Futurism

The Futurist movement began at the turn of the 20th Century. It was a result of Industrialism being introduced at the end of the 1800s, and it prompted not only artists but non-artistic people to think about design differently to all previous ideas and rules of what makes art.

Futurists were usually young people in as early as their twenties, and were referred to as 'avant-garde', sexists and even Fascists. They were classed as aarchistic, determined to push the boundaries of design and reinvent both themselves and the world around them.

The acclaimed 'founding father' of this movement was Filippo Tommaso Marianetti. He labelled the movement and created works that really challenged the idea of what art is defined by. He created 'sound poems' - pages of text that claimed to be phonetic descriptions of sounds - not necessarily music, but the sounds of car engines and other industrial equipment and machines.
His more well-known work was 'SCRABrrRrraaNNG' (above), a typographical piece created in 1919 using print, containing the text itself as well as other pieces of text and image, laid out in a dynamic and seemingly disorganised composition.

The futurists welcomed the industrial world and its innovation. They were surrounded by technological upheaval and war, and wanted nothing more than to fully challenge their environments and push design forward, leaving the past behind.

In this movement the art of 'chronophotography' occurred - the ability to capture motion in seperate still images, as if viewing its individual frames. Giacomo Balla created a piece based on this media technique named 'Dynamism of a dog on a leash' in 1909.


















The Futurists broke symmetry, hated the past and lived for the future. Some wanted to destroy libraries and museums, some glorified war, violence, pollution and sexism. The movement and its participants were rebellious, indulgent and pretentious, rejecting the idea of classic, conventional art and going as far as defacing classic art to make their point. They strived to conquer design through innovation in their arrogance.

While I personally don't agree with or support most political ideology within Futurism, the idea of following innovation and looking forward in terms of design is inspiring, and helped in the development and use of modern technology.

I plan to look more intently at the Futurists' use of varied and borderline chaotic composition. To apply this to my own work will be challenging, but could give my use of composition a much-needed boost in order to bring it to a professional and aesthetically original and pleasing body of work.