Dynamism of a Human Body

The frenzy of styles in the art world in the first decades of the 20th century reflected the general unease of transition: changes in borders, assassinations, wars, imperialism, women's suffrage, and the spread of industrialization. One movement in Western European art paralleled its literary, poetic, and political components, arising in Italy in 1909, courtesy of poet and revolutionary Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” integrally Italian, ironically was published in the French Le Figaro. Espousing violence and anarchy and resounding with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the manifesto gained popularity with the artistic avant-garde, including painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).

Boccioni, along with Giacomo Balla ( JAMA cover, October 26, 2011) and Carlo Carrà, wrote “Il Manifesto dei Pittori Futuristi,” the first Futurist painters' document, in 1910. His aesthetic, arising out of divisionism learned from Balla, easily enveloped Futuristic characteristics; the divisionist technique of color separation by discrete brushstrokes enhanced colors' clarity within a painting. Divisionism and its relative, pointillism, where color separation was achieved using dots instead of simply brushstrokes, were 2 types of painting within the school of Neo-Impressionism, such as practiced by Georges Seurat and even, for a time, Camille Pissarro (JAMA cover, February 1, 2012). Cubism, and its splinter phases of analytic Cubism, orphic Cubism, and synthetic Cubism, emerged in the same time frame as Futurism; the re-composition of objects and individuals, broken down to their essential elements, occurs in Futurist art, but with a different dimension. Movement, energy, and, most importantly, the concept of simultaneity occupy Boccioni's paintings, including his Dynamism series, in which he created Dynamism of a Human Body (Dinamismo di un corpo umano) (cover).

1913, one of the years of the Dynamism paintings ( JAMA cover, September 17, 2003), held another Futurist manifesto authored by Boccioni, and the Armory Show in New York, which introduced Cubism and other modern art movements to North America. Boccioni and the other Futurists, despite personal invitation, declined to exhibit at the Armory Show: they and their philosophical leader Marinetti objected to having their Futuristic paintings lumped together with those of the Cubists and the Expressionists—examples of the groups termed “futuristic” (in the lower case) by the Armory Show's organizers. Instead, Boccioni and colleagues participated in the First International Roman Secession Exhibition. However, this was not without angst on the part of Boccioni, who wrote, “Our triumphal entry into all the capitals is completely compromised! This really annoys me.”

The colors and shapes within Dynamism of a Human Body resemble a child's simple pinwheel with its swirl of motion and hues. Separation of each segment within the painting, typical of divisionist and Futurist works, adds to, instead of detracting from, the overall impact of life, creation, and birth. Intense colors and the impression of movement lend emotional energy to the painting, consistent with the violence and upheaval emerging from the Futurist manifestos. Right angles and corners formed by intersecting strong lines contrast with the bursting curves and near-abstractions, and blend with Boccioni's tidy brushwork, visible just as he executed. Dynamism of a Human Body, along with the others in the Dynamism series, erupts with power and brightness, flowing off the canvas to stand in strong companionship with the works of Seurat, Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay (JAMA cover, January 27, 2010), and Boccioni's colleagues, the other Italian Futurists.

Although Futurism, as a social theory, may have been exhilarating to those inclined toward rebellion, one of its principles now certainly evokes anxiety and discomfort. Marinetti's focus on destruction of the past included annihilation of museums and academic institutions, their inanimate objects (paintings, sculptures, books) and their scholars, the human stores of knowledge and history. Progress in humanism—including the visual arts as expressed by Boccioni and his Futurist brethren—cannot occur in a vacuum. It was providential that Marinetti, and his sociopolitical Futurism, lost favor before more damage had been invoked. What is unfortunate is that Boccioni died at age 35, from a fall, while preparing to enter the Veronese artillery and participate in defending his Italy during the Great War.