Luigi Russolo, Futurist

by Luciano Chessa

  THE CRAFT OF LIGHT: BALLA’S OCCULT SIGNATURE

  In Balla one finds again the confluence of two streams common among many of his futurist comrades: the scientific/positivist and the spiritualist.75 The merging of these two tendencies into a sort of metaphysical rationality would constitute, toward the end of the nineteenth century, one of the aims of theosophy. As Linda Henderson maintains, the preferred meeting place between science and spirituality is the theory of vibrations.76 In the light of this convergence of ends, it is no surprise that Balla, literally obsessed with vibrations, was involved with theosophy for many years, and that an understanding of his relations with it are crucial to reconstructing his artistic journey.

  During his formative years in Turin, Balla studied with Cesare Lombroso (whose contacts with spiritualism have been mentioned by Germano Celant, among others).77 But the encounter first with freemasonry and occultism, and later with theosophy, occurred only in 1895, once Balla had moved to Rome. In the first years of the century, Balla furthered his interest in psychiatry by reading Hoepli’s popular compendia and manuals.78 His interest in X-rays may have been piqued by his acquaintance with Professor Ghilarducci, an expert on radiology, psychology, and electrotherapy, whose portrait Balla painted in 1903.79 This is indicated in an undated entry in his notebooks: “Roentgen rays and their applications.”80 I believe he made this entry to remind himself to look into Ignazio Schincaglia’s popular 1911 book Radiografia e radioscopia: Storia dei raggi Roentgen e loro applicazioni piu importanti.

  The supernatural element is already present in some of Balla’s first Roman works, both in the impressive dimensions of Ritratto della madre from 1901 and in the metaphysical angle and hyperrealism of the formidable Fallimento of 1902.81 As early as 1904 he maintained a friendship with Ernesto Nathan, an occultist and freemason (he was grand master of the Grande Oriente d’Italia in 1899 and again in 1917), who in 1907 became the first anticlerical mayor to take office in the Campidoglio. Nathan acquired nine canvases from Balla and commissioned a portrait in 1910, and Balla even taught painting to Nathan’s daughter, Annie.82 Notwithstanding his contact with Nathan, Balla apparently never affiliated himself with a lodge.83

  FIGURE 4. Giacomo Balla, Trasformazione forme spiriti (1918). Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome.

  Information about Balla’s first contact with theosophy comes from Balla’s daughter Elica: “In 1916 Balla is also interested in psychic phenomena and attends the meetings of a society of theosophists presided over by General Ballatore; they hold, in said society, séances. [. . .] Inspired by this interest, [. . .] he outlines some sketches on this subject and then a larger painting, aptly titled Trasformazione forme spiriti” (fig. 4).84

  Flavia Matitti has reconstructed the history of the circle around Generale Ballatore, the “Gruppo Teosofico Roma,” and Balla’s relationship with that circle. Gruppo Roma was founded in 1897 and recognized as a theosophical association in 1907. In the same year, the first issues of the periodical Ultra came out; in it Ballatore published articles on hyperspace and the fourth dimension; later he wrote on radioactivity. Ultra was the official organ of Gruppo Roma until 1930. In October 1914, Ardengo Soffici published his article “La Teosofia nel futurismo” in Ultra.85

  Gruppo Roma’s activities included the production of their periodical, regular meetings, and the organization of lectures by illustrious speakers; among these Matitti mentions Annie Besant in 1907, and above all Rudolf Steiner, who in 1909 held a series of Roman lectures on different themes (Christ and theosophy, theosophy and Rose+Croix, occultism in Goethe’s Faust) and drew so much attention that he was invited again the following year.86

  A careful analysis of Balla’s canvases from those years offers evidence that Balla had contact with Gruppo Roma before 1916, perhaps even as early as 1914. In Balla’s signatures on the paintings from Iniezione di futurismo (1913–14) onward, the two “L” and the “A” of Balla’s name intertwine to form a swastika in which the hooks are oriented toward the right. The swastika becomes more evident in the signatures of Balla’s “patriotic” and interventionist paintings from 1915, among them Canto patriottico in piazza di Siena, Forme grido “Viva l’Italia,” and Bandiere all’Altare della patria, and it is definitely noticeable in Trasformazione forme spiriti.

  The swastika has a millennial history; the symbol reappears in a range of latitudes, principally in relation to the cult of light and sun. Especially the right-facing version (in which the hooks are flexed in a clockwise direction) is considered auspicious because it describes the apparent motion of the sun from east to west, thus representing light, life, energy, and the masculine principle.87

  Because of the presumed Indo-Iranian (i.e., Aryan) origins of the Germanic peoples, Germany’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party appropriated the swastika in their emblems as a symbol of the purity of “Aryan” blood. But the swastika had been utilized in other historical and geographical contexts well before the Nazis, with quite different meanings. In Madame Blavatsky’s posthumous theosophical glossary, the term svastika is defined as follows:

  Svastika (Sk.). In popular notions, it is the Jaina cross, or the “four-footed” cross (croix cramponnée). In Masonic teachings, “the most ancient Order of the Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross” is said to have been founded by Fohi, 1,027 B.C., and introduced into China fifty-two years later, consisting of the three degrees. In esoteric philosophy, it the most mystic and ancient diagram. It is “the originator of the fire by friction, and of the ‘Forty-nine Fires.’ ” Its symbol was stamped on Buddha’s heart, and therefore called the “Heart’s Seal.” It is laid on the breasts of departed Initiates after their death; and it is mentioned with the greatest respect in the Râmâyana. Engraved on every rock, temple and prehistoric building of India, and wherever Buddhists have left their landmarks; it is also found in China, Tibet and Siam, and among the ancient Germanic nations as Thor’s Hammer. [. . .] Finally, and in Occultism [sic], it is as sacred to us as the Pythagorean Tetraktys, of which it is indeed the double symbol.88

  According to Blavatsky the swastika was known in India (and other regions of the world that had contact with Buddhism), among proto-Germanic populations, and in China; above all it is a key symbol for freemasonry and theosophy, so important for Madame Blavatsky that she adopted it as one of the symbols of the mystic brooch she designed for herself.

  The swastika was an important symbol within Gruppo Roma. For the 1922 design of “Spiritualist Movement,” a column header in Ultra, Nicola D’Urso adopted a right-facing swastika inscribed in a winged disc and surrounded by stars and concentric orbits.89 Since at the turn of the century the swastika was regarded in Masonic and theosophical circles as a symbol of light, it is not surprising that Balla, too, would have been fascinated by it. The hidden swastika I detected in Balla’s signature on a 1914 work may well indicate that his theosophical influences date back to that year or earlier.

  Balla’s belief in the mysticism of light, initially inspired by symbolism and divisionism (from Segantini to Pellizza and Previati), followed his early interest in the representation of light in the dark.90 This interest became stronger over the years, to the point of becoming the most important element of the scene depicted in Elisa sulla porta of 1904, in which Balla’s wife, Elisa, who was expecting their first daughter—Balla would name her, appropriately enough, Luce—provided the background to a manifestation of light as magical and luminous phenomenon behind a door.91

  The culmination of Balla’s early research into light, and his first futurist work, is however Lampada ad Arco, dated 1909 on the canvas, though very probably painted in 1910.92 This painting, which was certainly influenced by Marinetti’s manifesto “Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna,” represents the symbolic victory of electric light over the moon and starry sky.93 In the technical manifesto of futurist painting of 1910, the signatories (Balla among them) proclaimed themselves “Lords of Light” who dr
ink “at the living fountains of the Sun.” This openly pagan adoration of the sun includes, among other elements, echoes of the poet Giosuè Carducci and the Milanese Satanism of the scapigliato Emilio Praga.94

  But this is not the whole story. Besides being a symbolic work, Lampada ad Arco is also a scientific work, in which Balla analyzed and pictorially rendered the division of the spectrum; divisionists had largely concentrated on that issue. On the occasion of the canvas’s acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art of New York in 1954, Balla wrote: “The canvas of the ‘lamp’ was painted by me during the divisionist period (1900–1910); in fact the dazzle of the light was obtained by means of the combination of pure colors. This canvas, besides being original as a work of art, is also scientific because I tried to represent the light by separating the colors that composed it. [. . .] Rendering light has always been my favorite study.”95

  In its ambitious, successful joining of science with spirituality, Lampada ad Arco represents an appropriate homage to the genius of Edison, who was a member of the Theosophical Society;96 as such, the painting may even be considered an homage to theosophy itself. Lampada ad Arco was not Balla’s last work to betray theosophical leanings. The above-mentioned cycle of 1916–18 titled Trasformazione forme spiriti, for example, or Forme e pensiero—visione spiritica, exhibited by Bragaglia in 1918, show an evident relationship not only with theosophy, but even more particularly—down to their titles—with Besant and Leadbeater’s Thought-forms. 97

  Calvesi has written of Balla’s self-portrait Auto-stato d’animo of 1920, “The attempt seems evident [on Balla’s part] to ‘dematerialize’ his own image by rendering it like an ectoplasm, an ideation very near to that of Bragaglia’s Autophotodynamism of 1911; in this portrait, the intent is not so much to suggest a sensation of movement as to spiritualize his own face through the unfocusedness of the repeating and moving of his features.”98

  Balla’s interest in spiritualism also surfaces in brief autobiographical descriptions. Describing himself, Balla wrote: “He is a little temperament (he would say) who prefers to hang out with the voices of the infinite than with our own.”99 In a brief autobiographical note from 1920, he affirmed: “In 1500 they called me Leonardo or . . . Titian after 4 centuries of artistic decadence, I reappeared in 1900 to shout to my plagiarizers that it is time to end it because times have changed. They called me crazy: poor blockheads !!!!!!!!! I have already created a new sensitivity in art that is expression of future ages that will be colorradioiridesplendorideal luminosisssssssssimiiiiii.”100

  Matitti considered this biographical note to be “in jest.”101 But if the style is in jest, the substance is less so, insomuch as Balla offers a precise and aware self-portrait of himself. The “colorradioiridesplendorideal luminosisssssssssimiiiiii,” a portmanteau word that comprises the terms colori, radio, iride, splendori, ideali, and luminosissimi (colors, radio, rainbow, splendors, ideals, and most luminous), summarize extraordinarily well the coordinates between which Balla’s research moved; “luminosissimi” returns us to the word luce, “light,” which is so central to his work, and “colori-radio-iride” to the notion of light as radiant wave and of the colors of the rainbow as a range, a spectrum of different frequencies of this same wave. Thus in but a few words Balla covered the critical and intellectual distance that separates the mysticism of colors, alchemy, and science.

  Another point of contact with the theosophical mysticism of colors emerges with clarity in the series of Compenetrazioni iridescenti of 1912–14, real meditations in which the penetrating dynamic-spiritual form of the triangle and the colors of the rainbow, matched together with calculation and elegance, become a symbol of the reunion of two opposing principles, the “compenetration of the self with the universe”—the title Balla later gave to one of the coeval preparatory studies for his now lost Spessori d’atmosfera, on which he worked in 1913.102

  Whereas the idea of rejoining opposites can be connected with the central thesis of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the animistic ideas of pantheism and panpsychism, which return in Bragaglia and Balilla Pratella, are always present in Balla.103 Calvesi finds these concepts in Trasformazione forme spiriti, a work that he in fact considers a perfect example of the “compenetration between spirit and matter, between creatures and creation.”104

  As Calvesi emphasized, “compenetration [. . .] returns to that idea, fundamental in the theosophical and hermetic sphere, of integration or mercurial coniuctio.”105 In the alchemical process the coniuctio takes place with the union of opposites, and its catalyst is the principle of light, symbolized by mercury (which is simultaneously a god, a planet, and an element). For alchemy—the hermetic science par excellence—as for theosophy, compenetration is possible since everything in the universe is intimately connected.106

  This interconnection, then, reveals the occult roots of synesthesia as they are found in the symbolists, the scapigliati, and the futurists. According to these roots, sound, color, and scent are connected because they are different manifestations of one energy. The same holds for alchemy, which appears to be one of the most paradigmatic forces driving Balla’s poetics. In alchemy, material objects are essentially variations of weight, form, and color of one single principle, to which they can all be reconducted; this leads naturally to one of the central aspects of this science: through the operation of transformation we can in fact pass from one substance to another. For example, to pass from iron to gold, the secondary properties, which are the distinctive characteristics of the first material (iron), are subtracted to reobtain the primal matter, and, in turn, properties of the second (gold) are introduced into the primal matter in the form of a seed.107

  The function of compenetration, or coniuctio, of opposing elements is to reconstruct the primal matter, the principle common to every existing thing, and thus re-create the totality present in God’s work (i.e., creation) through a process of artificious conjoining. The rainbow, as a symbol, is the natural equivalent of this process. Here the colors of the spectrum lie side by side, their conflicts smoothed out by way of attraction, to join together in a comprehensive universality of ranges in solemn harmony: white light as the primal energy that unites opposite, complementary colors.

  Since everything derives from a single element, and everything constitutes but a variation of it, it is possible, with detailed observation and analysis of nature and through comprehension of its structure, to deduce the universal principles of these variations (the abstract equivalents that inform creation). It is then possible to reproduce in vitro (with artifice) a sample of the harmony of nature that has the same properties as the natural, divinely created phenomenon and in this way give new form, according to the deduced principles, to the primal matter. The deduction is possible through a hermetical theory of correspondences, according to which the microcosm corresponds structurally to the macrocosm, and so for every object on earth there exists an abstract, celestial ideal. The general laws of the entire universe are thus faithfully reproduced or mirrored in the earthly detail. This theory, central in Plato and famously found in the opening of Hermes Trismegistus’s Emerald Tablet—“That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above, to achieve the wonders of the one thing.”—returns constantly in all occult thought and is also present in Swedenborg, Steiner, and the Hinduist-inspired nineteenth-century organicism of Goethe. By means of contemplation, one may read in the particular the very metaphor of the totality; one may grasp this idea of totality because in the particular is reflected the structure of the cosmos and its harmony of proportions. This theory of correspondences explains the scientific, analytic-deductive, and alchemical point of view of Balla’s research, characterized by meticulous study of details and their re-creation; it also explains his admiration for Leonardo da Vinci.108

  Balla’s ambition to re-create reality through thorough observation and then (re)production of that reality via a detail, or sample, is already perceptible in the hyperrealism
of his 1902 Fallimento; to create this painting Balla stood tirelessly for hours before a closed door on Via Veneto. In 1950 Balla wrote on the back of the painting:

  THIS PAINTING PAINTED BY ME FROM MEMORY IS OF A REALITY THAT NO ONE HAS EQUALLED! LEARN TO LOOK AT IT, TO KNOW IT PURIFIES THE EYES AND THE HEART

  BALLA 1950; THOUGHTLESS CHILDREN SCRIBBLE ON THE DOOR OF A FAILED STORE A.D. 1902109

  A similar attitude can be seen in Balla’s Lampada ad Arco, which its author also considered, not by chance, “scientific.” Fagiolo dell’Arco noted that in this painting Balla “humbly analyzes the most intimate substance of light, wants to find the structure inherent in the object, not the modifications brought by the subject; neglecting the effects he wants to arrive at the cause.”110 An example of Balla’s attention to detail is in the recursive structure of the Compenetrazioni iridescenti, in which the basic, modular element—the primal matter—is the triangle, which symbolizes movement and light.111 This attention is also present in the rhythms of the circular figures of Spessori di atmosfera, which are scaled down “to human dimensions by way of lines-of-force that connect them to the earth.”112 This painting is now unfortunately lost, but preparatory studies and photographs reveal Balla’s use of relations between alchemy and astrology that will culminate in his allegorical canvas Mercurio passa davanti al Sole, visto da un cannocchiale of 1914 (fig. 5).