Overview

Modern technology radically transformed urban life by the first decade of the twentieth century. As one of Western Europe's least industrialized countries, Italy appeared impervious to such developments. It was this state of affairs at which the Futurist movement took aim. With its founding in 1909, the poet and impresario F. T. Marinetti called for a revitalization of aesthetic expression by means of ""movement and aggression."" A growing cadre of Futurist painters, poets, authors, and musicians exchanged Italy's cultural patrimony for new technologies, media, and metaphors, championing machine-propelled speed and its salutary hazards. The movement's challenge to twentieth-century culture lay not in any specific set of images or objects but a more comprehensive revolution of sensibility. By the mid-1910s there circulated several dozen Futurist proclamations on everything from men's clothing to set design, photography to film, dance to politics. That political impetus proved relentlessly paradoxical in origin and upshot. From its base in Milan, Futurist activity spread throughout the entire peninsula. Prefiguring and then propagandizing Fascist imperialism, Futurism also galvanized a range of progressive modernist phenomena. More than a century later, the ""activist model"" of the Futurist avant-garde remains deeply fraught in its historical implications.

Full Product Details

9798228801783

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Ara H. Merjian is professor of Italian studies at New York University, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History. He has written and edited several books, including Fragments of Totality: Futurism, Fascism, and the Sculptural Avant-Garde, Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting, Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Contemporary Art and Neocapitalism, and Blueprints and Ruins: Giorgio de Chirico and the Architectural Imagination from the Avant-Garde to Postmodernism. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the San Quentin State Penitentiary College Education Program. Paul Bellantoni, a classically trained actor, is a former opera singer in the US and Europe. He voiced all the fight efforts for Wenwu in the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and made his animated feature debut in the Annie Award-nominated Ruben Brandt, Collector. Thrilled to be narrating audiobooks, he excels in character voices, accents, and captivating passionate storytelling. He was the singing voice for the Cowardly Lion of Oz ornament from Hallmark, and is the voice for Uatu, The Watcher in the Marvel Super War videogame. He has voiced lead characters in the English versions of several Netflix and Hulu series, and has appeared in many videogame franchises, including Dungeons & Dragons, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Black Desert, Genshin Impact, and Shenmue. He sang lead roles in opera companies throughout the US and Europe for over a decade, appears on the cast recording of ""The Ballad of Baby Doe"" with Central City Opera, as well as a solo CD of arias ""Heroes & Villains"" with the Moravian Symphony. He made his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall as a winner of the Koussevitzky Prize.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available