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Futurism: The Radical Art Revolution That Predicted the Modern World
"Most art movements start in a studio. This one started in a ditch outside Milan."
In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti swerved his Fiat into a canal, crawling from the wreckage electrified by a radical brainwave.
In this episode of HENI Talks, art historian Ben Street takes us on a high-velocity journey through the chaotic, brilliant, and dangerous trajectory of Futurism—Europe’s most aggressive avant-garde movement.
Ben Street traces how these radical Italian artists attempted to violently destroy the past to drag the world into the modern age. We look closely at Umberto Boccioni’s frantic attempts to capture raw speed on a still canvas, and Giacomo Balla translating the invisible world of sound waves and chronophotography into oil paint.
But what happens when an obsession with the machine age meets the brutal reality of mechanized warfare? We explore how the early, fiery rebellion of Futurism collided with the rise of fascism, ultimately transforming from a radical political threat into the foundational language of modern graphic design and commercial art—a legacy you can still hold in your hand today with Fortunato Depero’s iconic 1932 Campari Soda bottle.
Time Period:
20th century
Ben Street is an art historian, lecturer and educator based in London. He is the author of numerous books on art for general audiences, including "How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone" (Yale University Press, 2021) and a children's book, "How to be an Art Rebel" (Thames and Hudson, 2021). Ben has worked as an educator and lecturer for many museums, including the National Gallery, Tate and the Royal Academy in London, and MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.y, arts and museum strategy, and digital initiatives, as well as launching her own cultural education projects. Her books include Italian Renaissance Courts: Art, Pleasure and Power (2016) and Michelangelo The Taddei Tondo (2017). Ashley Bickerton (b. 1959, Barbados, West Indies; lives and works in Bali, Indonesia) was an original member of a group of artists known as Neo-Geo, which emerged in New York during the 1980s. In 1993, he left New York for Bali, Indonesia, where his work took on a distinct tropical exoticism often in sharp contrast to his Neo-Geo work, which was an abstract and geometric exploration of consumerism and industrialisation. However, Bickerton's investigation of materiality remained a consistent thread throughout his practice. Often blurring the boundaries between media, genre, and subject (photography and sculpture; portraiture and landscape; realism and fantasy), he challenges the parameters of art making, calling into question the value and significance of the art object itself.
Bickerton received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 and continued his education in the independent studies program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Solo shows of his work have been organized at Newport Street Gallery, London (2017); The FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2017); and Palacete del Embarcadero, Autoridad Portuaria de Santander, Spain (1997).