224 



The Review of Reviews. 



the hands of a dealer in Paris. The Madonnas at 

 Wellington were presented to the church by the Rev. 

 John Sanford, the vicar, in 1833. One represents the 

 Madonna and Child and the other the Madonna 

 adoring the child. The other works referred to by 

 Mr. Marquand are two medtillions, representing 

 Prudence and Faith. Perhaps they were sample 

 reliefs designed for the Pazzi Chapel, but for some 

 reason never put in place. 



THE FUTURISTS. 



In the Dublin Reviezv for July Rev. T. J. Gerrard 

 writes on the Futurists. To him they illustrate the 

 tendency of liberty without law. the dynamic without 

 the static, the subjective without objecti\e control. 

 After some humorous descriptions of the pictures 

 recently exhibited at the Sackville Gallery in London, 

 he says of the Futurists : — ■ 



They are all Italians. The leader is a poet, Signer Marinelti. 

 He gives inspiration to five painters — Boccioni, Carra and 

 Kussolo of Milan, Balla of Rome, and Severini of Paris. They 

 profess to have a following of- some 32,000 adherents in Italy 

 alone, recruited mostly among University students, artists, men 

 of letters, and musicians. 



THE AN.VRCIIISTS OF ART. 



Force and violence are their ruling thoughts. Thus Marinelti 

 writes : " We shall sing of the love of danger, the habit ol 

 energy and boldness. Literature has hitherto glorified thought- 

 ful immobility, ecstasy and sleep ; we shall extol aggressive 

 movement, feverish insomnia, the double quick step, the somer- 

 sault, the box on the ear, the fisticuff. There is no more beauty 

 except in strife. We wish to glorify War — the only health- 

 giver of the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm 

 of the Anarchist, the beautiful Ideas that kill, the contempt for 

 women. We wish to destroy the museums, the libraries, to 

 fight against mor.alism, feminism .and all opportunistic and 

 utilitarian meannesses. We shall sing of the great crowds in 

 the excitement of labour, pleasure or rebellion ; of the multi- 

 coloured and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capital 

 cities ; of the nocturnal vibration of arsenaU and worksliops 

 Lcnealh their violent electric moons ; of factories suspended 

 from the clouds by their strings of smoke ; of bridges leaping 

 tike gymnasts over the dkabolical cutlery ot' sun-bathed rivers ; 

 of broad-chested locomotives prancing on rails, like huge steel 

 horses bridled with long tubes. ..." All that is borrowed 

 from Nietzsche, except the mixed metaphors, which are the 

 poet's own. 



" SPACE NO LONGER EXISTS." 



The Futurist, says the writer, looks upon the name 

 of madman as a title ol honour ; — ■ 



Let me quote .again from one of their manifestoes. "All," 

 they say, " is conventional in art. Nothing is absolute in paint- 

 ing. What was truth for the painters of yesterday is but a 

 falsehood to-day. We declare, for instance, that a portrait 

 must not be like the sitter, and that the painter carries in him- 

 self the landscapes which he would fix upon his canvas. To 

 paint a liuman figure you must not paint it ; you must render 

 the whole of its surrounding atmosphere. Space no longer 

 exists : the street pavement, soaked by rain beneath the glare of 

 electric lamps, becomes immensely deep and gapes to the 

 \ery centre of the earth. Thousands of miles divide us from 

 the sun ; yet the house in front of us fits into the solar disc. 

 Who can still believe in the opacity of bodies, since our 

 sharpened and multiplied sensitiveness has already penetrated 

 the obscure manifestations of the medium ? Why should wc 



forget in our creations the doubled power of our sight, capable 

 of giving results analogous to those of the X-rays? . . . Our 

 renovated consciousness does not permit us to look upon man as 

 the centre of universal life. The suffering of a man is of the 

 same interest to us as the suffering of an electric lamp, which, 

 with spasmodic starts, shrieks out the most heart-rending expres- 

 sions of colour." 



Nothing is immoral in our eyes, says the Futurist 

 manifesto. 



A HU.MOROfS CRITICISM. 



The writer's own view is humorously expressed ; — - 

 If the Futurists were really true to lliemselves .each \^■ould 

 put himself into a category l>y himself. One would be a cross 

 bet\\cen a decadent kangaroo and a recessive split infinitive. 

 Another would be Friday afternoon developing into a pair of 

 trousers. A third might be the shiver left behind after the im- 

 pact between a snark and a phenomenon. And so on. The 

 dislocation between every idea and its corresponding reality i> 

 indeed an explicit aim of the Futurists. 



All childien occasionally have that feeling of tragic fury at 

 being under control, at being mere children. The Futurists 

 have the same rage at being mere cica/iira. They will not 

 seek the power of secondary creation from that Pus\er which 

 alone has the primary and essential creation. They will owe 

 nothing either to man or to God, no inheritance from tlie past. 

 1 hey will be as gods creating out of themselves alone. The 

 calm observer sees in them but a handful of boys, inflamed by 

 slieer passion, smashi g themselves against the one lasting and 

 unbreakable reality, the reality of the spirit 



Ulk.\ 



llieriiii. 



In— CubusI 

 The cubist at work, How the Chamber of Terror aros». 



