This Futurist representation of motion in sculpture has its lim-
itations. The eventual development of the motion picture, based on
the rapid sequential projection of fixed images, produced more con-
vincing illusions of movement. And several decades later in sculp-
ture, Alexander Calder (FIG. 35-61) pioneered the development of
kinetic sculpture—with parts that really move. However, in the early
20th century, Boccioni’s sculpture was notable for its ability to cap-
ture the sensation of motion.GINO SEVERINIThe paintingArmored Train (FIG. 35-25)
by Gino Severini(1883–1966) nicely encapsulates the Futurist pro-
gram, both artistically and politically. The artist depicted a high-tech
armored train with its rivets glistening and a huge booming cannon
protruding from the top. Submerged in the bowels of the train, a row
of soldiers train guns at an unseen target. Severini’s painting reflects
the Futurist faith in the cleansing action of war. Not only are the col-
ors predominantly light and bright, but the artist also omitted death
and destruction—the tragic consequences of war—from the image.
This sanitized depiction of war contrasts sharply with Francisco
Goya’s Third of May, 1808 (FIG. 30-13), which also depicts a uniform
row of anonymous soldiers in the act of shooting. Goya, however,
graphically presented the dead and those about to be shot, and the
dark tones of the work cast a dramatic and sobering pall.Armored
Train captures the dynamism and motion central to Futurism.In Cubist fashion, Severini depicted all of the objects, from the
soldiers to the smoke emanating from the cannon, broken into facets
and planes, suggesting action and movement. Once World War I
broke out, the Futurist group began to disintegrate, largely because
so many of them felt compelled (given the Futurist support for the
war) to join the Italian army. Some of them, including Umberto
Boccioni, died in the war. The ideas the Futurists promoted became
integral to the Fascism that emerged in Italy shortly thereafter.Dada
Although the Futurists celebrated World War I and the changes they
hoped it would effect, the mass destruction and chaos that conflict un-
leashed horrified other artists. Humanity had never before witnessed
such wholesale slaughter on so grand a scale over such an extended pe-
riod. Millions died or sustained grievous wounds in great battles. For
example, in 1916, the battle of Verdun (lasting five months) left 500,000
casualties. On another day in 1916, the British lost 60,000 men in the
opening battle of the Somme. The new technology of armaments, bred
of the age of steel, made it a “war of the guns” (as in Severini’s Armored
Train;FIG. 35-25). In the face of massed artillery hurling millions of
tons of high explosives and gas shells and in the sheets of fire from
thousands of machine guns, attack was suicidal, and battle movement
congealed into the stalemate of trench warfare, stretching from the En-
glish Channel almost to Switzerland. The mud, filth, and blood of the
trenches, the pounding and shattering of incessant shell fire, and the
terrible deaths and mutilations were a devastating psychological, as
well as physical, experience for a generation brought up with the doc-
trine of progress and a belief in the fundamental values of civilization.
With the war as a backdrop, many artists contributed to an artis-
tic and literary movement that became known as Dada.This move-
ment emerged, in large part, in reaction to what many of these artists
saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide.
Although Dada began independently in New York and Zurich, it also
emerged in Paris, Berlin, and Cologne, among other cities. Dada was
more a mind-set or attitude than a single identifiable style. As André
Breton (1896–1966), founder of the slightly later Surrealist move-
ment, explained: “Cubism was a school of painting, futurism a politi-
cal movement: DADA is a state of mind.”^12 The Dadaists believed
reason and logic had been responsible for the unmitigated disaster of
global warfare, and they concluded that the only route to salvation
was through political anarchy, the irrational, and the intuitive. Thus,
an element of absurdity is a cornerstone of Dada, even reflected in the
movement’s name. There are many explanations for the choice of
“Dada,” but according to an often repeated anecdote, the Dadaists
chose the word at random from a French-German dictionary. Dada is
French for a child’s hobbyhorse. The word satisfied the Dadaists’ de-
sire for something irrational and nonsensical.
The Dadaists’ pessimism and disgust surfaced in their disdain
for convention and tradition. These artists made a concerted and
sustained attempt to undermine cherished notions and assumptions
about art. Because of this destructive dimension, art historians often
describe Dada as a nihilistic enterprise. Dada’s nihilism and its deri-
sive iconoclasm can be read at random from the Dadaists’ numerous
manifestos and declarations of intent:
Dada knows everything. Dada spits on everything. Dada says
“knowthing,” Dada has no fixed ideas. Dada does not catch flies.
Dada is bitterness laughing at everything that has been accomplished,
sanctified....Dada is never right....No more painters, no more
writers, no more religions, no more royalists, no more anarchists,
no more socialists, no more police, no more airplanes, no more uri-
nary passages....Like everything in life, Dada is useless, everything928 Chapter 35 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1900 TO 194535-25Gino Severini,Armored Train,1915. Oil on canvas, 3 10
2 101 – 8 . Collection of Richard S. Zeisler, New York.
Severini’s glistening armored train with protruding cannon reflects
the Futurist faith in the cleansing action of war. The painting captures
the dynamism and motion central to the Futurist manifesto.1 ft.