In Utopia by J. C. Hallman

Author:J. C. Hallman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466873025
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Some Futurists were uncomfortable with Marinetti’s glorification of violence; others complained that he had borrowed the “ingredients” and a “recipe” for Futurism from France. World War I arrived before anyone could stage a revolt. The Futurists, Marinetti included, rushed off to a conflict far more boring than their romantic rhetoric had suggested. Some left the movement. Still, Futurism after the war reached its pinnacle of influence, beginning to suggest utopian visions, a “new Arcadia” with artists at the helm. Some scholars deny that Futurism ever amounted to a true paradise because it did not offer up a plan for an ideal city. In other words, eupsychia was not utopia. The criticism is unfair. The one Futurist who had designed a city—the author of The Manifesto of Futurist Architecture—had been killed in the war, shot in the head in 1916.

Futurism fell into bed early with Mussolini, though Marinetti later denounced fascism. In the midtwenties, Futurism found itself folded into a global porridge of politics and art movements. Marinetti fought to keep it alive and distinct. The emphasis shifted from the automobile’s speed to the perspective of the airplane. All the manifestos were rewritten. Manifesto of Futurist Aeropainting, Manifesto of Aeropoetry, Futurist Manifesto of Aerial Architecture. This last was another stab at a Futurist city, though by then it had flown somewhat beyond the pale:

We Futurist poets, architects and journalists have conceived the great, unitary City as made up of continuous lines to admire from the air, the parallel thrust of Aeroways and Aerocanals fifty meters wide, separated from one another by slender, materially and spiritually supplied habitations that will nourish all the diverse and distinct, never-intersecting speeds. The Aerostrade and the Aerocanale (which will unify rivers realigned in harmony with the airway lines) will transform the configuration of the plains, of the hills, and of the mountains.

By the thirties there were more Futurist manifestos being written than there were works of art inspired by them. Marinetti stayed true to his rhetoric. He again volunteered for military service in World War II. Past sixty, he served two years on the Russian front. He died in 1944.

75

But what of food?

Futurism slid into Italy’s collective repressed memory. When historians returned to it in the sixties, questions nagged. Had futurism all been an elaborate scam? Was Marinetti’s attempt to provoke a perfect world no different from More’s wit, intended to chastise and wound? Was Marinetti utopian at all? And perhaps most important, did he like pasta?

A manifesto of Futurist cooking appeared as early as 1913, but late in Futurism’s evolution Marinetti’s interest in food and utopia returned with vigor. This time he drew on Fourier. He produced a series of articles on Futurist food in 1930, and The Futurist Cookbook was published in 1932. From Fourier, Marinetti borrowed the idea that food could play a role in cultural rejuvenation and a belief that pasta was not all it was cracked up to be.

As a pleasure prophet, Fourier had had a lot to say about food.

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