Amongst art historians it seems generally acknowledged that the Futurists were Fascists despite the fact that their period of peak activity is usually taken as 1909 to 1915 when Mussolini called himself a Socialist and the term Fascism hadn’t yet been articulated.
But, to be fair, such a glib equation can be found in the
early anti-Fascist writers. Benedetto Croce, writing in La Stampa on 15th
May 1924, said, “For anyone who has a sense of historical connections, the
ideological origins of Fascism can be found in Futurism.” Croce argues on the
basis that they both glorify street fights and are youthful and revolutionary
in outlook. Not unique qualities, to be sure. The case for Marinetti being a
Fascist is rather more complex and one has to be wary of remarks like those of
Wyndham Lewis in Blasting and Bombadiering, “Marinetti, for instance.
You may have heard of him! It was he who put Mussolini up to Fascism. Mussolini
admits it. They ran neck and neck for a bit, but Mussolini was the better
politician.” Certainly it was Futurism that made Fascism attractive to Lewis
and Ezra Pound rather than Mussolini’s pragmatic political manoeuvres and
alliances which influenced the likes of the Fabian George Bernard Shaw.
According to Marinetti’s First Futurist Political
Manifesto the Futurists “sole political programme is national pride, energy
and expansion”. Both in style and idea there are more straightforwardly
political writings which Marinetti may well have read but not copied. Compare
the Nationalist Enrico Corradini’s Discorsi politici: “the programme
involves the sole plank: the grandeur of the fatherland.” It would be a mistake
merely to view Futurism as a hyperbolic literary expression of nationalism, but
Corradini has expressed the concept of war as a moral hygiene which liberates
heroism from the manacles of liberalism and democracy, which relates to the
most often quoted founding manifesto with reference to Fascism. “We will
glorify war – the world’s only hygiene – militarism, patriotism, the
destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for.”
Corradini, in The Principles of Nationalism, put it this way: “a moral
imperative. In a word, we propose a ‘means of national redemption’ which we sum
up, extremely concisely, in the expression ‘the need for war’. War is the last
act.” Both this strain of Nationalism and Futurism believe that parliament
shows that the rule of the majority cannot work – it just becomes the tool of
base interest. For both of them only the “intoxicating intuition” of revolution
and war can restore the vision of life as a constant struggle for change.
Violence, then, is a moral necessity. This is 1909 when the reality of the
First World War is unknown and when Nationalism is not the same as Fascism, not
least because the term doesn’t yet exist although clearly some themes can be
traced building in European culture from the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Futurism is a minor not a major part of this trend. Marinetti’s
second political manifesto was written to celebrate the Italian conquest of
Tripoli in 1911. The same themes of danger, violence, patriotism and war are
praised in “this great Futurist hour of Italy” and he coined the expansionist
phrase “Panitalianism”.
Marinetti also commented on the Balkan War but how important
the Futurists were in any encouragement of Italian intervention, and their
entry into the First World War, is difficult to determine. Giovanni Giolitti
was in power and pursued the moderate line of pacification. The majority of
Italians, at first, were opposed to war. Giolitti was supported by the
Catholics, socialists and liberals. The Nationalists and the Futurist movement
campaigned actively for war and were subsequently joined by the Syndicalists
and other radical groups. In turn some liberals and socialists, including
Mussolini, agreed on the basis that war could force Italy out of a sense of
useless stasis. The Futurist’s contribution to the debate included a
contribution to the literary journal Lacerba devoted exclusively to
interventionism and was the only publication to do so. The Syndicalist Sergio
Panunzio, writing in 1910, had attacked the Futurists for their irrationalism
and exaltation of violence but in 1914 the Syndicalists supported intervention
to bring order and justice out of chaos. Mussolini’s L’Avanti! ridiculed
the Futurists but they still met on the same side in the massive
interventionist demonstrations. The Futurist’s burning of the Austrian flag in
Trentino and the demonstration in Milan, for which they were arrested, were
spectacular publicity for Boccioni, Marinetti, Mazza and Piatti but they were never
a popular or populist movement capable of influencing government policy or were
significant enough to prevent other disparate groups who despised or ridiculed
the Futurists generally from joining the highly vocal minority in Italy clamouring
for intervention.
The art of this period is noticeably more patriotic and, as
in Germany, collage became a new tool to reference contemporary conflicts. Carlo
Carra, in particular, started to make ‘free-word paintings’, for example Patriotic
Celebration contained phrases like ‘Long Live the Army!’ and ‘Long Live the
King!’ These seem to be selected to reflect war fervour as an objective
observer rather than being a particularly personal or Futurist statement.
Marinetti and, one assumes, other Futurists usually have a less cheery recipe
for monarchy. Carra’s Pursuit is built up mostly from sports and
entertainment clippings but under the horse’s mouth is the word ‘JOFFRE’.
Marshall Joffre was the French Commander in Chief during the early years of the
First World War and widely celebrated as a hero for success at the First Battle
of the Marne in September 1914. These war collages were illustrated in Lacerba
and also formed the basis of Carra’s publication Guerrapittura. Boccioni
didn’t use collage except for Cavalry Charge of late 1914 which includes
clippings of news from the war in France. Balla took a less literal approach but
used the colours of the Italian flag in his Patriotic Chant in Piazza di
Siena and The Flag on the Altar of its Country. Severini produced The
Armoured Train which was first exhibited in Paris in January 1916 in the First
Futurist Exhibition of Plastic Art of the War.
The death of Boccioni and Sant’Elia does not seem sufficient
explanation for the death of Futurism, however what concerns us here is that
the second wave of Futurism is not generally regarded in such esteem. The
second wave of Futurism is officially aligned to Fascism whereas supporting patriotism
and militarism in the immediately pre-war period could equally apply to many
European countries. The later Futurist artists are, perhaps, written off
unfairly and, more importantly, they did not create the ideal Fascist art
despite attempts like Enrico Prampolini’s Cosmic Synthesis of Fascist Italy
and Fillia, Oriani and Rosso’s The Revolution Continues. A tighter
conjunction of ‘modernistic’ art serving the cause is provided by Mario Sironi
and Arturo Martini. Sironi was art critic for Il Popolo d'Italia and
helped design numerous Fascist exhibitions including the tenth anniversary of
the regime in 1932. Sironi and Martini’s group Novecento in Milan
managed to blend modernism, classicism and propaganda in an easily digestible
form that made modernism more appealing to the public. Bontempelli, in the Novecento
journal, writes, “Futurism was necessarily avant-gardist and aristocratic.
Novecentist art must make itself ‘popular’ and attract the ‘public’…Marinetti
has conquered and courageously held certain advanced trenches. Behind these I
have been able to begin the city of the conquerors.”
Fascism shares some philosophical background with Futurism.
In Replica a Graziadei Mussolini says he was influenced by Henri
Bergson, though he does not say in what way. Nietzsche is less important to the
Italians. Rather than the superman or ΓΌbermensch there is Georges Sorel’s
myth of heroism and virility, “the formation of aggressive and conquering
elites driven to conquest by expansiveness and vitality. There is something of
this in the programme of the so-called Futurists but they are limited to an aesthetic
and literary conception of life.”
Both Mussolini and Marinetti borrowed terminology from
French philosophers and, as one would expect, Italian politics; but there are
two phrases or slogans referring to what became common concepts that Mussolini
may have borrowed from Marinetti. The first is referring to war as “igiene del
mondo” or ‘hygiene for the world’. “We might accept war…as the only hygiene for
the world” would seem to refer back to the Futurist slogan “War is the only
hygiene for the world.” The term ‘race’ is used a lot by Marinetti which he
conceived as ‘people’ or ‘nation’ possessed of a “will to conquest and
adventure” in phrases such as “racial pride”, “a new national consciousness”,
“the prestige of our race”, “the Italian race”, “Italian blood” and “Italian
people”. Mussolini had a similar interpretation of the word ‘razza’ in phrases
like “racial solidarity” and “a union of free spirits in the Italian nation”.
In other words the interpretation was not racist in terms of a natural
assumption of racial supremancy. It was a call to action: an appeal to the will
of the Italians rather than their genes, to their heroism rather than their
heredity. As in Roman times the Italian view of citizenship was about granting
rights for your achievements or by agreement of good behaviour under conquest. Anti-semitism,
for example, had no place in Italian fascism until 1938 and the Italian army’s
record in Africa or the Balkans may be no better than any other but at least
they were not justified by spurious intellectual doctrine.
In the manifestos War, the World’s Only Hygiene
1911-15 and Futurist Democracy 1919 there are suggestions of programmes
to reduce the birth rate, for the benefit of health and sport, and to create a
credit bank for artists. Both these ideas seem to have interested Mussolini and
he even promised a credit bank although one was never set up. Marinetti’s tract
Portrait of Mussolini is often quoted to show how close they had always
been. In fact it was written in 1929 in reverence to a President of seven years
standing. It is hard to believe that there were no manifestos in the art world
before the Futurists but certainly they seem to have encouraged the idea in the
media and common consciousness of it being a political vehicle. Previously it
often referred to a poster although there is a link to political demonstrations
which were known as manifestazione.
It’s worth appending some of the politcal history and
military activity that connects Marinetti to Mussolini’s Fascist era to add
that perspective. 1918 saw the foundation of a Futurist Party which founded
clubs in Ferrara, Florence, Rome and Taranto. Marinetti used his techniques of
public disruption to drown out a speech by Bissolati at La Scala. Mussolini was
also there and seems to have developed the same talent for creating torrents of
abuse that a rational lecture cannot penetrate. The Fasci di Combattimento was
formed at the Piazza San Sepolcro in 1919 with Marinetti in attendance. A few
weeks later he staged a “patriotic demonstration” with the Arditi (special
forces veterans) and the Fascists. They attacked a Red rally in Milan. The
resulting ‘battle of Via Mercanti’ is said to have been conducted by Marinetti
from the back of one of the lion monuments. They wrecked and burned the offices
of L’Avanti after the main confrontation. Mussolini knew about and
approved the action but did not take part personally. In the elections of 1919
Marinetti and Mussolini stood as Fascist candidates along with eighteen others.
The party received 4,657 votes out of a possible 270,000 in Milan. Perhaps this
result was key to Mussolini realising he needed the support of conservatives,
nationalists, industrialists and landowners more than a few Futurist
intellectuals and was the start of broader alliances. Before the elections of
May 1921 Mussolini, who was an atheist, even began to make overtures to the
Catholic church for their support.
Around this time Marinetti ceased his active support and
referred to Mussolini in characteristic style as “this extravagant buffoon who
wants to play politics and whom nobody in Italy, least of all me, takes seriously.”
Marinetti left the Fascist party in 1920 and in 1924 stated that the Futurists
“intervene in political contests only in hours of great danger for the Nation.”
He was not completely estranged, however, and in 1929 was made Secretary of the
Fascist Writers’ Union and a member of the Accademia d’Italia. In 1930 he
performed propaganda on Giornale Radio. He volunteered for active service in
the Second World War and fought on the Russian front even though he was in his mid-Sixties
by then. He was given a state funeral when he died a couple of years later
peacefully in Italy whilst working on a collection of poems about the Navy commando
unit Decima Flottiglia MAS.
In 1913 Papini declared that
“Futurism means frantic love for Italy and for her greatness…an Italy greater
than the one we have known, more modern, more courageous, more progressive than
other nations.” The patriotism of Futurism proper seems no more complex than
that, a desire to drag Italy into the Twentieth Century. Patriotism is not
Fascism, though they seem to derive their patriotism from a movement
capitalised as Nationalism and which, like Syndicalism, contains embryonic
elements of Fascism. Both Fascism and Futurism originated in Milan in the metropolitan
industrial heartland of northern Italy (closer in mind and body to the rest of
Europe) and formed part of a general shift in political and cultural weight since
the unification of Italy in the late nineteenth century and only really
complete in 1918. The Bernheim-Jeune catalogue of 1912 states that “If our
paintings are futurist, it is because they are the result of absolutely
futurist conceptions, ethical, aesthetic, political and social.” Yet it is
primarily Marinetti’s writings that claim to address this broad spectrum. The
link with Fascism rests heavily on the assumption that Marinetti is Futurism.
Since Futurism is primarily known for the plastic arts rather than as a
literary movement, ie. by its artists and their paintings and sculptures, this is
hardly fair.
Fascism, once established in
the mainstream, follows hierarchy, tradition and respect of the law; it sets it’s
standards by the Roman empire, the Renaissance and the Catholic Church. The
spirit of Futurism is anti-clerical, anti-tradition and perpetually
revolutionary, rather than being revolutionary to a reactionary end. Futurism,
despite it’s national focus, had blood brothers in other countries such as
Russian Futurism, which aligned itself with Bolshevism, and Dada which
expressed anti-war anarchism. In 1919 Marinetti wrote, “To the oppressed classes,
to the impoverished workers, let the entire parasitical plutocracy of the world
be sacrificed.” For similarities with Dadaism one could quote from the first
Futurist manifesto which called for “the abolition of museums, libraries and
academic institutions of every kind, and a campaign against ethics and aestheticism.”
Fascism represented something new and exciting and modern in Italy between the
two world wars. Marinetti saw in it some of his own tendencies – the craze for
speed and violent action, the extolling of war and patriotism, a hatred of Parliament
and bureaucracy - and carried his second generation of Futurists with him.
Selective Bibliography:
Futurism – Jane Rye
Futurist Manifestos – ed.
Umbro Apollonio
Futurism – Joshua C Taylor
The Syndicalist Tradition
and Italian Fascism – David D Roberts
The Ideology of Fascism: The
rationale of totalitarianism – A James Gregor
Fascism in Italy: Its Development
and Influence – Elizabeth Wiskermann
Fascism – Giuseppe Prezzolini
Italian Fascisms: From
Pareto to Gentile – ed. Adrian Lyttelton
Mussolini – Laura Fermi
Marinetti: Selected Writings
– ed. R W Flint
The Fascist Experience:
Italian Society and Culture 1922-45 – Edward R Tannenbaum
Kunst und ideologie des
Faschismus – Umberto Silva
