This text comes from a conference given by Philippe Blanchard on November 17, 2019 in Geneva for the Art Genève association and on September 9, 2022 at Dublin-Trinity College
Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo is an Italian painter, philosopher and composer, born on April 30, 1885 in Portogruaro in the Province of Venice and died on February 4, 1947 at the age of 61 in Cerro di Laveno (Lake Maggiore, Northern Italy). He is considered the father of noise music because of his book "The Art of Noises" published in 1913. Luigi Russolo grew up in a family of musicians: his father, who was a watchmaker by profession, played the organ at Church and his two older brothers are pianist Giovanni and violinist Antonio. He began studying the violin but gave it up when he was sixteen in favor of painting. From 1901, the family moved to Milan to facilitate the entrance to the conservatory of his two brothers and the new activity of photographer of the father. Luigi joins them a little later after finishing his seminary year in Portogruaro. In Milan, he began to show an interest in painting, which he studied as an autodidact, although thanks to a friend he was able to attend classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera. His first years of painting are poorly documented, but we know that on the death of his father in 1907, he became an apprentice in the service of the restorer Crivelli in charge of the renovation of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci and the frescoes of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and that he thus received a solid technical training as a painter.
In 1908, he produced etchings of a symbolist nature, "Symbolism" is a French movement of the end of the 19th century (Gérard de Nerval, Stéphane Mallarmé, Lautréamont, Charles Baudelaire...). The publication in Le Figaro in 1886 of the "Manifesto of Symbolism" by Jean Moréas is considered the birth certificate of this movement which aspires to enter with the hidden meaning of the universe through the intermediary of the symbol, the discovery of another world behind the sensible world. The themes addressed in symbolism: the imaginary, the mystery, the unconscious, the dream. The world around us is indeed only the reflection of a spiritual universe. Symbolist writers therefore dream of reaching a real world (an impalpable, inaccessible, interior world) hidden behind the visible world of things and beings. Between 1908 and 1910, Luigi Russolo made about fifty engravings which were listed by G. Franco Maffina in 1977 in a book “The graphic work of Luigi Russolo”.
In 1909, he presented his works in a collective exhibition entitled "White and Black". It was on this occasion that he met Umberto Boccioni who became his friend, it was even love at first sight and the latter would quickly introduce him to the futurist movement.
Futurism is a disruptive movement that was born in Paris thanks to a founding text published on the front page of Le Figaro on February 20, 1909: the manifesto of futurism written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. This text lays the foundations not for a new way of doing literature or art, but it wants to generate a new way of life in accordance with the new myth of modernity which marks this era from which the echo encountered by this text. Speed, the destruction of museums and libraries, the beauty of the modern world and machines are exalted, Marinetti’s target is Italian society and its culture suffocated under the weight of the past. A new revolutionary being who imposes his will on the world. France is seen by the futurists as the country of modernity and revolutionary fervor. Marinetti will exert his influence on a band of young people determined to assert themselves aggressively on the cultural scene. It is necessary to find the gestures which disturb the well-meaning world and the failure is interpreted as the brilliant demonstration of the mediocrity of the official culture.
"The splendor of the world has been enriched with a new beauty: the beauty of speed". This quote from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti makes it possible to summarize in one sentence the transition between the movement of cubism and the movement of futurism which will be treated in this article.
Indeed, Futurism, born in Italy in 1909, is characterized by a search for the pictorial expression of movement. If the generally geometric forms can sometimes recall those of cubism, there is a disagreement with its static aspect. The search for futurism is based on dynamics and speed. Movement is mainly based on the fascination of machines, of speed, and on the decomposition of movement and its representation.
Futurism, created following the publication of the Manifesto of Futurism by Filippo Marinetti, takes place in a pre-war context where the political and social climate was particularly tense. Many young people want to radically change the world and see the revolution only through the destruction of all the values of the past (museums, libraries, historic cities). Futurism itself will run out of steam with the arrival of fascism in power during the 1920s, but the movement will have allowed the appearance of questioning on the visual apprehension of movement.
Luigi Russolo, more than any other futurist, systematically tried to illustrate in oil paintings the images contained in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (April 1910). The solidity of the fog evokes several passages of the manifesto but this painting could also evoke an imminent death experience or Near Death experience.. As a nocturnal scene, it specifically exemplifies the futuristic delight of electric light that enabled a whole new repertoire of visual sensations and experiences in early 20th-century cities: the doubling of life evoked in the manifesto. The subject, in which atmosphere and mood unite a disparate group of individuals, has a literary equivalent in the so-called unanimist poetry of Paris, with which Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was familiar.
The painting is structured by concentric rings radiating from two different points making tangible the physical sensations of a foggy night. The vague shape of a horse-drawn carriage can be seen in the distance. The attempt to paint an equivalent for physical sensation is characteristic of Russolo. Earlier works, for example, took perfume and music as subjects. These experiences of synaesthesia connect Russolo to the Scapigliatura painters of northern Italy in the late 19th century, who believed that pictorial technique could also convey atmosphere and mood.
It was undoubtedly Marinetti who gave Luigi Russolo the idea of writing the Art of Noises manifesto addressed to his comrade Pratella in charge of the “Music” department of the Futurist movement. Marinetti suggested that Pratella conclude his opera “Aviatore” with a finale of the roar of an airplane engine. It is even possible that the publication of the manifesto has been delayed for a few months. Anyway, it appeared in the form of a 4-page booklet on March 11, 1913.
