Inventing futurism
Subtitle: the art and politics of artificial optimism
By: Christine Poggi.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Princeton
Language: eng
Number of pages: 374
ISBN-13: 9780691133706
Subjects: Futurism (Art); Arts and society -- Italy -- History -- 20th century; Avant-garde (Aesthetics) -- Italy -- History -- 20th century
Description: "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 naively bellicose, Christine Poggi argues that Futurist artists and writers were far more ambivalent in their responses to the shocks of industrial modernity than Filippo Tommaso 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."

"Inventing Futurism demonstrates that beneath Futurism's belligerent avant-garde posturing lay complex and contradictory attitudes toward an always-deferred utopian future."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Futurist velocities; title: Folla/follia: futurism and the crowd; title: Umberto Boccioni's The city rises: picturing the futurist metropolis; title: Photogenic abstraction: Giacomo Balla's iridescent interpenetrations; title: Dreams of metallized flesh: futurism and the masculine body; title: Futurist love, luxury, and lust; title: Return of the repressed: vicissitudes of the futurist machine; title: Aesthetics under fascism.