Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture
Umberto Boccioni
In his writings, Boccioni claims that you cannot separate a subject from its surroundings, that artists must move beyond the influence of classical styles to be successful and that movement must be shown without trajectory. Only by achieving these things, he believes, can art be truly valid and not, as he says, a "lamentable spectacle of barbarism and lumpishness"
Boccioni says: "no one can deny any longer that one object continues at the point another begins, and that everything surrounding our body (bottle, automobile, house, tree, street) intersects it and divides it into sections by forming an arabesque of curves and straight lines." While this may be true, it does not always make for good art. When your canvas or sculptural field becomes too cluttered, the importance of the main subject is lost. For instance in sculpting "Development of a Bottle in Space", Boccioni failed to capture the sinuous curves and start beauty of a bottle, instead we have the suggestion of a bottle and some cut away forms that I assume were bowls or other objects near the bottle.
English: 'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space', br...
Euro-standard circulation Italian 20 cent coin (na...
A strada entra nella casa, (The street enters the ...The emphasis is no longer on the bottle, but on the piece as a whole, as a collection of interesting shapes.
Boccioni goes so far as to state, "One must abolish in sculpture, as in all the arts, the traditionally "sublime" subject matter. " This speaks to my above point; he removes all emphasis from the subject matter, rendering them unimportant to the viewer. The result is often a confusing mélange of color, shape and dimension, which the average person cannot fathom. This can be seen to great effect in his sculpture "The Unique Forms of Continuity in Space", by removing the "sublime subject matter", he created a stunning piece of art...