Enlisting and Updating: Ruggero Vasari and the Shifting Coordinates of Futurism in Eastern and Central Europe

The Italian Futurist movement has come back into vogue with its centenary in 2009 and the landmark exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that ran through 2014. The cultural influence of this movement on the modern era is undisputed, whether we look at paintings, literature, poetry, sculpture, architecture, music, or advertising. It is also undisputed that this avant-garde movement was deeply involved in the politics of both liberal and Fascist Italy. Futurist politics were characterized by a pronounced nationalism and imperialism, and were known for the mantra that war was the 'world's only hygiene' .

International yearbook of futurism studies, 2011

The essay provides an insight into the hitherto almost unexamined contacts between Latvian artists and Futurism. Early Modernism in Latvia was episodically infl uenced by impressions obtained mostly through the Russian avant-garde milieu. Nevertheless, during the rise of Latvian Modernism, a number of artists developed closer links with representatives of secondo futurismo, amongst them the sculptor and publisher of the Latvian avant-garde magazine Laikmets (Epoch), Kārlis Zāle, then living in Berlin, and the painter, stage and book designer Niklāvs Strunke, then resident in Rome. In the early 1920s, Zāle joined the international avant-garde movement in Berlin, establishing contacts with Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm gallery, the Novembergruppe, the Russian émigré circle and Ivan Puni, as well as with the Italian Futurist Ruggero Vasari, publisher of the journal Der Futurismus, whose private gallery exhibited works by Zāle and other Latvian modernists. Strunke was the only Latvian modernist in the mid-1920s to interact with Futurists on their own soil. He became involved with Marinetti and representatives of secondo futurismo in Rome, especially with Enrico Prampolini and Ivo Pannaggi, and with Anton Giulio Bragaglia's circle at his Casa d'arte and Teatro degli Indipendenti. These are outstanding pages in the history of Latvian Modernism characterized by its international dimension and creative productivity.

International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, 2022

This essay investigates the Futurist oeuvre of Bruno Jasieński (1901- 1936) and its entanglement with issues of power. The Polish Futurists sought to undermine the dominant discourses and structures of social hierarchy because, Jasieński argued, these were controlled, subjugated by the ruling class and overburdened with bourgeois tradition. Following the revolutionary patterns of Russian Futurists and the innovative art of French avant-garde authors, Jasieński questioned the ‘transparency’ of language, arguing that it formed the backbone of agency and a cornerstone of class emancipation. However, as one may find the Polish artist’s manifestos more radical and incisive than his literary output, I shall present these dimensions of Jasieński’s work separately. Therefore, besides discussing the Polish Futurist’s politics of aesthetics, I also examine the contradictions between Jasieński’s theory and praxis.

Matica Srpska Journal of Fine Arts, 2017

This article examines how—and why—Futurism became part of the discourse of madness in late Imperial Russia. Framed around a study of three sets of sources—writings by the creative intelligentsia intended for educated readers, studies by medical professionals concerning mental illness, and mainstream news reports on Futurist art and performance—it is argued that with the failed Revolution of 1905 having turned everyday life on its head, discussions on Futurism operated as a proxy for social critique across Russia. Ultimately the Futurist term would be dissociated from art entirely, and used conterminously with madness, in a process that would raise a still-pertinent question: what do we talk about when we talk about madness in art?

2011

My dissertation studies the intersection of popular entertainment and the visual arts in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century and the dialogue that formed between this subculture and the avant-garde factions of Paris and Italy. While this project focuses on the Italian Futurist Gino Severini (1883-1966), it is not conceived of as a monograph. Instead I will use Severini as a case study to help make sense of a complicated world in which the boundaries between bohemia and the bourgeoisie, masculinity and femininity, and art and popular culture are transgressed and blurred.

An account of Italian and Russian futurism from the perspective of world literature, centre/periphery relations, cosmopolitanism and nationalism.