In this essay I am going to evaluate futurists and how successful they were in their attacks against the bourgeois, drawing on examples necessary I am going to present my argument, as well as expose and analyse the traditions of performance futurists drew on and the purpose of such provocations.
Futurism is an immense on going debate through history, exploring both the avant-garde and theory of modernity. It is born from the avant-garde and represents technological and human progress. Futurism is the destruction of tradition and putting the assumed reality against the new. The Futurists were born out the war, which made them prioritise and glamorise violence through the aesthetics of war and the human subject. It explores both the human subject and opens out new realities through art and language. They were fascinated by the modern world and strived towards a new beginning. Futurists went beyond the norm and merged together artistic and political ideas in order to propose change in Europe and more specifically Italy. They were to be one of the most politicized art movements of the twentieth century. They were fixated on and had a revolutionary desire to attack the bourgeois aesthetic, along with the society that had conceded to the culture, how and why they did this is going to explained through my argument.
Futurists relied on the arts and the traditions of performance to convey their message to the masses. Through spanning the spectrum of the arts, such as drama, film, dance, language, literature, music and so on, they dominated the visual and kinaesthetic fields of performance. They explored and pushed their art to strive towards making their audiences feel something, by evoking sensations which other art couldn’t. They tried to bring the essence of the metropolis to their work by using objects, noise, heat and smell. They wanted to make art sensational and bring the senses together and not make art for arts sake. Futurist’s main under-lining goal was to shock their audiences, so therefore testing or going against the traditions of performance was a key factor, as their audiences wouldn’t be expecting change in a performance a hundred years ago.
In their theatre performances, they often used direct address and/or breaking the fourth wall, this was to go against normal theatre and shock their audience members. This was their main use of portraying their political values, which often was the main reason that provoked the audience and caused riots. Their views against the Italian society and bourgeois culture forced them to want to be heard and breaking the forth wall allowed them to do this in performance. Another technique that futurists were fixated on was to make their performances a Cabaret style. Cabaret is a form of entertainment layout for a performance. Bringing together art, song, dance, theatre and comedy thus creating an episodic structure to their events. They liked this idea as it could convey all of the elements of their art to the masses at the same time.
The bourgeois is the idea that belongs to the middle class in our society. It is often known as having materialistic views and conventional attitudes. They abided with society and often disregarded the working class and showed no interested in the abnormal. They settled for mediocrity and never questioned otherwise. So futurists were an out-rage, they hated everything they stood for and wanted nothing to do with people who conformed to society and who only cared about their economic supremacy. They wanted to modernise society and to make society reborn and ridden of the middle/higher class bigots. It is known that the ‘Futurist ideology could not accept bowing to the law, the respect of the established religion, the cult of tradition’ (Gentile, 2005) so in their mission to dismantle the bourgeoisie, they accumulated many different ways to form their attack. Through performance and art they wanted to provoke the bourgeois and their views, they wanted to make them feel and think differently, and if they meant through violence then so be it. You could call futurists ‘proletariats’ meaning the ordinary people and masses of society that disregarded the bourgeois. They focused their acts on the fracturing of unified form and to any means necessary take down the bourgeois.
After the War the futurist attitude towards the bourgeoisie and specific political issues came clearer because war attacks the meaning of life and the human subject. The aspirations they had for going against the bourgeois is bringing to light a new beginning, abandoning the old, tradition views and showing that we can live by a new futurist philosophy.
The Futurist manifesto was written by the Italian poet Marinetti, It was written before the movement actually existed and offered a guide and/or philosophy to all future futurists and how they should perceive art and the human subject. It spelt out their values and claimed “Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty and injustice.” (Marinetti, 1909 in: Apollonio, 1973) The Manifesto described Futurism wanting to reject the past, and celebrate the modern world of the present day. "We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice." (Marinetti, 1909 in: Apollonio, 1973) They wanted to start anew and make society reborn into a new and changed era. Their main objective was to grasp the conception of modern reality and cultivate new art for its shock value.
Futurists insisted that literature would not be overtaken by progress, they worried that technology and war was over-taking art and the human subjectivity and shown in their manifesto that they should embrace the new world that was upon them rather than simply sticking with the old and traditional ways. Futurists wanted to project the sense of history cannot be neglected, although their values say otherwise. They knew many things in society had to change, but while still taking into consideration, human values and a sense of civilization history. Fearing that technology will come second nature to the human race, they wanted to attack and argue that there is an alternative philosophy in their manifesto.
As this was published in a French newspaper, some would say that this was an attack by itself through journalism, because a newspaper for the general public to read published it. This meant that this could influence or provoke their readers. Which was beneficial for the futurists either way, and was an artistic movement act in itself, before the futurist art movement had even begun, this article provoked and agitated the bourgeois.
Performing arts were one of the Futurists favourite forms of expression. In the early nineteen hundreds, they held theatrical evenings, known as Serate or ‘Serata’. Carlo Carra, a leading figure in futurist movement said ‘we felt the need to enter into a more immediate contact with the people, thus were born the famous futurist Serate’ (Carra 1978 cited by Berghaus 1998, p143). Their aims, during these evenings were to attempt to make the audience experience theatre rather than simply watching. They were used to demonstrate the political and artistic aims of the futurist movement; through performance and presentation they hoped to provoke the audience and initiate riots. With the inspiration of the manifesto, futurists felt the need to go one step further with theatre by using performance to advertise and provoke their audience with their political views. They did this by using a combination of dance, reciting poems, displaying their art and all while shouting their political views. This made the audience uncomfortable by their hectic and over-powering use of theatre and because of their vocal opinions of the passive Italian bourgeois society, the audience reacted by rioting and throwing fruit and vegetables at the Futurists. These evenings were also described as battles as the Futurist aims were to agitate the audience purposefully.
The idea of shock and violence and what art might be, constantly fascinated and inspired the futurists to make them focus on their art movements and educate the public. They knew that technology was becoming second nature to us and also knew that we are more used to see reproduced versions of art than the actual art itself. They wanted to change this and radicalize the public to change their old and traditional ways. They understood that the world is changing, and wanted to guide us to see, think and feel different. They wanted to create art to acknowledge changes to our society, and also go against and provoke the bourgeois culture – this was the whole purpose of their serates.
They went against the traditions of performance by breaking the fourth wall and creating what maybe considered was a form of anarchy and attack against the bourgeois. They also challenged naturalism on a stage, which at the time was the heart of theatre and anything other than naturalistic theatre seemed absurd ‘The art theatres’ rebellion against naturalism was also an attack against the bourgeois society, in which art and life seemed to widely separated.’ (Saal, 2007) These Serates also used the elements of surprise and verbal violence to provoke the audience to feel something, this was very effective, but once the futurists were established it wasn’t easy to avoid repetition so their audience became disillusioned and no longer interested because it was predictable and obvious what they were trying to achieve. ‘at times their rhetoric was typically excessive, and the works failed to live up to the arrogant claims of the manifestos’ (Gordon, 1990) The serates were often disappointments to the futurists as they did not abide or convey their manifesto’s message through out their theatrical evenings.
To conclude, the futurists were hoping for a better future, to say goodbye to the traditional ways of society and the bourgeois culture and say hello to a modern, free, realistic view on the world. They single handily, dominated the theatre and its traditions in order to attack the bourgeois culture they had so longed to take down. Even if this meant provoking their audiences and channelling hate to perform, they needed their voices heard any means possible and through art they achieved this.
Through the Manifesto’s they wanted to reject the past and tradition and focus on the new, to personify the machine and the human subject, it was published in a newspaper, this is an act in itself going against the culture and influencing the public. They also achieved this through their Serates, a performance being a revulsion against the bourgeois, projecting their own views and provoking the audiences to feel something. I think even though their serates were repetitive after a while, they still achieved their purpose to why they were created: to provoke and make the futurists known. To send a message, a lasting message, that the bourgeois was under threat. I think through my examples, of futurist attacks against the bourgeois that I have given and their purpose of those attacks, I think the futurists were successful because they did get the reaction they wanted. They did convey their message across and provoke the audience to think and feel something different. You could argue that their audiences never had lasting feelings and as history is presented to us, they never got their rebirth of society and the defeat of the bourgeois culture so they were not successful overall. I would still like to argue that they were successful in their attacks, because they did get their message across and achieved in provoking their audiences to feel something.