| Artist: | Boccioni, Umberto |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Dynamism of a Cyclist | |
| Date of Work: | 1913 | |
| Nationality: | Italian | |
| Context: | Pre-WWI | |
| Movement: | Italian Futurism | |
| Medium: | oil paint on canvas | |
| Subject: Boccioni expresses the dynamism of a cyclist through this fusion of the figure and its surroundings. The Futurist doctrine of dynamism held that energy runs through matter and man; all objects, people, and masses are potential energy. Nothing is static according to the theory of dynamism; energy is always in motion. The Futurists celebrate speed and the machine; they cannot go fast enough. Here Boccioni is less interested in portraying the cyclist and his machine than he is in portraying speed itself. Style: emphasis is put on movement and action to express dynamism; the Futurists are in revolt against the static. They equate dynamism - energy - matter - light as being all one in the same; thus, all things fuse and move. Their aggressive aesthetic is played out in lines of force that cut through the field. Context: one year before the outbreak of WWI. Italy is going through its own cultural crisis. It is an old country with a long, rich cultural history caught between its glorious past and its modern present. While de Chirico's deserted city squares and train stations haunt one with a sense of inertia and paralysis, as if caught in a time warp, the Futurists launch us forward at a dizzying speed into the modern world. They want to leave the past behind so badly that they are not even content with catching up to the present; they want to push forward to the future. They thus embrace all things modern, celebrating the big city and the machine; in Marinetti's 1909 Futurist Manifesto, they boldly reject the past, urging their followers to burn down the academies and the museums, and they forbid anyone to paint the nude (which they consider a dated subject) for ten years! In order to drag Italy into the modern world and do away with the old, they enthusiastically look forward to war. Trouble is, most of them did not live long enough to have much of a future. Futurism itself proved to be a short-lived movement since many of its members, including Boccioni, were killed early on in the war. | ||
