Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: Work

“On 11 October 1908, having worked for six years at my international magazine Poesia, in an attempt to free the Italian lyrical genius that was under sentence of death from its traditional and commercial fetters, I suddenly felt that articles, poetry and controversies were no longer enough. It was absolutely crucial to switch methods, get out into the streets, lay siege to theaters, and introduce the fisticuffs into the artistic struggle... My Italian blood raced faster when my lips coined out loud the word FUTURISM.
It was the new formula of Action-Art and a code of mental health. It was a youthful and innovative banner, anti-traditional, optimistic, heroic and dynamic, that had to be hoisted over the ruins of all attachment to the past.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

quote from 'Guerra sola igiene del mundo', in Edizione Futuriste di Poesia', Milan 1915; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 21
1910's

Death , Health , Youth , Art

“While an artist is labouring at his work of art, nothing prevents it from surpassing Dream. As soon as it is finished, the work must be hidden or destroyed, or better still, thrown as a prey to the brutal crowd which will magnify it by killing it with its scorn, and thereby intensify its absurd uselessness. We thus condemn art as finished work, we conceive of it only in its movement, in the state of effort and draft. Art is simply a possibility for absolute conquest. For the artist, to complete is to die.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Quote of marinetti in his 'Le Premier Manifeste du Futurisme', 1909
1900's

Dreams , Art , Effort

“.. there is no longer any beauty except the struggle. Any work of art that lacks a sense of aggression can never be a masterpiece.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

In the 'First Futurist Manifesto,' Filippo Marinetti, 1909; as quoted in Critical Writings: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, New Edition, quoted in the text on the Back Cover, Macmillan, 7 Apr 2007
1900's

Beauty , Art , Sense

“In order to win over Paris and appear, in the eyes of all Europe, an absolute innovator, the most advanced of all, I urge you to get to work with all your heart, resolute on being bolder, crazier, more advanced, surprising, eccentric, incomprehensible, and grotesque than anybody else in music. I urge you to be a madman.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Marinetti (1910); as quoted in: Lawrence Rainey (2005) Modernism: An Anthology, p. 2
1910's

Music , Appearance , Heart

“11. We shall sing the great masses shaken with work, pleasure, or rebellion: we shall sing the multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution in the modern metropolis; shall sing the vibrating nocturnal fervor of factories and shipyards burning under violent electrical moons; bloated railroad stations that devour smoking serpents; factories hanging from the sky by the twisting threads of spiraling smoke; bridges like gigantic gymnasts who span rivers, flashing at the sun with the gleam of a knife; adventurous steamships that scent the horizon, locomotives with their swollen chest, pawing the tracks like massive steel horses bridled with pipes, and the oscillating flight of airplanes, whose propeller flaps at the wind like a flag and seems to applaud like a delirious crowd.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Original Italian text:
Noi canteremo le grandi folle agitate dal lavoro, dal piacere o dalla sommossa: canteremo le maree multicolori e polifoniche delle rivoluzioni nelle capitali moderne; canteremo il vibrante fervore notturno degli arsenali e dei cantieri incendiati da violente lune elettriche; le stazioni ingorde, divoratrici di serpi che fumano; le officine appese alle nuvole pei contorti fili dei loro fumi; i ponti simili a ginnasti giganti che scavalcano i fiumi, balenanti al sole con un luccichio di coltelli; i piroscafi avventurosi che fiutano l'orizzonte, le locomotive dall'ampio petto, che scalpitano sulle rotaie, come enormi cavalli d'acciaio imbrigliati di tubi, e il volo scivolante degli aereoplani, la cui elica garrisce al vento come una bandiera e sembra applaudire come una folla entusiasta.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 52 : Last bullet-item in THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

Pleasure , Singing , Sun , Horse