The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cubists And Post-impressionism, by Arthur Jerome Eddy.

M. Duchamp says in effect something like this: “If you paint a girl coming downstairs, on any one step you will not show her moving. If you paint a girl on every step, like Burne-Jones with the ‘Golden Stair’ you have a crowd and still no movement. But if you get the forms down to simplest and most essential, just swaying shoulders and hip and knee, bent head and springy sole—and then show them on every step and between all the steps, passing and always passing one into the next, you give the sense of movement, as with a run of arpeggios on the harp or a cadenza on the violin. You and your friends don’t feel the movement—too bad, my friends and I do.” And pure movement is what, after all, here was sought.

Pure movement, it will hardly be questioned, these men can give.

Picabia makes the lines in his “Dance at the Spring” leap and swing and flicker like a fiddler’s bow. If he and others want, when they choose, to abandon the last pretense of representation and convey directly to you the way they feel mass and motion, as music conveys inner experience always, who is to stop them?

Futurism had its beginning in Italy a few years ago. The first exhibition in Paris was held in February, 1912. One of its fundamental notions in painting is a certain theory regarding the painting of motion. It is that in order rightly, scientifically, to indicate motion on a canvas it is not sufficient to paint the figure of a man in an attitude of walking, but a series of more or less clearly outlined figures must be shown overlapping, a sort of cinematograph effect; very much as every painter shows a blur of spokes to indicate a wheel turning, if an individual is in motion there must be a blur of many overlapping individuals. (See the half-tone of the girl with the dog.)

The theory is interesting, it is based on recognized optical conditions, and no doubt the experiments will have their value. Some very interesting results have been obtained in photography already.

The program of the Futurists is, however, far more ambitious than the mere painting of motion effects. They have issued the following formal “Manifestoes”:

6. “Manifesto of the Technic of Futurist Literature,” May, 1912. Supplement to same, August, 1912.

And every few months new declarations of faith are issued in Milan, each, if possible, more violent and extravagant than its forerunner.

If the public looked upon the Cubist pictures as “crazy,” what would it think of these manifestoes if printed in English and scattered broadcast?

So many madmen and visionaries have influenced the world by their utterances that we must not turn a deaf ear.

The Cubists, Orphists, and other extreme moderns all reason from the past; the Futurists would break with the past entirely—as if it were possible!

All who do not agree with them are Pass-ists, and every form of art and literature up to Futurism belongs to Pass-ism, and is therefore condemned.

There is much in Futurism that is repellant, just as there is much in Anarchism that is repellant.

When men push their opposition to established order to extremes, their hatred of the traditional and conventional is such they indulge in wild and foolish excesses; they even defy law and order and decency, and require curbing.

The unprejudiced reader will find a great deal that is suggestive in some of these Futurist declarations mixed with much that is philosophically and ethically unsound.

Take, for instance, some of the propositions regarding the technic of the literature of the future:

1. Use only the infinite form of the verb, because only the infinite mood gives the sense of the continuity of life.

2. Abolish the use of the adjective so that the noun standing alone may speak for itself with all its force. The adjective implies modification, an arrest of judgment, meditation, and is, therefore, opposed to the human vision dynamic, to the force and energetic flow of human thought.

3. Abolish the adverb, which is a superfluous refinement, a fastidious hampering of human expression.

4. New punctuation: Adjectives and adverbs and conjunctive phrases being suppressed, punctuation goes with them naturally, in the varied continuity of a living style which creates itself without the use of absurd commas and periods. To accentuate certain movements and indicate their directions, certain mathematical and unusual signs will be used.

5. Abolish the “I” from literature, that is to say, psychology; replace the “I,” the ego, by the matter, the essence of which must be appreciated by intuitions. Heretofore the matter, the real substance of a book or a poem, has been obscured by the intervention of the ego of the writer, by the persistent “I” of the author, who is too much pre-occupied with himself and filled with prejudices and conceits in his own supreme wisdom. In short, writers use the subjects of the works as vehicles to exploit themselves.

(Here the Futurists certainly put their finger on one of the weak spots in literature.)

6. Revolution in typographical appearance: Suppress the ornaments, fancy initials, &c., &c., of the presented printed page, which impede rather than assist the natural flow of expression. “We will employ on the same page three or four inks of different colors, and twenty different characters, if necessary: for example, italics to express rapid sensations; capitals for violent; &c., &c. New conception of the graphic printed page.”

All of which sounds wildly extravagant, but in sum and substance it simply means the death of the, let us say, Henry James style and the apotheosis of the front page of the modern sensational journal.

And is it not true that the painfully involved and boresome style of Henry James—the adjectival and adverbial style, the style of endless qualifications, the assertion and amplification of the “ego” style—is rapidly becoming obsolete in fiction as it has long been obsolete in American journalism?

And is it not true that the terse, the substantive, the journalistic style, together with the printed page in many colors and many types, is gaining vogue?

In even the matter of punctuation the painstaking use of the comma and the semicolon has yielded to the free use of the dash. Only a short time ago there appeared a lamentation by a well-known writer over the use of the dash in dialogue. He counted an unbelievable number on one page of a popular magazine, each of which, he thought, should have been replaced by one of the more orthodox signs.

But the orthodox signs are too slow. Modern conversation does not move in studied phrases and rounded periods; its sign is the dash, because the dash either breaks the thought abruptly or carries it over into the words of the next speaker.

noted that there is coming over our literature a profound, a radical change, a change in the direction of terser, more forcible expression; a change in the direction of the elimination of superfluous words, of condensation, to the end that the imagination and intelligence of the reader will be called more and more into play.

It is conceivable that the reading public may become so intelligent and so keenly sensitive that one word will suffice to convey a wealth of information or suggestion where a page is now necessary.

Certain it is, if mankind is progressing at all, it is progressing in that direction.

A few years ago no American publisher would risk the printing of a play; now every play of any merit and many of no merit are issued in book form.

The novelist devotes two-thirds of his book to descriptions of persons and places, and most of the remaining third to banal psychological analysis and comment. He leaves little to the imagination of the reader, who is told the color of the heroine’s eyes and hair, the number of her dimples, the length of her smile, the shape of her teeth, her make of face powder, together with endless references to her hats, gowns, shoes, parasols, etc., etc.

Usually the novelist has some young woman acquaintance in mind, and he literally forces the woman he likes upon the reader, who may be in love with an entirely different type, and who, if left to himself, would find the girl he likes in the pages of the story.

The dramatist does nothing of the kind. “Mary Smith, age about twenty,” suffices for him. Shakespeare gives no more than the name.

As for description of places, “a room,” or “an office,” “a wood,” “a garden,” answers every purpose.

Managers and players have no trouble in building up both scenes and characters; the less “directions,” the more room for individual initiative.

Nor is the reader of a play troubled by entire absence of description and “directions.” His imagination supplements the dramatist’s, and he creates heroes and heroines to please himself.

That psychological analysis is not only not essential to the psychological novel, but positively detrimental, is demonstrated by the entire absence of such analysis in so profound a psychological study as Hamlet. Paul Bourget is as obsolete as Henry James.

Bernard Shaw is the one conspicuous reactionary. He still exploits the ego, and writes as if his readers were fools—perhaps they are.

The popularity of the cinematograph lies not in the cheapness of the entertainment, nor in its novelty, which wore off long ago, but in the fact that it is without words and each onlooker enjoys his own interpretation; from child to old man, every one in the audience is his own playwright, supplying his own dialogue as the scenes flicker on the curtain.

The best of modern plays leave much to the imagination of the audience. Words and bits of business absolutely necessary thirty years ago are considered childishly obvious nowadays, as is amply demonstrated in revivals of old plays.

Apparently the development is toward more action and less dialogue—more cinematograph, fewer words.

Scenery will become less and less obvious—save, of course, where it is intended to be of first importance. In the theater of the future there will be less and less on the stage to interfere with the play—of the spectator’s imagination.

There is a precisely parallel tendency in print—more action, fewer words; more suggestion, less description.

The future novel will leave more and more to be supplied by the reader. Paragraphs, pages, whole chapters now deemed essential, will be omitted.

In books such as histories, philosophical works, scientific treatises, &c., &c., the skill and art of the printer will be exhausted to make the page not only attractive but expressive—readable at a glance, instead of, as now, to make the volumes as forbidding as possible.

The much-despised “yellow journal” of America has taught a valuable lesson in the art of emphasis, and its effect is seen not only in the make-up of newspapers but of periodicals, and will be felt in the make-up of books.[64]

In America the art of advertising has far outstripped the art of literature. The advertising pages of our periodicals are often more interesting and always more alive than the literary.

A magazine devotes pages to an article or a story every line of which betrays the writer’s evident desire to write as many words as possible. In the advertising pages, to every square inch, the minds not of one but of three or four experts have been concentrated upon the attempt to express an idea in as few words as possible and in such a manner it will stand out and be read with a minimum of trouble.

Why should not stories be told that way? Why should not all literature be written and printed that way?

We find fault with our plays, our poetry, our fiction, our serious literature; we complain people prefer the flashy periodical; well the word flashy is doubly descriptive—it is commonly used to describe the quality but it also measures time.

Meanwhile most of us underrate the intelligence of our readers and use more words than are necessary to carry our meanings.

The Futurists themselves use an abundance of words in advocating their cause, though their examples of Futurist literature contain many lines and pages that are written in strict accordance with their theories.

Marinette says in so many words, “Philosophy, science, politics, journalism, must still make use of the conventional syntax and punctuation; I am myself obliged to use them to explain my ideas.”

March 8, 1910, in the Theatre Chiarella, at Turin, before an audience of three thousand, the Futurist painters launched their first declaration of faith, “which contained,” to follow their own words, “all our profound disgusts and hatreds, our revolts against vulgarity, against academic and pedantic mediocrity, against the fanatic cult of what is antique.”

1. Our desire for the truth no longer contents itself with form and color as heretofore understood.

2. What we wish to reproduce on the canvas is not an instant or a moment of immobility of the universal force that surrounds us, but the sensation of that force itself.

3. As a matter of fact everything moves, everything runs, everything transforms rapidly. A profile is never immobile before us, but it appears and disappears without ceasing.

Given the fact of the momentary persistence of the image on the retina, objects in movement multiply, change form and follow like vibrations in space. A running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular.

4. Nothing is absolute in painting. That which was a truth for the painters of yesterday, is a lie for those of today. We declare, for example, that a portrait should not resemble its sitter, and that the painter carries in his own imagination the landscape he wishes to place upon the canvas.

5. To paint the human figure it is not necessary to paint the figure but simply to give its envelopment. Space does not exist. Millions of miles separate us from the sun, yet that is no reason why the house before us should not be encased in the solar disk. In our work we can secure effects similar to those of the X-ray. Opacity does not exist.

They paint all sides of an object as if they saw through it. They will paint a platter on a table and the part of the table covered by the platter; they will paint the entire collar about the neck so that it is visible through the neck. They ignore not only the ordinary conceptions of space, but time does not exist for them. Where in ordinary painting the box of bonbons that is passed at a baptism may be painted closed on a table, the Futurist shows what is inside the box, also the people assembled to whom the bonbons are given, and the infant to be baptized, and perhaps the marriage of the father and mother, the carriages outside the church, etc., etc.[65]

The sixteen persons about us in a moving omnibus are in turn and at the same time, one, ten, four, three; they are immobile and yet move; they go, come, bounding along the street, suddenly lost in the sun, then return seated before you, like so many symbols persistent of universal vibration.

How often it happens that upon the cheek of the person with whom we are talking we see the horse that passes far away at the end of the street. Our bodies become parts of the seat upon which we rest and the seat becomes part of us. The omnibus merges in the houses that it passes, and the houses mix with the bus and become part of it.

6. The construction of pictures up to this time has been stupidly traditional.

Painters have always shown things and persons before us. We place the spectator in the midst of the picture.

Heretofore we have looked at pictures; it is the idea of the Futurist that we should look through them, that the pictures should give us new visions of life and things, new sensations, new emotions.

We declare:

That one should hate every form of imitation and glorify every form of originality.

That it is necessary to revolt against the tyranny of the words “harmony” and “good taste,” expressions too elastic and with which one might easily condemn the works of Rembrandt, Goya, and Rodin.

That art critics are useless and detrimental.

That it is necessary to brush aside all the subjects already used, in order to adequately express our turbulent life of steel, of pride, of feverish rapidity.

That the name madmen applied to all innovators shall be considered a title of honor.

That the universal force must be shown in painting as a sensation dynamic.

Above all, sincerity and purity are required in the portrayal of nature.

That movement and light destroy the materiality of objects.

We are opposed to the use of those bituminous colors by which it is attempted to secure the effect of time on modern pictures.

We are opposed to the superficial and elementary archaism based on the flat tints and linear manner of the Egyptians, which makes painting puerile and grotesque.

We are opposed to the false modernism of the Secessionists and Independents who have built up new “schools” as pontifical as the old.

The nude in painting is as nauseous as adultery in literature.

To explain this last article: There is nothing immoral in our eyes, it is the monotony of nudity that we fight against. Painters possessed of the desire to display on canvas the bodies of the women with whom they are in love have transformed picture exhibitions into galleries of portraits of disreputables. We demand for the next ten years the absolute suppression of the nude in painting.

The first exhibition of Futurist paintings in London was at the Sackville Gallery in March, 1912.

The painters printed by way of preface to the little catalogue a statement of their beliefs and aims. From this statement the following paragraphs are taken:

“While we admire the heroism of these painters of great worth, who have displayed a laudable contempt for artistic commercialism and a powerful hatred of academism, we feel ourselves and we declare ourselves to be absolutely opposed to their art.

“They obstinately continue to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all the static aspects of nature; they worship the traditionalism of Poussin, of Ingres, of Corot, ageing and petrifying their art with an obstinate attachment to the past, which to our eyes remains totally incomprehensible.

“We, on the contrary, with points of view pertaining essentially to the future, seek for a style of motion, a thing which has never been attempted before us.

“All the truths learnt in the schools or in the studios are abolished for us. Our hands are free enough and pure enough to start everything afresh.

“It is indisputable that several of the aesthetic declarations of our French comrades display a sort of masked academism.

“Is it not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject, in painting, is of perfectly insignificant value?

“We declare, on the contrary, that there can be no modern painting without the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation, and none can contradict us when we state that painting and sensation are two inseparable words.

“If our pictures are futurist, it is because they are the result of absolutely futurist conceptions, ethical, aesthetic, political, and social.

“To paint from the posing model is an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical, or cubic forms.

“To lend an allegorical significance to an ordinary nude figure, deriving the meaning of the picture from the objects held by the model or from those which are arranged about him, is to our mind the evidence of a traditional and academic mentality.

“While we repudiate impressionism, we emphatically condemn the present reaction which, in order to kill impressionism, brings back painting to old academic forms.

“Nothing is more absurd than to fight it by adopting the pictural laws which preceded it.

“The points of contact which the quest of style may have with the so-called classic art do not concern us.

“Others will seek, and will, no doubt, discover, these analogies which in any case cannot be looked upon as a return to methods, conceptions, and values transmitted by classical painting.

“We see no difference between one of those nude figures commonly called artistic and an anatomical plate. There is, on the other hand, an enormous difference between one of these nude figures and our futurist conception of the human body.

“Perspective, such as it is understood by the majority of painters, has for us the very same value which it lends to an engineer’s design.

“The simultaneousness of states of mind in the work of art: that is the intoxicating aim of our art.

“Let us explain again by examples. In painting a person on a balcony, seen from inside the room, we do not limit the scene to what the square frame of the window renders visible; but we try to render the sum total of visual sensations which the person on the balcony has experienced; the sun-bathed throng in the street, the double row of houses which stretch to right and left, the beflowered balconies, etc. This implies the simultaneousness of the ambient, and, therefore, the dislocation and dismemberment of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, freed from accepted logic, and independent from one another.

“In order to make the spectator live in the center of the picture, as we express it in our manifesto, the picture must be the synthesis of what one remembers and of what one sees.

“You must render the invisible which stirs and lives beyond intervening obstacles, what we have on the right, on the left, and behind us, and not merely the small square of life artificially compressed, as it were, by the wings of a stage.”

“We have declared in our manifesto that what must be rendered is the dynamic sensation, that is to say, the particular rhythm of each object, its inclination, its movement, or, to put it more exactly, its interior force.

“It is usual to consider the human being in its different aspects of motion or stillness, of joyous excitement or grave melancholy.

“What is overlooked is that all inanimate objects display, by their lines, calmness or frenzy, sadness or gaiety. These various tendencies lend to the lines of which they are formed a sense and character of weighty stability or of aerial lightness.

“Every object reveals by its lines how it would resolve itself were it to follow the tendencies of its forces.

“This decomposition is not governed by fixed laws but it varies according to the characteristic personality of the object and the emotions of the onlooker.

“Furthermore, every object influences its neighbour, not by reflections of light (the foundation of impressionistic primitivism), but by a real competition of lines and by real conflicts of planes, following the emotional law which governs the picture (the foundation of futurist primitivism).

“With the desire to intensify the aesthetic emotions by blending, so to speak, the painted canvas with the soul of the spectator, we have declared that the latter ‘must in future be placed in the center of the picture.’

“We may further explain our idea by a comparison drawn from the evolution of music.

“Not only have we radically abandoned the motive fully developed according to its determined and, therefore, artificial equilibrium, but we suddenly and purposely intersect each motive with one or more other motives of which we never give the full development but merely the initial, central, or final notes.

“As you see, there is with us not merely variety, but chaos and clashing of rhythms, totally opposed to one another, which we nevertheless assemble into a new harmony.

“One may remark, also, in our pictures spots, lines, zones of colour which do not correspond to any reality, but which, in accordance with a law of our interior mathematics, musically prepare and enhance the emotion of the spectator.

“We thus create a sort of emotive ambience, seeking by intuition the sympathies and the links which exist between

the exterior (concrete) scene and the interior (abstract) emotion. Those lines, those spots, those zones of colour, apparently illogical and meaningless, are the mysterious keys to our pictures.

“Conclusion: Our futurist painting embodies three new conceptions of painting:

“1. That which solves the question of volumes in a picture, as opposed to the liquefaction of objects favoured by the vision of the impressionists.

“2. That which leads us to translate objects according to the force lines which distinguish them, and by which is obtained an absolutely new power of objective poetry.

“3. That (the natural consequence of the other two) which would give the emotional ambience of a picture, the synthesis of the various abstract rhythms of every object, from which there springs a fount of pictural lyricism hitherto unknown.”

“Leave-taking,” by Boccioni: “In the midst of the confusion of departure, the mingled concrete and abstract sensations are translated into force lines and rhythms in quasi-musical harmony: mark the undulating lines and the chords made up of the combinations of figures and objects. The prominent elements, such as the number of the engine, its profile shown in the upper part of the picture, its wind-cutting forepart in the center, symbolical of parting, indicate the features of the scene that remain indelibly impressed upon the mind.”

“Rebellion,” by Russolo: “The collision of two forces, that of the revolutionary element made up of enthusiasm and red lyricism against the force of inertia and reactionary resistance of tradition. The angles are the vibratory waves of the former force in motion. The perspective of the houses is destroyed just as a boxer is bent double by receiving a blow in the wind.”

The theory of the Futurists is vividly illustrated in the following note to a picture called “The Street Enters the House.” “The dominating sensation is that which one would experience on opening a window: all life, the noises of the street rush in at the same time as the movement and reality of the objects outside. The painter does not limit himself to what he sees in the square frame of the window as would a simple photographer, but he also reproduces what he would see by looking out on every side from the balcony.”

To the layman this attitude is almost incomprehensible. For instance, the Cubist, Pierre Dumont, says of his picture, “The Cathedral at Rouen”:

One must not expect to find in this picture an exact representation of the cathedral at Rouen, but rather my idea, my personal perception, of this cathedral as I see it.

In painting my picture I did not paint from a fixed point and always from the same point, but I studied the cathedral and surroundings from all points of view and obtained a personal conception of it, which I reproduced on my canvas.

I only included the details which struck me most forcibly, and thought it necessary to break up the monotony of the roofs in the first plan by one of the most beautiful details of the cathedral—a statue of a saint, who is certainly not in his right place as far as the eye is concerned, but does really occupy the place which he occupies in my conception of what was before me.

That a painter should deliberately attempt to show on one canvas features of all sides of a building, strikes the layman—and many artists—as a “crazy” attempt to achieve the impossible; but it is not impossible, as a moment’s reflection shows.

It is, of course, easy to show all sides and all details of a building, interior and exterior, on one sheet or canvas, by drawing or painting, one after another, in panorama effect—that is done in every architect’s drawing-room.

It is also equally possible to superimpose these detached drawings one over the other and see or feel the outlines through. That is, the drawing or photograph of the exterior of a cathedral may be so made as to show in outline or shadowy substance the altar within.

Illustrations along these lines are common in fiction—ghostly, shadowy, mystical effects, effects secured only by treating stones and walls and human beings as semi-transparent.

In this way every feature of a cathedral that strikes the artist, whether on the outside or inside, whether a feature so permanent as a statue or so fleeting as a wedding ceremony, may be indicated in his picture. By suppressing every detail save the most striking, what purports to be the picture of a cathedral may appear to be fragments of spires, bronze doors, statues, altars, lights, processions, the brilliant color of a priest’s robe, the white note of a bridal veil.

Another man painting his impressions of the same subject might catch glimpses of entirely different features.

If we can in our mind’s eye see what is behind an object; if, for instance, we can picture to ourselves clearly the children playing in the yard back of a house, why may not the painter, if he chooses, suggest to us in his picture of the house the vital feature of the children in the rear?

The feat is a seemingly impossible one. Perhaps neither the Cubists nor the Futurists have accomplished it successfully; but because it is difficult is no reason why the attempt should not be made.

Theoretically there is nothing to be said against pictures which show what both the eye and the mind’s eye of the artist see.

The works of the ultra-modern men can be understood only by the aid of the imagination, by the aid of the mind’s eye to see through, and about and into things, to see the inner conditions, happenings, and significance of things.

Stated in other terms, the extreme modern is no longer content to paint what is before his eyes at a given moment and from a given point of view; he is no longer content to act the part of a camera, making reproductions of what is in front of it. He demands the freedom to walk around his subject, fly over it, enter it, find out all about it, and then record on canvas the sum and substance of his observations and reflections. The result may not look like a cathedral, but if done by a genius it may give a fine impression of certain salient features of the building, inside and out, and also a vivid impression of some of its great ceremonies. Why not try to paint the power as well as the proportions?

If the American public found the work of Lehmbruck and Brancusi queer, what would it think of the Futurist sculpture?

The two female figures exhibited by Lehmbruck were simply decorative elongations of natural forms. In technic they were quite conventional. Their modelling was along purely classical lines, far more severely classical than much of the realistic work of Rodin.

The heads by Brancusi were idealistic in the extreme; the sculptor carried his theories of mass and form so far he deliberately lost all resemblance to actuality. He uses his subjects as motives rather than models. In this respect he is not unlike—though more extreme than—the great Japanese and Chinese artists, who use life and nature arbitrarily to secure the results they desire.

Brancusi—so simple, so severe in its beauty, it might have come from the Orient.

Of this head and two other pieces of sculpture exhibited by Brancusi in July, 1913, at the Allied Artists’ Exhibition in London, Roger Fry said in “The Nation,” August 2:

Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures have not, I think, been seen before in England. His three heads are the most remarkable works of sculpture at the Albert Hall. Two are in brass and one in stone. They show a technical skill which is almost disquieting, a skill which might lead him, in default of any overpowering imaginative purpose, to become a brilliant pasticheur. But it seemed to me there was evidence of passionate conviction; that the simplification of forms was no mere exercise in plastic design, but a real interpretation of the rhythm of life. These abstract vivid forms into which he compresses his heads give a vivid presentment of character; they are not empty abstractions, but filled with a content which has been clearly, and passionately apprehended.

Futurist sculpture, like Futurist painting, starts with a fundamental departure.

All sculpture, classic as well as Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic, deals with an object or a group of objects. It models and reproduces them detached from their environment.

Futurist sculpture seeks to reproduce a figure or an object attached to and a part of its fleeting and flowing surroundings, its atmosphere, its medium.

It goes further; it seeks to convey not only the impression of the truth that a figure is a part of its environment, but that its atmosphere and environment flows through the figure and the figure through the environment, that nothing is segregated but everything fusing.

The philosophical thought is old, as old as the earliest Greek philosophy, but the attempt to express the thought in stone, wood, bronze, is new.

We may feel sure the attempt is futile, that it cannot succeed, but our scepticism is no reason why a sculptor in his enthusiasm should not make the attempt.

In June and July last a Futurist sculptor, Boccioni, exhibited some of his work in Paris.

One example, “Head—Houses—Light,” was literally a conglomerate of a human bust of heroic size, with hands crossed in front, and the following accessories:

On the top of the head the fronts of several small houses, with doors, windows, and all details just as the sculptor saw the houses many blocks back of his model. The casual observer would be completely mystified on seeing several house fronts start out of the head of a bust; but when one understands that it is a fundamental belief of the Futurists that all that is within the vision, actual or imagined, of painter or sculptor is a part of the picture or bust, the reason why of the houses is plain.

From one shoulder of the figure starts about eighteen inches of a wooden railing and iron grill work, part of a balcony, just as the sculptor glimpsed it a block or so down the street.

A little to the back of the shoulder is a slightly inclined level surface about a foot square; on this surface is the toy figure, an inch high, of a woman in street costume. The figure was probably bought at a toy store, just as the wooden railing and iron grill work might have been picked up at any second-hand shop. The little figure of the woman and the level surface represent some open square that—judging from the diminutive size of the figure—must have been a long distance away, far enough away for a human being to appear no taller than an inch.

face was modelled in downward flowing lines and painted yellow to represent rays of strong sunlight.

The figure was ugly in the extreme; the lines were ugly, the coloring ugly, the technic clumsy; but as an illustration of a theory the work was both curious and interesting.

1. Sculpture must give life to objects by making sensible their extension in space, for no one today can deny that an object continues to where another object begins, and that all things that are about us—automobile, house, tree, street, etc., etc.—traverse our bodies, dividing us into planes and sections, forming an arabesque of curved and straight lines.

This traversing of each object by the planes occupied by all other objects is called in the transcendental terminology of Futurism, “Compenetration of planes.” (Here Futurist and Cubist again meet.)

2. A Futurist sculptural composition will contain in itself the marvellous mathematical and geometrical elements of modern objects. These objects will not be placed close to the statue, like so many detached explanatory attributes or decorative elements, but according to the laws of the new conception of harmony they will be embodied in the muscular lines of the body. For example, we may see the wheel of an automobile starting out of the body of a chauffeur, the line of a table traversing the head of a man who is reading, and the pages of his book may project through his chest.

3. The abolition complete of the line finished and the statue isolated! Throw open the figure like a window and make part of it the surroundings in which it exists. The sidewalk may extend to your table; your head may traverse and include the street, and at the same moment your lamp may unite house to house by its searching rays.

The entire world precipitates itself upon us, amalgamates with us, creating a harmony that will not be controlled except by creative intuition.

4. Do not be afraid to go outside one art and receive assistance from others. There is no such thing as painting alone, sculpture alone, music alone, poetry alone; there is simply creation.

Hence if a particular sculptural composition needs some special movement to augment or contrast the rhythm of the ensemble, there is no reason why one should not make use of a small motor to secure the effect.

5. It is necessary to get rid of the idea, purely literary and traditional, that marble and bronze are the materials that must be used in great sculpture. The sculptor may use twenty materials in one work if required to express his idea. He may use glass, wood, cement, cardboard, leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights, etc.

6. It is only by choosing subjects absolutely modern that one can discover new motives and ideas.

7. It is necessary to abandon the nude and the traditional conception of the statue and the monument.

8. What the Futurist sculpture creates is, in a way, the ideal bridge that unites the infinite plastic exterior with the infinite plastic interior. That is why the objects never finish, but they intersect with endless combinations both sympathetic and averse. The feeling of the spectator is at the center of the work, not aloof and outside, as with traditional sculpture.

The obvious objection to the attempt of the Futurist sculptor to include in his composition an object and its environment