Their manifesto of 1910 lays down some tough guidelines. One of these in particular, the fourth declaration, states that 'all subjects previously used must be swept aside in order to express our whirling life of steel, or pride, of fever and of speed.' This ties in with the statement that all things are changing, indeed it demands immediate change. The belief that the world and everything within it is undergoing perpetual motion is however not as recent as Marinetti and his brethren, indeed much of the points made within the manifestoes hark back strongly to Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher of the fifth century B.C.E. There are striking ideological similarities between him and the Futurists. As quoted by both Plato and Socrates, he proclaimed that 'nothing ever is, everything is becoming' and is commonly summed up in the apocryphal phrase 'all things are flowing' . He believed that 'the sun is new every day', and interestingly, like Marinetti, he avidly supported war. The Italian, in his 'Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism' (1908), declared it to be 'the only true hygiene of the world'. Heraclitus, according to Bertrand Russell, stated: 'We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass way through strife.' Although the Futurists believed they were sweeping away the past and indulging in newer doctrines that they believed essential for the world to move forward, they were actually doing little more than quoting a luminary of ancient Greece; this is ironic, when you consider their phrase 'Far from resting upon the examples of the Greeks' . So, to what extent then was their success at sweeping aside 'all previously used subjects'?
Referring directly to the statement made in the title, the technical manifesto states that: 'A profile is never motionless before our eyes, but it constantly appears and reappears…thus a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular'. With this in mind I look at Balla's Rhythms of a Bow (1912). For Balla, the triangle was a synthetic symbol of movement, and this piece is framed as such, although the shape is more of a parallelogram which suggests the triangle. It is nonetheless a dynamic shape, which is said to have been painted as part of a decorative scheme for the house of one of his private pupils in Düsseldorf . How though does it represent constant motion and dynamism? Within the painting we see a left hand playing the neck of a violin. Neither the right hand nor any other part of the musician's body is shown. The motion is suggested by the fact that we see not one left hand but a synthesis of approximately four versions of the same, in different positions, placed upon four differently placed (but still corresponding) versions of the bow. The hand is painted in terms of lines which are blended into the picture - one is left with a sensation that we are seeing the arm rock upwards with the violin. As the artist puts it himself, the violinists' hand 'is featured moving in different positions and inserted into the landscape of the continuously active bow; movement expressed by a muted chiaroscuro play of tones' . The dimensions that are suggested are not simply those of physical movement - the use of the bow suggests the aural stimulation as well. In many ways it owes much to Galli's Vibrations from Novissima (1904), which depicts a rear view of a man playing a violin. Emanating from the instrument are smooth curved lines suggested by the texture of the drawing, which are supposed to represent the sweet music being played. In Balla's piece the lines are not coming from the instrument necessarily but are bouncing around the space, and we are treated to a blur. In Galli we also see two faces touching, as if to suggest the music is very romantic. This particular technique of visually describing music is picked up on by Russolo in his painting Music (1911-12), in which a river of sound wails from the player's organ, while the organist himself is surrounded by ever-darkening circles filled with faces of all expressions in various colours; green, red, pink, yellow.
Coming back to my original point, however, I would say that Balla does contradict the manifesto in Rhythms of a Bow. The use of the violin as a subject for a piece is, as proved in looking at Galli, quite well established, and instruments of this genre appear regularly in still-lifes of such as Braques and Picasso among others. This is because of its inherent generic shape, which it shares with other much favoured subjects, the bottle and, naturally, the feminine body. One could therefore argue that by using such a well-established subject Balla might be going against the idea that 'all things are changing', even though the depiction of motion certainly is not.
Many people believe that a good way to gauge the moods or sense of any period in history is to look at its artwork, as it is generally a reaction to the day. The Futurist movement came about as a reaction against the frozen staticity of their contemporaries and predecessors. They believed that to adhere to and worship the traditions of Western art was to attach oneself obstinately to the past, and while they certainly admitted an admiration of the Cubists, Post-impressionists and Synthetists they knew their philosophies were in total contradiction . They were said to have been influenced by the ideas of leading French philosopher Henri Bergson, which suggest that the 'past is transformed into the present consciousness by memory' .He believed life to be 'a shell that bursts into parts which are again shells'.
This would certainly help explain Balla's reworked use of the bow. But how the movement really serves as a mirror of the early twentieth century is clear in its aims to use as subjects the bold industrial advancements of the day. The world was becoming ever more a global community, with the advent of international railway links and telecommunications - of which the Eiffel Tower, oft depicted by Robert Delauney, became the symbol. Fast moving cities and the hubbub of railway stations, it's passengers moving back and forth between distant cities, became the primary focus of these artists: they saw this (rightly so) as the future. Of course, they did not simply paint conventional pictures of these places, but studied what lay within them, in every single emotional space. As described in the catalogue introduction 'The Exhibition to the Public' (1912), 'We thus arrive at what we call the painting of states of mind.'
It was Umberto Boccioni who, in 1911, produced the triptych of pieces Stati d'animo, or 'States of mind'. Comprising of three paintings - The Farewells, Those Who Stay, and Those Who Go, he attempts to express the different emotional reactions to a train leaving a station. In the centrepiece, The Farewells, there is a well of action taking place. Stark swirls of green billowing fumes envelope a depiction of a locomotive that nods in the directions of both Cubism and Orphism, with the 'disc-shaped clouds and iron pylons'. The two different reactions to the departure are exhibited in the remaining chapters, and they contrast each other strongly. Those Who Stay is very stale and depressing, with sad vertical lines. There is no sense of movement, just the deep mournful melancholy of those who, now they have bade their farewells to whoever, are left behind in the same grey place. There is little excitement, and the rounded shapes of the figures seem to wander slowly wallowing in misery. Not at all what Futurism is about; not at all what the twentieth century is about. Such a state of mind must be reserved for those artists who persist in clinging to the values and ways of the past, those who will not catch the train - unlike those in the Futurist movement, Those Who Go. This state of mind upholds the virtue of catching that train; full of vertical lines as forceful as heavy rain, it is an enormously exciting piece that takes the beholder on a journey, probably on a night train, in which the landscape is a blur and fast perpetual motion is the key. This picture, which is reinforced by its slow and disparaging counterpart, embodies the essence of what the Futurist Manifesto declares, (just as his sculpture series 'Unique Forms' embodies the ideal of Futurist Man), being dynamic and using steel and speed as the essential subjects, yet the characters within it seem to pay homage to Cubist styles.
Wherever one may look in Futurist art it is possible to find discrepancies and contradictions to their concrete-set manifesto. This is the danger we face when we deliberately try to compartmentalise and place brittle boundaries. Art, being a reflection of our natural selves, mimics life, and life always finds a way of breaking free and finding new horizons. I would say that the Futurist Manifestoes attempted to break free from what they saw as the staid world of art, but with their own limiting rules that didn't allow for the inevitable bending. Such a philosophy that all things are moving and changing at all times should have really expected that influences from earlier or contemporary times were inherent and unavoidable. As we approach the new millennium we as a society are looking towards the past, in our music and poetry and other artistic media, as a source of comfort from the uncertain future we know a mere change of date will force us to acknowledge. The Futurist movement may have been flawed in many respects but it was brave and produced some amazing expressions of emotion whose influence has arguably been as important as, if not more than, Cubism, in terms of the artwork that followed in it's wake in the century that delivered the wars the Futurists anticipated, and which ultimately splintered and destroyed the movement. However, everything must change in order to survive, it's the nature of life, and as Heraclitus proclaimed, 'You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.'