Futurist Conditions: Imagining Time in Italian Futurism

Italian futurism visualized diverse types of motion, which had been rooted in pervasive kinetic and vehicular forces generated during a period of dramatic modernization in the early 20th century. Yet, as David Mathers sweeping intellectual and art historical scholarship demonstrates, it was the cameranot the enginethat proved to be the key invention against which many futurist ideas and practices were measured. Overturning several misconceptions about Italian futurisms interest in the disruptive and destructive effects of technology, Futurist Conditions provides a refreshing update to that historical narrative by arguing that the formal and conceptual approaches by futurist visual artists reoriented the possibly dehumanizing effects of mechanized imagery toward more humanizing and spiritual aims. Through its sustained analysis of the artworks and writings of Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, and the Bragaglia brothers, dating to the first decade after the movements founding in 1909, Mathers account of the their obsession with motion pivots around a 1913 debate on the place and relative import of photography among more traditional artistic mediumsa debate culminating in the expulsion of the Bragaglias, but one that also prompted a number of productive responses by other futurist artists to the world-changing social, political, and economic conditions.