Luigi Russolo, Futurist

by Luciano Chessa

  79. Balla and Depero signed themselves “Futurist Abstract Painters” in the 1915 manifesto “Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo”; see the facsimile in Fagiolo dell’Arco, Balla: Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo: Scultura teatro cinema arredamento abbigliamento poesia visiva (Rome: Bulzoni, 1968).

  80. Zanovello mentions that Russolo’s library included books by Evola; see Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 77. The first philosophical works by Evola, which were also known to Ginna, were published beginning in 1927 by the same Milanese publisher, Bocca, with whom Russolo in 1938 published the first edition of his Al di là della materia. In 1919 works by Russolo and Evola were presented side by side at the Grande Esposizione nazionale futurista, which opened in Milan at the ex–Caffe Cova before going on tour to Genoa and Florence. It is not known whether Russolo and Evola met on that occasion.

  81. Calvesi, Fusione, 156, 339n126.

  82. Severini coined the term “absolute realism,” according to Calvesi, Fusione, 144.

  83. Calvesi recalls that, just as Bergson did, Boccioni believed that matter becomes life through action. Through the animation of matter and the identification of matter with energy, the futurists “point to the image of the ‘absolute reality,’ ‘superreality,’ the integrated reality of time and space, object and subject, external and internal data.” Calvesi, Fusione, 145.

  84. Soffici, “Al di là della pittura,” Mediterraneo Futurista 4 (1938); cited in Calvesi, Fusione, 145.

  85. Archivi del futurismo, 1:588.

  86. This article is reprinted in Umbro Apollonio, Futurismo (Milan: Mazzotta, 1970), 168–71.

  87. The original article is found in Noi (Numero speciale, I, II serie, n. 6/9, 1924), 12. Noi is available in facsimile (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1981).

  88. Noi (May 1923): 2.

  89. Noi (June–July 1923): 3.

  90. Enrico Prampolini, “The Aesthetic of the Machine and Mechanical Introspection in Art,” Little Review 11 (1926): 10.

  91. Viazzi, ed., I poeti del futurismo, 113.

  92. Numerous examples could be cited; I will discuss the two poems dedicated to Russolo in chapters 9 and 11.

  93. Viazzi, ed., I poeti del futurismo, 121–22. The reference to the lyre as a machine was already in Buzzi’s Inno alla Poesia nuova; cf. Viazzi, ed., I poeti del futurismo, 122, with the anthology Marinetti, ed., I poeti futuristi (Milan: Edizioni Futuriste di “Poesia,” 1912), 107; henceforth Marinetti, ed., I poeti futuristi. Buzzi often read Inno alla poesia nuova during the many serate futuriste (futurist evenings). If the connection between these lines and Russolo’s musical research could be confirmed, one could conclude that Russolo was in 1912 longing for an occult music of machines. Indeed, my analysis of Russolo’s painting La musica confirms this hypothesis (see chapter 4).

  94. In Russolo’s compositions, the spirali di rumori, he refurbished the notion of harmony of the spheres by synthesizing many chaotic noises in cosmological unity. For a fascinating treatment on the harmony of the spheres, see the classic book by Leo Spitzer, Stimmung: Storia semantica di un’idea (Bologna: Mulino, 1967)

  95. Viazzi, ed., I poeti del futurismo, 128.

  96. Buzzi was one of the few friends from Russolo’s youth who remained close to him in his late years. For many years, Buzzi rented a summer house near Russolo’s cottage in Cerro di Laveno. On the later stages of the friendship between Russolo and Buzzi, see Gasparotto in MART, 107–9. Buzzi’s novel Cavalcata delle vertigini (Foligno: Campitelli, 1924; henceforth Buzzi, Cavalcata delle vertigini) also suggests his close friendship with and admiration for Russolo; Marzio, the protagonist of the novel, was directly inspired by Russolo.

  97. “Manifesto della aereopittura,” in Francesco Grisi, ed., I futuristi (Rome: Newton, 1990), 101. A detailed chronology of Marinetti’s published poetry is provided in Viazzi, ed., I poeti del futurismo, 21.

  98. On Scriabin’s alcohol abuse, see Boris de Schloezer’s classic biography, first published in French in 1976, and in English translation as Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, trans. Nicholas Slonimsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

  99. In MART, 19n22. Testa e fiore is reproduced on page 131; for a reproduction of the sleeping female that Tagliapietra has identified as Morfina, see 132.

  100. Giovanni Lista records on the subject that “Maria Ginanni, Irma Valeria, Bruno Corra, Oscar Mara, Arnaldo Ginna, Mario Carli and Remo Chiti, the poets and the writers of the Florentine group who for the most part were from Ravenna, [. . .] held séances, practiced mediumistic [i.e. automatic] writing and indulged in experiences of hallucinations caused by the use of drugs.” Lista, Futurisme, 265.

  101. Ginna and Corra, Scritti, 265–67.

  102. Bruno Corra, Sam Dunn è morto (Milan: Einaudi, 1970), 38.

  103. Lista (in Futurisme, 266) adds to those I have discussed the names Pino Masnata, Benedetta [Cappa], Giuseppe Steiner, Emilio Notte, Luigi Rognoni, and Oswaldo Bot.

  104. This concept is very much present in Russolo’s metaphysical system, as evident from his works.

  105. Boccioni’s chilly line on cubism is quoted in Boccioni, “Fondamento,” Lacerba (March 15, 1913).

  106. Reference to the opposition between Boccioni and Balla is first found in Calvesi, Fusione, 127. See also Fagiolo Dell’Arco, Compenetrazioni, 12. The very concept of subjective synthesis (sintesi soggettiva) can be found in Boccioni’s “La pittura futurista,” in Altri inediti, 16, and his “Note per la conferenza tenuta a Roma 1911,” in Boccioni, Altri inediti, 35.

  107. Balla’s obsession with detail can be noted in Fallimento (1902), but it is structurally fully exposed in Un mio istante del 4 aprile 1928 ore 10 più due minuti (1928), where Balla’s self-portrait appears isolated and almost trapped between two opposed forces, visually represented as symmetrical and convergent. With a deductive operation, this instant in time that Balla painted brings us back to universal dynamism by implying and exemplifying it. Boccioni’s titanism is displayed fully in his Città che sale of 1910–11 and Stati d’animo I: Gli Addii of 1911.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. Russolo described his friendship with Boccioni in an article emblematically titled “La voce lontana,” which he wrote in 1933 for Dinamo futurista, a periodical edited by Depero; the article was reprinted in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 263).

  2. This may have been an unconscious politico-philosophical position. Already in his 1962 Opera aperta, Umberto Eco, addressing the orphism of Mallarmé’s Livre, declared that “every aspiration of the artist to clairvoyance, even though poetically productive, always sounds somewhat equivocal.” Eco, Opera aperta (Milan: Bompiani, 2006), 50.

  3. See Gary Lachmann, “Ready to Rumble,” Wire (December 2003): 30–35, and Carlo Piccardi, “Futurismo,” in Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, ed. A. Basso, Il lessico (Turin: UTET, 1985), 2:307–17.

  4. The first issue of Ultra (January 1907) carries the mission statement of the editorial board: “This periodical aims to bring to all its readers the message of the soul. This message tells us that man is more than a mere clothed animal, because in his intimate nature he is divine even though his divinity is hidden by a veil of flesh.” In Matitti, “Balla e la teosofia,” 44. This statement resembles what Russolo wrote in the last section of Al di là della materia. Writing about the men of the future, Russolo argued that “man, who will certainly still be made of his exterior clothing of flesh and bones, will have understood by then that this exterior vest is only a simulacrum, a bark, a transitory phase that hides what man truly is.” Russolo, Al di là della materia, 395.

  5. Celant, “Futurismo esoterico,” 112–13, 115. Celant omitted the first quote in the English version of the article as it appeared in Artforum, but he does not add anything on Russolo; Germano Celant, “Futurism and the Occult,” Artforum 19 (1981).

  6. In Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 86. In this review, Carrà writes a contradictory statement, claiming that in Al di là della materia Russolo had foun
d a “new orientation, after futurism”; Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 85.

  7. See Lista and Franini, whom I quote in the introduction. In later research, Lista more openly acknowledged a connection between the avant-garde and occult arts, though in his 2009 essay on Russolo he refrains from addressing the topic. This modernist critical stance was shared by other Russolo scholars (Maffina, Franini) and has dominated Russolo scholarship up to the present.

  8. This may have been for fundamentally political reasons. An equation can easily be drawn from occultism and irrational thought to fascism. Furthermore, the neopositivism and neorationalism that has characterized post–World War II Western culture, and may be seen as a philosophical reaction to the horrors and excesses of Fascist and Nazi totalitarianism, has also produced a “modernist” critical climate that tended only to reward what is scientific, rational, or “progressive.” Despite the best intentions, this modernist approach has rescued from the futurist movement only, or mostly, pragmatic aspects such as exaltation of technology and has consequently sacrificed the irrational or spiritual side, building an image of futurism that, though not corresponding to reality, is still the dominant one today.

  9. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 17.

  10. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 12. The title for this piece, like the titles of most of Russolo’s other pieces, was likely suggested by Marinetti. The reference to Rimini’s Hotel Kursaal cannot but have come from Marinetti. In a photograph from his prefuturist years, reproduced in Marinetti, La grande Milano, 131 (photograph 11), the fiery poet is portrayed in an impeccable summer outfit while sitting at the table of the Hotel Kursaal’s terrace, a location that will enter collective memory thanks to the opening scene of Fellini’s I Vitelloni.

  11. Information about the organ of Portogruaro was provided to me by Professor Luigi Russolo (no relation to the subject of this book), organ professor at the Trieste Conservatory. Thanks also to Professor Andrea Macinanti, organ professor at the Bologna Conservatory.

  12. This is true at least of the first two models. In the 1927 version, levers were substituted for the keyboard to allow those shadings of microtonal pitch that the futurists would call “enarmoniche.” See Brown, introduction to Russolo, The Art of Noises, 16.

  13. Quoted in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 190 (Maffina published the text but not the patent drawing, which was at first thought lost). This project, whose patent Russolo never registered, offers an insight into his understanding of the construction principles of the pipe organ. His modification was designed to allow an organ pipe to obtain multiphonics. The additional pitch could be tuned over the fundamental according to the ratios 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, etc., to produce a relationship of octave, fifth, fourth, third, etc. This project constituted for Russolo a remarkable construction saving. At the end of the text, he added a variation, based on a simpler principle: since two pipes can be contained one inside the other, they can both exploit the same breath emission. From the combination of the two versions presented in the project, Russolo claimed that with two pipes—one inside the other—up to four distinct sounds can be produced with the same breath.

  14. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 41.

  15. Ester Coen, “Les futuristes et le moderne,” Les Cahiers du Musée National d’art moderne 19–20 (June 1987): 62.

  16. In Calvesi, Futurismo, 21.

  17. Lista, “Russolo, peinture et bruitisme,” 12–13.

  18. Jean-Marc Vivenza, “L’art des bruits: Historique et theórie du bruitisme futuriste,” Inter 76 (Summer 2000): 47.

  19. Celant, “Futurismo esoterico,” 115.

  20. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 90.

  21. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 70–71.

  22. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 92–93. Boccioni’s quote is found in Boccioni, Altri inediti, 11.

  23. Verdone, “Abstraktion, Futurismus und Okkultismus—Ginna, Corra und Rosà,” in Okkultismus, 488.

  24. Lista, “Futurismus und Okkultismus,” in Okkultismus, 435.

  25. Quoted in MART, 85–86.

  26. The only other work on this topic is Diego Collovini’s book Luigi Russolo: Un’appendice al futurismo (Venice: Supernova, 1997). Scholarly reluctance to address Russolo’s connections with fascism may also explain the reluctance to investigate Russolo’s late works.

  27. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 31.

  28. Russolo expressed this idea in his “Catalogo della Galleria Borromini di Como,” cited in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 122.

  29. On Russolo’s harsh critique of the Novecento group, see Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 304. Funi was the only exponent of Novecento with whom Russolo stayed on good terms. On November 7, 1920, Russolo wrote a laudatory review for the periodical La Testa di Ferro of the October 1920 Achille Funi exhibit curated by Margherita Sarfatti. The review is reproduced in MART, 65.

  30. We know from a letter by Russolo, written in Paris on July 1, 1927, that he was not proficient in German (see Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 279). It is therefore likely that he read Nietzsche in D’Annunzio’s translations. As for Poe, Russolo certainly read his writings in the Italian translation by Decio Cinti. Cinti’s translation of a collection of Poe’s tales was in fact one of the few works of fiction that Russolo owned. According to Gasparotto, Poe might have been the source for Russolo’s early etching and aquatint Donna pipistrello (Bat woman), of 1907; see MART, 86. Marinetti mentioned Poe in his “Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista” of May 11, 1912 (see I manifesti del futurismo, 97), and he mentioned him again a couple of years later in his article “Contro il decadentismo” (Against decadentism) in L’Italia Futurista, but on that occasion he attacked Poe.

  31. See Geurt Imanse, “Occult Literature in France,” in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), 355f.

  32. Buzzi, in the poem “Russolo,” compared a concert of intonarumori with a dance macabre; see chapter 11.

  33. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 34.

  34. Diane Lesko, James Ensor, the Creative Years (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 43. It is interesting to compare this position with two different statements by Russolo on the aging of The Last Supper. In the first, recorded by Marinetti in his La grande Milano, 118–19, the young Russolo argued in favor of replacing aging (and aged) frescoes with the work of young artists. In the second, contradictory, opinion, the older Russolo wrote about the contrast between the aging of the material body of The Last Supper and the eternal spiritual power of that work; see Russolo’s last writing, of 1947, “L’eterno e il transitorio nell’arte,” in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 315.

  35. Calvesi, in Fusione, 52, noted the influence of scapigliatura—in particular Emilio Praga’s Satanism—within the futurist movement.

  36. In Carrà, La mia vita (Milan: Rizzoli, 1945), 88. Carrà mentioned Romani in the chapter that discusses his years in Brera’s Art Academy from 1906 on.

  37. Lista, “Russolo, peinture et bruitisme,” 15. 1910 was the year when, according to Lista, Russolo began to take an active interest in spirituality. However, Lista set this date slightly earlier in Okkultismus, where he links Russolo’s early Autoritratto con teschi (which he incorrectly believed was painted in 1909–10) with Russolo’s interest in the occult (Lista, “Futurismus und Okkultismus,” in Okkultismus, 435).

  38. Russolo could have known the French edition of this text, which had appeared by 1905.

  39. See Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 92–93.

  40. The influence of Romani is not particularly surprising, especially given the deep friendship that bound him to Russolo. See Silvia Evangelista, “Dal simbolismo alla non figurazione e ritorno: Il percorso artistico di Romolo Romani,” in Romolo Romani, ed. Silvia Evangelisti, Renato Barilli, and Bruno Passarani (Milan: Mazzotta, 1982), 23. Evangelisti emphasizes Russolo’s and Romani’s common interest in the vibration of light and sound waves, and in ways of
portraying them in painting.

  41. Piselli’s hypothesis is described in Ethel Piselli, Luigi Russolo: Incisore e pittore 1907–1913 (Bornato in Franciacorta: Sardini Editrice, 1990), 20–23.

  42. See reproductions of Romani’s works in Giorgio Nicodemi, Romolo Romani (Como: Cairoli, 1967) and Romolo Romani, ed. Evangelisti, Barilli, and Passarani.

  43. Silvia Evangelisti, “Geometrien der Psyche im Werk Romolo Romanis,” in Okkultismus, 83. The term ideoplastica, together with its synonym eteroplastica, and intended in this occultist sense, is from Boccioni: “Our futurist audacity has already forced opened the gates of an unknown world. We are creating something that is similar to what the physiologist Richet [Nobel Prize in 1912] has called heteroplastic or ideoplastic. For us, the mystery of the medianic materialization is certainty, a clarity.” Boccioni, Scritti, 203, 457n11. On Romani and Palladino, compare Romani’s Ritratto di Giosuè Carducci—one of the “masks” that Romani made for Poesia (October 1906–January 1907 issue)—with one of the “ideoplastic” medallions produced by Palladino; see Evangelisti, “Geometrien der Psyche im Werk Romolo Romanis,” in Okkultismus, 84. Romani painted many other mysterious manifestations, including the demoniac mask in the upper right corner of his phantasmal Ritratto di Dina Galli of 1906. These works by Romani may well have been the main influence on Russolo’s mystical mezzotint Il Redentore of 1907, a masklike print of the barely identifiable features of Jesus’s face, and probably an allusion to the Shroud of Turin.

  44. See Boccioni, Scritti, 203.

  45. Masks are also found in Russolo’s painting Giovane romantica of 1941. Tagliapietra has mentioned that Ilaria Schiaffini linked La musica to theosophy (MART, 41n58).

  46. Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 289.

  47. Buzzi, in a 1921 article cited in Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 30–31. The reference to the “intellectual goatee” but also the reference of the skulls as masks, together with the reference to music (Verdi chorus), leaves us uncertain on whether Buzzi may here be overlapping the memory of the 1908 Autoritratto with that of the later La musica.