Thursday 4 September 2014

Gino Severini's Blue Dancer 1912


FUTURISM AND THE VITALIST INHERITANCE
Out of its origin in Greek metaphysical thought, Vitalism favours the fluid state of ‘becoming’ over the state of completion suggested by the notion of ‘being’, it prefers movement to stillness, values action above inaction and enjoys more than structure. In short, Vitalism envisages life in terms of a force that arises from within and produces its own very special type of order. For this reason shades of Vitalist thinking frequently emerge in thinking of artist and this is particularly true when, like the Futurists, they are speaking on behalf of some imagined, new universal order.
As Carlo Carra wrote in 1913: ‘We Futurists seek to identify with the core of things through the power of intuition, so that our Ego will merge with their uniqueness in a complex whole. Thus we depict the planes of a picture like a spheric expansion in space, obtaining the sense of perpetual motion which is innate in every living thing. Only this way can we express the soul and atmosphere of all things.’ – source: ‘How to read Modern Painting’ by Jon Thompson /Thames & Hudson 2006



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