The Italian Futurists were one group of artists
who were doing incredible things in 1913,
thinking about art as something that
had to be for the new century.
Speed, noise, machinery, and the city
became a key part of all of their paintings.
“Dynamism of a Soccer Player”
challenges any viewer to
actually find a soccer player
– two arms, two legs, a face.
No way!
Colors and shapes moving, running, kicking.
Your eye is brought to the next place
or to a place further down.
And there is only one way when you look at a yellow form
or a red form, that you can see that form
which is in relation to the colors circulating around it.
The brushstrokes are extremely visible.
They’re tangible.
It’s material.
Photography, which was little more
than half a century old,
had an enormous impact.
Eadweard Muybridge did photography in sequence
bop bop bop bop bop.
They wanted to do that in painting too.
The Futurists believed that part of being modern
was not only painting modern things,
but creating a ruckus.
When their pictures appeared at exhibitions,
they issued manifestos, they had lectures,
they had performances that absolutely provoked
the people in attendance to realizing,
"Wow! Even if we didn't understand the picture,
what we're doing is being a witness to something
that is upsetting centuries of tradition.”
Sub-titling done by the 8th-graders of ISJA Middle School, Saint-Maximin, France