The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture

by Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff's stunning book was one of the first to offer a serious and far-reaching examination of the momentous flourishing of Futurist aesthetics in the European art and literature of the early twentieth century. Offering penetrating considerations of the prose, visual art, poetry, and carefully crafted manifestos of Futurists from Russia to Italy, Perloff reveals the Moment's impulses and operations, tracing its echoes through the years to the work of "postmodern" figures like Roland Barthes. This updated edition, with its new preface, reexamines the Futurist Moment in the light of a new century, in which Futurist aesthetics seem to have steadily more to say to the present.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Theory, Criticism, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Chris]

Amazing view of early 20th century development of mostly Italian and Russian futurism and its English variant, Vorticism. The artists of the day really thought that they were going to change the world; that new technologies would democratize participation in arts, culture and politics. Unfortunately, they did not anticipate the horrible consequences technology wrought in WWI, which discredited their often militaristic and nationalistic rhetoric.