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‘Barbari civilizzatissimi’: Marinetti and the futurist myth of barbarism

2012; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1354571x.2012.667228

1469-9583

Lucia Ré,

European history and politics

Abstract In light of the specific cultural history of Italy and of Marinetti's African provenance, the persistent self-proclaimed primitivism and barbarism of the Italian futurists is discussed in contrast to other versions of modernist and avant-garde primitivism. Postcolonial critics have highlighted the complicity and affinity between primitivist avant-gardes and European imperialism in Africa. Yet Italian futurism cannot be simply assimilated to the imperialist European incorporation of the African ‘other’. Italy (especially southern Italy) was traditionally perceived and represented by northern Europeans as an inferior, barbaric ‘primitive’ other akin to Africa, in opposition and contrast to ‘civilized’ Europe. The Italian futurists ironically reclaimed, embraced and valorized both Italy's southern-ness and its African-ness. At the same time, the futurists exposed barbarism and civilization in technology-driven modernity as two faces of the same coin. Keywords: Primitivismbarbarismmodernismimperialismcolonialismavant-gardeAfricaart nègreMarinettiBoccioni Il tamburo di fuoco Notes These works by Carrà and their African models are reproduced in Bassani's essay, which is part of the two-volume catalogue of the groundbreaking exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Primitivism in the 20th Century: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (Rubin Citation1984). The term ‘antigrazioso’, usually associated with Boccioni, was widely used as a positive term by the futurists, including Carrà, to refer to art that was intentionally and provocatively graceless and even ugly by traditional western esthetic standards based on outmoded classical models of graceful beauty, symmetry and proportion. Yet, at the same time, Carrà declined to acknowledge the influence of non-western art on his work. In the article ‘Vita moderna e arte popolare’, published in Lacerba in June 1914, Carrà mocked the French Cubists for turning to African art for inspiration to evoke a sense of innocence that was wholly artificial. See also Carrà's (Citation1921) essay ‘André Derain’ – published in Valori Plastici well after Carrà had abandoned futurism and entered his metaphysical phase – in which he called the French passion for ‘Negrism’ an ‘atavistic and morbid aberration’. According to Bassani, Carrà, Boccioni and the other futurist artists were first exposed to African tribal sculpture in Paris through Apollinaire, Braque and other representatives of the French avant-garde. However, several large and popular ethnographic exhibitions, which included colonial African crafts, fetishes and objects from Eritrea, Somalia and the Sudan, and even live demonstrations by African craftsmen, had taken place in Italian cities (especially Turin, Milan and Rome) from 1884 (Esposizione generale italiana in Torino) to 1911 (Esposizione Generale in Torino and Rome; Abbattista Citation2004). In his essay, Bassani nonetheless radically downplays the importance of tribal and primitive art for the Italian futurists, with the partial exception only of Carlo Carrà. Oddly, Bassani states that the main reason why African and other non-western art was not more influential in Italy was that, unlike France, Germany, Belgium and other European countries, ‘Italy had no colonies’ (Bassani Citation1984: 411). It is worth recalling instead, not only that Italy had an official colony in Eritrea since 1890 (conquered with violence and bloodshed by an army of more than 20,000 men), but also that from 1900 on there was a strong colonialist movement in Italy which overlapped with the new Italian nationalism, and led eventually in 1911 to the invasion of Libya. See also in L'alcova d'acciaio (Marinetti Citation1921; Citation1985: 225): ‘Primitività stramba del mio temperamento vergine, selvaggio, schietto, elastico, pieno di barbarie crudele e di profonda umanità civilizzata’ (‘Strange primitiveness of my temperament, virgin, savage, sincere, elastic, full of cruel barbarism and of profoundly civilized humanity’). For a wide-ranging discussion of this topos from classical antiquity to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and beyond, see Gombrich (Citation2002). Meštrović elaborates on the theme of modern and postmodern barbarism also in more recent works, including The Trials of Abu Ghraib: An Expert Witness Account of Shame and Honor (Meštrović Citation2007). For an interesting dissection of the slippery history of the term ‘barbarism’ in contemporary thought, see Nielsen (Citation1999). Although he was in other things considerably influenced by Nietzsche, Marinetti spelled out his distance from Nietzsche's archaicizing views as early as 1910 in the manifesto ‘Contro i professori’ (Marinetti Citation1968: 306–10). Marinetti also often referred to himself as a ‘Saracen’, a southerner, a Neapolitan and a Sicilian (Salaris Citation1997: 9–10). As pointed out by Fogu (Citation2008), Marinetti, in his passion for Capri, often described the island as a fragment of a volcanic peer that once connected Italy to Africa. In the same article, Fogu discusses the importance of the volcano in futurist esthetics and politics, and the ‘Neapolitanization’ of futurism. Unfortunately Tondelli seeks to explain Marinetti's savageness very reductively as the symptom of a real trauma – an actual car accident perhaps, or the trauma of migration and displacement from the sands of Egypt's Alexandria to the industrial landscapes of Milan. See, for example, the scene in chapter 6 of Women in Love, in which Gerald observes the ‘Negro statues’ along with some ‘new pictures in the Futurist manner’ in Halliday's studio. An African female fetish, half human and half animal, becomes the emblem of disintegration and dissolution, a dreadful mindless knowledge through the senses and ‘beyond any phallic knowledge … the African process of purely sensual understanding’ (Lawrence Citation1921). Carlo Anti's article ‘Scultura negra’ appeared in Dedalo. Rassegna d'Arte1921, 1(3): 592–621. The stage directions describe the characters' costumes in detail, and the costumes themselves as well as the sets were designed by Prampolini, one of the great futurist painters and stage designers. The Prampolini sketches that survive refer to the Prague production of the play in the Stavovske Divadlo theater in December 1922. This is interesting in part because Prague was one of the first cities in Europe where African sculpture was known and collected in artistic circles. The manifesto refers to the ‘tactile table’ ‘Sudan-Parigi’, an assemblage piece that in its various tactile components and multidirectionality encapsulates Marinetti's multiple South-North and North-South trajectories, and the hybrid complementarity of Africa and Europe. For an interesting discussion of the symbolic implications of the table, see (Salaris Citation1997: 9). Amendola's report to the Ministero degli Esteri (reproduced in Filesi 1975: 178–9) is filled with racist observations. He comments for example that Garvey's pan-negro movement is ‘espressione genuina dell'infantile psicologia della razza negra’ (‘a genuine expression of the childish psychology of the Negro race’), yet intimates that the movement could indeed become a threat for European and Italian colonialism and the prestige of the white race, and was to be closely monitored.