Italian Futurism and the First World War by Selena Daly (review)

The 1909 Futurist Manifesto by the Italian poet F.T. Marinetti bristled with provocative and incendiary statements. Museums were to be destroyed, women scorned, and war celebrated as "the world's only hygiene." The artists and writers who signed up to the futurist movement were without doubt radical iconoclasts and anti-feminists. But how enthusiastic were they in reality about the idea and the experience of war? Were such views merely a literary conceit, and did they outlast the period of World War I from 1914 to 1918?

Selena Daly's brilliant and important new book Italian Futurism and the First World War sets out to answer these questions. She demystifies the futurists' attitudes towards war and carefully distinguishes their ideas from the reality both on the streets of Milan and in the trenches of the eastern front. In the process, she answers an important question about the movement's understanding of the relationship between art and politics. Clearly written, cogently argued, and deeply researched, this book – essential reading for anyone interested in futurism and in the relationship between art and the broader social sphere – completely transforms our understanding of the Italian avant-garde movement's relationship to war.

Unlike most studies of futurism, Daly's story begins not with the notorious 1909 manifesto but, rather, with the futurists' role in Italy's "interventionist crisis" of 1914 to 1915. Contrary to repeated claims by Marinetti, his followers, and by recent historians of the movement, the futurists were relatively minor players among the groups clamouring for Italy's intervention in World War I. Marinetti and his group of futurist artists and writers were certainly passionate about the prospect of Italy's declaration of war against the Austro-Hungarian empire, the latter of which occupied territory viewed by many as belonging to Italy. Although they claimed to have effectively united art and politics in favour of this cause, as Daly clearly demonstrates, the futurists' interventionist demonstrations were in fact relatively insignificant and passed almost without notice. This account contrasts markedly with most literature in the field that has continued to assert the central role played by futurism in pushing Italy towards war. Moreover, as Daly shows, those who were sympathetic to the ideas of futurism and their passion for interventionism – including the editors of the avant-garde journal Lacerba based in Florence – were sorely disappointed with Marinetti's efforts in this area and criticized him for being insufficiently political.

Later chapters of the book deal with the futurists' experience of the war itself and the impact of combat on their artistic and political strategies during and immediately after the conflict. Although Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, and others eagerly signed up when war was declared, many futurists avoided or regretted that course of action. Those who did serve reported a variety of emotions once faced with the considerable hardships of battle. Drawing on letters sent home or exchanged between the futurists, Daly documents the pain and suffering that many of the movement's combatants felt. As she stresses nevertheless, by interpreting military conflict as an aesthetic experience, futurism helped its members to intellectualize and thereby cope with the dreadful nature of trench warfare. In addition, the sense of collectivity created by the group mentality underpinning futurism helped sustain many of the writers and artists throughout this difficult experience.

The other effect of the war on the futurist movement was a shift towards a more accessible form of art and literature – dubbed by Marinetti "moderate futurism" – which involved several artistic compromises to ensure the movement's survival during a period of great social and cultural upheaval in Italy's history. As Daly shows, by the end of the war in 1919, the futurist movement had begun to stress more traditional forms of art, theatre, and literature and had definitively separated the project of simply transforming art and culture from the more ambitious, but now abandoned, goal of radically changing society through politics. After World War I, having exited the political sphere...