FUTURISM AND MOVEMENT

“What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?” This quote is taken from the Futurist Manifesto, written by Marinetti in 1909.  If you need it, a link here for quick Futurist primer. 

The Futurists, as we saw a few months ago at the Guggenheim show in NYC, were concerned with the then new concepts of speed, movement and modernism. Their two dimensional paintings are of particular interest to us, as we can see this implied movement in depictions of airplanes, trains, etc.

The Futurists taught us that when you draw or paint to represent movement, some level of transparency is introduced.  There is no doubt that the futurists were interested in graphic abstractions. That is to say that they were not content to represent objects and buildings. Rather one method involved an abstractive and dynamic overlay onto existing objects. This kaleidoscopic overlay implied movement.  The painting is by Russolo.  Look for the overlapping layers and the general sense of transparency.

The Futurist Manifesto, as we might guess, gives opinions on traditional Renaissance art. They state, “We fight against the nude in painting, as nauseous and as tedious as adultery in literature.” Although they don’t expressly state that they are against the linear perspective and the Renaissance, their political movement did call into question the traditional and accepted painterly art.

More from the Futurist Manifesto.

“To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?”

No, we absolutely do not want to waste our strength. And I think that the principals of Transparent Drawing help us to conserve our strength. Futurism can inform your Transparent Drawing. The loose and abstract geometry can serve as inspiration.

The watercolor above is an abstract study in movement. I took the Steiner house and sequentially rotated the form across the page.  We first looked at this piece by Loos at the link just above.

Consider creating multiple simultaneous viewpoints on your drawing by showing the object as if it is turning.  Overlap the transparent viewpoints.  See if this might do anything for you. We will continue to look into the concept of movement as a method for transparent understanding.