The document outlines the Futurist Manifesto published in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, which celebrated modernity, technology, youth and rejected traditionalism. It initiated the Futurist movement in art, which praised speed, machinery, violence and industry. The manifesto expressed admiration for vehicles like cars and their association with speed and danger. It called for rejecting the past and tradition in favor of embracing the new modern world.

1. The Futurist Manifesto

2. Published in the French newspaper Le Figaro on Feb.
20th
, 1909, by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet
and writer, the Futurist Manifesto was one of the first
documents to celebrate the automobile as an object of
beauty and to cite speed and acceleration as aesthetic
elements. “We declare that the splendour of the world
has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of
speed,” Marinetti proclaimed.
“A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great
tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring
motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is
more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace,” he
continued in the most memorable passage.

3. Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti

4. The Futurist Manifesto initiated an artistic
philosophy, Futurism, that was a rejection of the
past, and a celebration of speed, machinery,
violence, youth and industry; it was also an
advocation of the modernization and cultural
rejuvenation of Italy.

5. The following are some of the
theses in the Futurist Manifesto:
● We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of
energy and fearlessness.
● Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential
elements of our poetry.
● We intend to exalt aggresive action, a feverish
insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch
and the slap.
● We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been
enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A
racing car whose bonnet is adorned with great pipes,
like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that
seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the
Victory of Samothrace.

6. ● Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No
work without an aggressive character can be a
masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a
violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and
prostrate them before man.
● We stand on the last promontory of the
centuries!... Why should we look back, when
what we want is to break down the mysterious
doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died
yesterday. We already live in the absolute,
because we have created eternal, omnipresent
speed.

7. ● We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—
militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of
freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying
for, and scorn for woman.
● We will destroy the museums, libraries,
academies of every kind, will fight moralism,
feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian
cowardice.

8. Machine + War - Woman = Futurism

9. Futurism became an international art movement
since then. It was a refreshing contrast to the
weepy sentimentalism of Romanticism. The
Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution,
and cities; they embraced the exciting new world.
The Futurist manifestos (on painting, sculpture,
music) show us an alternative view to fearing and
attacking technology.

10. The Manifesto of Futurist Painters

11. The cry of rebellion which we utter associates our
ideals with those of the Futurist poets. These
ideals were not invented by some aesthetic clique.
They are an expression of a violent desire which
boils in the veins of every creative artist today.
We are sickened by the foul laziness of artists,
who, ever since the sixteenth century, have
endlessly exploited the glories of the ancient
Romans. These are our final conclusions:

12. With our enthusiastic adherence to
Futurism, we will:
● Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with
the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
● Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
● Elevate all attempts at originality, however
daring, however violent.
● Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
● Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony”
and “good taste”.
● Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes
and subjects which have been used in the past.

13. Some Futurist painters:

14. Umberto Boccioni
(1910)

15. Ugo Gianattasio
(1920)

16. Tullio Crali
(1932)

17. The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest
bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept
free of mummies! Make room for youth, for
violence, for daring!

18. Technical Manifesto of Futurist
Sculpture

19. ● The aim of sculpture is the abstract
reconstruction of the planes and volumes which
determine form, not their figurative value.
● Sculpture cannot make its goal the episodic
reconstruction of reality.
● It is necessary to destroy the pretended nobility
of marble and bronze, and to deny squarely that
one must use a single material for a sculptural
ensemble. The sculptor can use twenty different
materials, or even more, in a single work,
provided that the plastic emotion requires it.
Here is a modest sample of these materials:
glass, wood, cardboard, cement, iron,
horsehair, leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights,
etc.

20. ● It is necessary to proclaim loudly that in the
intersection of the planes of a book and the
angles of a table, in the straight lines of a
match, in the frame of a window, there is more
truth than in all the tangle of muscles, the
breasts and thighs of heroes and Venuses
which enrapture the incurable stupidity of
contemporary sculptors.
● One must destroy the systematic use of the
nude and the traditional concept of the statue
and the monument.

21. Some Futurist sculptors:

22. Otakar Švec
(1924)

23. Umberto Boccioni
(1913)

24. Giacomo Balla
(1915)

25. The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians

26. I appeal to the young. Only they should listen, and
only they can understand what I have to say.
Some people are born old, spectres of the past.
To them no words or ideas, but a single injunction:
the end.
I, who repudiate the title of Maestro as a stigma of
mediocrity and ignorance, hereby confirm my
enthusiastic adhesion to Futurism, offering to the
young, the bold and the reckless these my
irrevocable conclusions:

27. ● To convince young composers to desert schools,
conservatories and musical academies, and to
consider free study as the only means of regeneration.
● To be independent and resolutely opposed to the
criteria of conservatory professors and to those of the
debased public.
● To abstain from participating in any competition with
the customary closed envelopes and related
admission charges, unmasking the incompetence of
juries, which are generally composed of fools and
impotents.
● To provoke in the public an ever-growing hostility
towards the exhumation of old works which prevents
the appearance of innovators, to encourage everything
in music that appears original and revolutionary.

28. Luigi Russolo working on his “noise
experimental music”

29. Futurist Music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYPXAo1cOA4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHJySm7ZO0

30. The legacy of the Futurists lies less in their own
art than in the inspiration they provided designers.

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32. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjgFYQMWtqo

33. Compose a futurist poem using some of the
vocabulary below or related vocabulary:
● Speed
● Acceleration
● Car
● Motorbike
● Machinery
● Violence
● Youth
● Industry
● Danger
● Courage
● Audacity
● Aggresive
● To destroy
● Cowardice
● Death
● Reckless

34. Fascist Manifesto

35. The Manifesto of the Italian Fasci of Combat ,
commonly known as the Fascist Manifesto, was
the initial declaration of the political stance of the
Fasci Italiani di Combattimento ("Italian League of
Combat"), the movement founded in Milan by
Benito Mussolini in 1919 and an early exponent of
Fascism.

36. Benito Mussolini

37. The Fascist Manifesto was written by national
syndicalist Alceste De Ambris and Futurist
movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

38. It has recently been the 100th anniversary of the
Futurist Manifesto

39. The Futurists celebrated speed and power, but
they had a short run: World War I soon gave
culture more speed and power than anyone
wanted. Several Futurists ended up as disgruntled
fascists.

40. The First World War centenary is the centenary of
World War One which starts in 2014 and will last
until 2018.

41. Participating countries
● Australia
● Belgium
● Bosnia and Herzegovina
● Denmark
● France
● New Zealand
● Kenya
● Turkey
● United Kingdom

42. From 2014 to 2018, across the world, nations,
communities and individuals of all ages will come
together to mark, commemorate and remember
the lives of those who lived, fought and died in the
First World War.

43. Write three sentences with facts you know about
nazism and facism, or with your own opinion
about them.
What do you know about the First World War?
Write five lines.

44. Sources:
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_Manifesto
http://www.1914.org/