futurist painting. THEe ^ARTe ^OFe ^NOISE includes five key Futurist manifestos: Luigi Russolo's "The Art of Noises" and "The Futurist Noise Machines", and Francesco Balilla Pratella's "Manifesto of Futurist Musicians", "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music", and "Destruction of Quadrature"; plus Carlo Carra 's related sensory manifesto "The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells"; Bruno Corra's notes on "Chromatic Music"; proto-Futurist Ferrucchio Busoni's visionary and influential "Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Sound Art"; a historical introduction on Futurist music and its legacy; and a chronology of Futurist music and noise.

Incompletion is an essential condition of cultural history, and particularly the idea of the fragment became a central element of Romantic art which continued being of high relevance to the various strands of modernist and contemporary aesthetics.

Founded in 1909 by the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurism was a radical art and social movement that glorified modernistic concepts of speed, destruction, noise, machines, cities and war. Marinetti's obsession with the future even extended to the abolition of libraries and museums, which he demanded be burned to the ground in a vortex of incendiary violence. Over 100 years later, Futurism stands as a key conceptual movement of the 20th century, one whose ideas are still ominously relevant in the age of rampant technological progress, suicide bombers and unmanned drone strikes. This special ebook volume in the Radical Manifesto series collects nine of the most challenging manifestos of the early Futurist Movement, from Marinetti's founding charter and subsequent calls to war to the seminal noise theories and machine music blueprints of Luigi Russolo and Balilla Pratella. It also contains as a bonus the first manifesto of Russian Futurism, written by Vladimir Mayakovsky and others.

February 21-September 1, 2014 The first comprehensive overview of Italian Futurism to be presented in the United States, this multidisciplinary exhibition examines the historical sweep of the movement from its inception with F.T. Marinetti's Futurist manifesto in 1909 through its demise at the end of World War II. Presenting over 300 works executed between 1909 and 1944, the chronological exhibition encompasses not only painting and sculpture, but also architecture, design, ceramics, fashion, film, photography, advertising, free-form poetry, publications, music, theater, and performance. To convey the myriad artistic languages employed by the Futurists as they evolved over a 35-year period, the exhibition integrates multiple disciplines in each section. Italian Futurism is organized by Vivien Greene, Curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In addition, a distinguished international advisory committee has been assembled to provide expertise and guidance.

Their provocative manifestos and outrageous performances earned the Italian Futurists international fame but, surprisingly, very little recognition outside of Italy for their actual achievements. The few English and American critics who have studied the movement in any depth have focused on the first phase, which spanned the years 1909-15 and was centred in Milan, Rome, and Florence. By contrast, the second phase covered a much longer period and represented a pan-Italian phenomenon. Despite the wealth of material available about this later part of the movement, there has been little attempt to survey Futurist activity outside of the major geographical centres in any detail or to relate it to the Futurist mainstream. In The Other Futurism, Willard Bohn seeks to remedy this oversight by examining the work of Futurists in Venice, Padua, and Verona from 1909 to 1944. He considers these local artists and writers both in terms of their relationship with F.T. Marinetti, who remained the major theorist and organizer of Futurist activities, and of their own specific adaptations and appropriations of Futurist theory. Conceived as a combination literary history and critical study, The Other Futurism looks at particular examples of literature, visual arts, and the performing arts and, using a series of rare documents, sheds new light on the complex cultural and political issues at the heart of this neglected chapter in Italy's history.

In 1909 the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the founding manifesto of Italian Futurism, an inflammatory celebration of "the love of danger" and "the beauty of speed" that provoked readers to take aggressive action and "glorify war--the world's only hygiene." Marinetti's words unleashed an influential artistic and political movement that has since been neglected owing to its exaltation of violence and nationalism, its overt manipulation of mass media channels, and its associations with Fascism. Inventing Futurism is a major reassessment of Futurism that reintegrates it into the history of twentieth-century avant-garde artistic movements. Countering the standard view of Futurism as naïvely bellicose, Christine Poggi argues that Futurist artists and writers were far more ambivalent in their responses to the shocks of industrial modernity than Marinetti's incendiary pronouncements would suggest. She closely examines Futurist literature, art, and politics within the broader context of Italian social history, revealing a surprisingly powerful undercurrent of anxiety among the Futurists--toward the accelerated rhythms of urban life, the rising influence of the masses, changing gender roles, and the destructiveness of war. Poggi traces the movement from its explosive beginnings through its transformations under Fascism to offer completely new insights into familiar Futurist themes, such as the thrill and trauma of velocity, the psychology of urban crowds, and the fantasy of flesh fused with metal, among others. Lavishly illustrated and unparalleled in scope, Inventing Futurism demonstrates that beneath Futurism's belligerent avant-garde posturing lay complex and contradictory attitudes toward an always-deferred utopian future.