UPDATED 12/4, 2/11, 4/2
Below is an initial list of some recent and upcoming publications pertaining to Italian Futurism. Please do not hesitate to contact me with updates or further information.
Le futuriste nelle arti visive
By Mirella Bentivoglio and Franca Zoccoli
De Luca Editore
Publication Date: 2008
Il Futurismo
By Fabio Benzi
Federico Motta Editore
Publication Date: October, 2008
Debout sur la cime du monde: Manifestes Futuristes 1909-1924 (Standing on the Top of the World: Futurist Manifestos 1909-1924)
Introduction in English by Jean-Pierre Andreoli-de Villers
Editions Dilecta (Paris)
Publication Date: October, 2008
Boccioni da vicino. Pensieri e passioni del grande futurista (A close encounter with Boccioni. Thoughts and passions of the great Futururist)
By Gino Agnese
Liguori Editore
Publication date: December, 2008
This books follows Agnese’s Vita di Boccioni (Boccioni’s Life), the only biography of the artist, published in 1996. This book will contain many unpublished pictures and ends with an extensive abstract in English.
Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism
By Christine Poggi
Princeton University Press
Publication Date: January 5, 2009
In 1909 the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the founding manifesto of Italian Futurism, an inflammatory celebration of “the love of danger” and “the beauty of speed” that provoked readers to take aggressive action and “glorify war–the world’s only hygiene.” Marinetti’s words unleashed an influential artistic and political movement that has since been neglected owing to its exaltation of violence and nationalism, its overt manipulation of mass media channels, and its associations with Fascism. Inventing Futurism is a major reassessment of Futurism that reintegrates it into the history of twentieth-century avant-garde artistic movements.
Countering the standard view of Futurism as naïvely bellicose, Christine Poggi argues that Futurist artists and writers were far more ambivalent in their responses to the shocks of industrial modernity than Marinetti’s incendiary pronouncements would suggest. She closely examines Futurist literature, art, and politics within the broader context of Italian social history, revealing a surprisingly powerful undercurrent of anxiety among the Futurists–toward the accelerated rhythms of urban life, the rising influence of the masses, changing gender roles, and the destructiveness of war. Poggi traces the movement from its explosive beginnings through its transformations under Fascism to offer completely new insights into familiar Futurist themes, such as the thrill and trauma of velocity, the psychology of urban crowds, and the fantasy of flesh fused with metal, among others.
Lavishly illustrated and unparalleled in scope, Inventing Futurism demonstrates that beneath Futurism’s belligerent avant-garde posturing lay complex and contradictory attitudes toward an always-deferred utopian future. (Amazon)
I futuristi e la Quadriennale
by Enrico Crispolti, Matteo D’Ambrosio, Giovanna Bonasegale, Mariateresa Chirico, Anty Pansera, and introduction by Gino Agnese
Electa
Publication date: January, 2009
Reviews of the Futurists’ participation in the first four Quadriennale d’Arte (1931, 1935, 1939, 1943).
First Manifesto of Futurism (Re-edition in fac-simile form)
Publication Date: February 2009 (Ottawa, Canada)
Poetry Magazine
Publication Date: February 2009
Modern Painters Magazine
Publication Date: February, 2009
In February, 2009, Modern Painters is doing a special issue on Futurism. Contributors include Italian artists Maurizio Cattelan and Luca Buvoli as well as renowned Futurist scholars Ara H. Merjian, Christine Poggi, and Jennifer Bethke. Also a special portfolio of Futurist-inflected artworks by Ori Gersht and Kristin Baker, among others, titled: “artists on speed.” www.artinfo.com/modernpainters
Roman Jakobson e il futurismo italiano
By Matteo D’Ambrosio
Liguori editore
Publication Date: February 2009
Futurism
By Ester Coen, Matthew Gale, Giovanni Lista, Jean-Claude Marcade,
Edited by Didier Ottinger
5 Continents (Abrams)
Publication Date: May 1, 2009
Impassioned, polemical, and rebellious, the Futurist movement exalted the modern world by placing machines, speed, and technology at the heart of its artistic experimentations. Futurism embodied the same reality that it tried to capture: a dynamism that reflected the changing structure of the visible world. This landmark survey, published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism, traces the movement from its origins in Italy to the international creative forum.
Richly illustrated with 130 works by luminaries such as Boccioni, Balla, Picasso, Braque, Leger, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Duchamp, and Malevich, the book explores different modes of expression within shared themes: the lighting of modern cities, dance, crowd movement, and the speed of new mechanical means of transport. Featuring essays by the world’s leading authorities on Futurism and the avant-garde, Futurism is a radical reassessment of the movement and essential for understanding the genesis of many of modernism’s greatest works. (Amazon)
Futurism: An Anthology (Henry Mcbride Series in Modernism)
Edited by Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, Laura Wittman
Yale University Press
Publication date: June 23, 2009 September 29, 2009
Annali d’Italianistica
Vol. 27, AdI 2009: A Century of Futurism: 1909-2009
Publication Date: Fall 2009
Marinetti
By Giordano Bruno Guerri
Mondadori
Publication Date: January 2009
Futuristi in Politica
By Emilio Gentile
Laterza
Publication Date: January 2009
Una parentesi luminosa. L’amore segreto fra Umberto Boccioni e Vittoria Colonna
by Marella Caracciolo Chia
Adelphi
Publication Date: March 2009
FUTURISTE. Letteratura. Arte. Vita.
Edited by Giancarlo Carpi
Casa editrice Castelvecchi
Publication Date: March 2009
Marinetti e la Russia
by Pavlovic Lapšin
Skira
Rougena Zatkova monograph
Published by Masaryk University in Brn
Publication Date: 2009
Futurism in Art and Literature 1945-2009: A Bibliographic Reference Shelf
By Günter Berghaus
Publisher: Walther de Gruyter, Berlin/New York
Publication Date: 2010
Marinetti et la Révolution futuriste
By Maurizio Serra
Edizioni Cahier de l’Herne, 2009
La nostra sfida alle stelle. Futuristi in politica
By Emilio Gentile
Laterza (I Robinson), 2009
Il futurimo e la moda
Luca Federico Garavaglia
Excelsior 1881, 2009
Luca Federico Garavaglia, giovane manager che ha raccolto la sfida di riportare in auge una casa editrice come Excelsior 1881, ha dedicato al futurismo un libro affrontando però l’argomento partendo dal mondo della moda che tanto ha interessato i futuristi e molto ha influito anche sulla loro poetica. Marinetti Balla, Depero, Crali, Thayaht, Diulgheroff, Rizzo, Nizzoli, Corona, De Sanctis, Delle Site hanno prodotto proposte e riflessioni che ancora oggi rischiamo – senza esserne consapevoli – di ritrovare nel nostro guardaroba e nei nostri armadi. Suggestiva e innovativa, per esempio, la proposta di Balla di prodursi da sé – li faceva confezionare alla moglie Elisa – gli abiti raffinati e di ottima fattura in contrasto con la moda bohemiéne che tanto era amata dagli artisti dell’epoca; per non parlare di Marinetti che esortava le belle donne a non diventare schiave di velluti e gioielli di cui, semmai, necessitavano le donne vecchie e brutte.(Viviana Musumeci)
