Futurism: A Surging Incoherence of Forms

Umberto Boccioni Street Noises Invade the House - 1911 - 100 x 107 cm (39 1/4 x 42 in) - Sprengel Museum - Hannover - Germany (click photo for larger image)Interest in—and appreciation of—machinery was clearly in the air in the early decades of the 20th century. For a group of young Italian artists, the progress offered by machinery epitomized their increasing fascination with dynamic speed and motion. Though they translated this idea of progress into a frenetic exultation of the glory of war and the destruction of museums, their visual understanding of motion remained exciting. The Italian Futurists—like the members of Die Brücke in Germany—aimed to free art from all its historical restraints and celebrate the new beauty of the modern age. Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) and other of his contemporaries wanted to express the onrush of events in the world with pictures of motion, dynamism, and power. In the work featured here, Boccioni attempts to provide this sensation and succeeds remarkably well. Noise becomes something seen, something literally invasive of privacy. Boccioni said of the painting, “…all life and the noises of the street rush in at the same time as the movement and the reality of the objects outside.” The surging incoherence of the forms is both chaotic and ordered—a true mark of Futurism, as a movement.