Fortunato Nemo

FORTUNATO NEMO

Far away in the Galaxy Marinetto on the planet Depera and during a time of rapid technological progress there lived the toy maker Fortunato Nemo.




So ingenious were his toys that everyone called him 'The Magician' and the principles of his toy making were taught to all toy makers on Depera:

MANIFESTO:
In games and toys, as in all traditionalist manifestations, there is nothing but grotesque imitation, timidity (little trains, prams, puppets), immobile objects, stupid caricatures of domestic objects, antigymnastic and monotonous, which can only cretinize and depress a child.
With plastic complexes we will construct toys which will accustom the child:
1. to completely spontaneous laughter (through absurdly comical tricks);
2. to maximum elasticity (without resorting to thrown projectiles, whip cracking, pin pricks, etc.);
3. to imaginative impulses (by using fantastic toys to be studied under a magnifying glass, small boxes to be opened at night containing pyrotechnic marvels, transforming devices, etc.)
4. to the continual exercise and sharpening of his sensitivity (in the unbounded realms of acute and exciting noises, smells and colors)
These toys will be very useful to adults too, keeping them young, agile, jubilant, spontaneous, ready for anything, untiring, instinctive and intuitive.

It so happened that planet Depera went through a phase warfare and being somewhat of a conformist, Fortunato did not resist when the authorities of Depera's Futuristic Congress added to his manifesto:

5. to physical courage, to fighting and to war (with gigantic, dangerous and aggressive toys that will work outdoors).

During this time he found it wiser to keep to himself his secret inspiration for most of his toys: the life of animals, birds, and plants around him and he rarely dared to show his studies to anyone.




In fact he felt more and more suffocated losing control of his life in an environment that resembled more and more a gigantic machine.



In the end he put all his genius into building an intergalactic space ship to escape from Depera and to explore other forms of life in the universe.

Futurist Ballet

Here are some videos that Angeliki found on Youtube of Futurist Ballets. The piece is called "Ballet Mechanique" (1924) by Fernand Leger.

Futurist Theatre

Futurist Performance
FROM THE MANIFESTO OF THE FUTURIST SYNTHETIC THEATRE

"The dramatic 'synthesis', which will take the place of the traditional play, will be 'autonomous, unreal, and alogical'. Although elements drawn from reality will be used, they will be combined according to whim, and the synthesis will resemble nothing but itself. With color, forms, sounds and noises, it will, like the works of Futurist painters and musicians, assault the nerves....
The spectators will be made to 'forget the monotony of everyday life' through a 'labyrinth of sensations' characterized by the most exasperating originality combined in unexpected ways.
Anticipating the Surrealists, the Futurists declared that discoveries of the subconscious must be brought to the stage. The entertainment would 'symphonize' the feelings of the public, exploring and revealing those feelings in every possible way. "

Signed by: Filippo Marinetti, Bruno Corra and Emilio Settimelli (1915...Milan)
Source: Futurism, by Jane Rye, Pub.Dutton Edited by: Joe De Marco (1992...Los Angeles)

Kat's Book Review

Pinocchio's Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons and Robots in Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama by Harold B. Segel

Overview
A look at how modernist movement created new artistic interest in the use of puppets with human likenesses. An exploration of the metaphors of puppets and the use of puppets in modernist and Avant-Garde theatre from around the world from 1890 through 1935.

Links to the Puppeteer and Puppet (esp. Futurism)

"What simultaneity meant to Futurist practice was the occurrence of different events at the same time, action onstage, for example, taking place simultaneously in different locations. Although this was in part an attempt by Futurists to parallel the cinematographer's ability to move instantaneously from one locale to another, it was also reflective of their sense of the rapidity with which change was occurring in their own time. Certainly one way of rendering the fast pace of modernist times was to move back and forth between several unrelated, or apparently unrelated, events, collapsing in the process both time and space."

This holds true also to the Russian Futurist obsession with the idea of film and moving pictures. Futurists believed that "the human actor and dancer should be no longer tolerated" and should be replaced by puppets, mechanistic puppets and finally by "electric currents and diffusing luminous colourations."

Futurists seemed to love using puppets in Futurist Theatre (in fact Marinetti created two Futurist plays using marionettes: Le Roi Bombance (Bombance the King) and the better known Electric Puppets which was later shortened to only the second act and was thus renamed to Sexual Electricity.

In conjunction with the idea of replacing the live actor, Futurists seemed to love the use of puppets for this main reason: "shadows and marionettes co-ordinate their various movements with the humans' speech and actions [...] both shadows and marionettes mock their (human) alter egos. The apparitions (puppets) that mimic their (human) actions in fact mock their (human) marionette-like behaviour in life.

Segel, H. (1995). Pinocchio's Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons and Robots in Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Basics of Futurism

So here are the basics of Futurism that I’ve found out so far:

Futurism is arguably one of the most important avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century. It was founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (photo shown), who was an Italian poet and novelist (and a very wealthy one at that). He wrote the first Futurist manifesto in 1909, which celebrated the dynamism of the machine age while also strongly negating the past: “”We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind…”

With this beginning, Marinetti and a group of other like-minded artists joined together with the aim to FREE Italy from the oppressive weight of her past and GLORIFY the modern world – MACHINERY, SPEED, VIOLENCE – in a series of exuberant manifestos (On that note, it’s worth pointing out that Marinetti was a friend of Mussolini, and so Futurism has also been associated with Fascism, thus making it a political-ideological, social and artistic entity).

Key Futurist artists (painters) include:
- Umberto Boccioni (“Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” 1913).
- Carlo Carrà (“The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli” 1911)
- Luigi Russolo (“The Art of Noises” manifesto 1913)
- Giacomo Balla (“Dog on a leash” 1912)
- Gino Severini (“Armored Train” 1915)
- Marcel Duchamp (“Nude Descending a Staircase No. 1” 1911)

(I found a Futurist blog that mentions these artists – it’s written in Portuguese but it’s well worth visiting for the great images. Click here to have a look).

Futurism also influenced the Russian Futurist movement, with artists such as Larionov, Goncharova, Malevich and Mayakovsky.

In terms of art styles, Futurist art can be divided up into four parts:
1) Influences from Cubism (e.g. “Boccioni’s “Lines of Force”)
2) Geometric abstracts from 1916 (Balla)
3) The machine art of the 1920s (cf. Russian Constructivism)
4) The Aeropittura (‘aero-painting’) of the 1930s

Apart from the visual arts, Futurism also manifested itself in literature, theatre, music, and even spread to fashion, food and drink, and toys!

Some thoughts on Futurism from “Art History: The Key Concepts” by Jonathan Harris (2006):

“Futurism breathlessly aestheticised and idealised urban, industrial, and military modernity, linking them to a faith in the renewal of patriotic national identity through corporate political leadership and an aggressive rejection of the premodern past.”

“The dissolution of traditional perspectival design and naturalistic conventions (e.g. Balla’s “Dog on a leash” 1912) was the result of a common attempt to represent seen and felt experiences of motion and time.”

“Futurism was an ‘interesting anomaly: a short-lived right-wing avant-garde whose makers generally outlived the nationalist polemic.”

Websites used for this post:
http://www.fluxeuropa.com/futurism.htm
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/
http://hatfuturismo.blogspot.com/