Luigi Russolo, Futurist

by Luciano Chessa

  48. Giovanni Lista, “Futurismus und Okkultismus,” in Okkultismus, 435.

  49. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 39.

  50. A discussion of the skull is pertinent in analyzing Russolo not only for anatomical and structural but also for metaphysical and symbolic reasons. Emanuel Winternitz has written that “Leonardo is well known as a master in drawing skulls, apparently being attracted by their structure and complex curvature of surface with its interplay of light and shadow.” According to Winternitz, people used animal and human skulls throughout the Renaissance, both as decoration and as an object for meditation. See “The Mystery of the Skull Lyre,” in Winternitz, Leonardo da Vinci as a Musician, 39. I have dedicated chapters 9 and 10 to the relationship between Leonardo and Russolo.

  51. Igor Stravinsky, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, ed. Robert Craft (London: Faber and Faber, 1958), 93.

  52. Russolo did not have much respect for the term “studio” or for the very existence of a market for sketches as finished artistic products. See Russolo, Al di là della materia, 247–48. It is possible that this work and others are forgeries.

  53. This is especially surprising given that 1911 marks the turning point of De Chirico’s career.

  54. See the reproduction in MART, 173. The red-chalk drawing (sanguigna) technique, especially when used for self-portraiture, may be another of the many influences of Leonardo da Vinci, whose self-portrait in red chalk was immensely popular.

  55. In Calvesi, Fusione, 111.

  56. Buzzi, “Russolo ferito (January 1918),” in Archivi del futurismo, 1:378.

  57. See Lista, “Russolo, peinture et bruitisme,” 28, 139.

  58. We know that the painting was shown at Milan’s Prima Esposizione d’Arte Libera of April 1911, as it is mentioned in a series of reviews of the exhibit: one by Filippo Quaglia in the newspaper Avanti! of June 11 and one by Enrico Cavicchioli from June 15, 1911, both reproduced in the catalog (p. 53) of the exhibit Luigi Russolo: L’arte dei rumori 1913/1931, curated by Maffina in 1977 for the Venice Biennale. A third review, from Ardengo Soffici in La Voce of April 20, 1911, is cited in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 35.

  59. Muldoon and Carrington, The Projection of the Astral Body (London, 1929), pl. 9. Cited in Katharine V. Tighe, “Primitives of a Transformed Sensitivity: Italian Futurism and Occultism” (MA thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1994), 80.

  60. According to Gasparotto, another painting that present a series of projections on the aura is the above-mentioned Giovane Romantica of 1941; see MART, 70.

  61. The chronology of this work is particularly uncertain. Zanovello claims 1909 as the year it was painted, Lista 1910, Maffina 1912, and Tagliapietra 1910–11.

  62. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 23. Flavia Matitti considers the canvas an example of the futurists’ interest in mediumistic phenomena, and for that reason is cited by Lista. See Matitti, “Balla e la teosofia,” 43, and Lista, “Futurismus und Okkultismus,” in Okkultismus, 439.

  63. Apollinio, illustration 55. See also MART, 171.

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

  65. In my dissertation I argued that it could perhaps be dated to the period that preceded his stay at Thiene (1922). In the letter of December 5, 1929 (cited in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 289), Russolo wrote that the “portrait with the shadow (ritratto con l’ombra)” was part of a stock of paintings that he left as a temporary deposit for the unpaid last three months’ rent with the landlord of his Milanese studio in via Stoppani, where he and Piatti had built the intonarumori.

  66. See the author’s foreword in Charles W. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1913), 3; henceforth Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things.

  67. The Milanese publisher Bocca, also Evola’s publisher, had a large number of books on occultism in his catalog.

  68. Russolo, Al di là della materia, 102–5. According to Besant and Leadbeater in Thought-forms, the mental body and the astral body are the main components of the aura (Galbreath, “A Glossary of Spiritual and Related Terms,” 390).

  69. Russolo, Al di là della materia, 103.

  70. Russolo, Al di là della materia, 116.

  71. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 78–79.

  72. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 24.

  73. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 71.

  74. MART, 88n92.

  75. Lista, Futurisme, 58. The term metapsychic was first introduced by the Nobel laureate Charles-Robert Richet, a physiologist who studied anaphylaxis but was also a scholar of medianic and paranormal phenomena. Boccioni cited Richet in his Scritti, 203. See also Boccioni, Scritti, 457n11.

  76. Ricordi di una notte share common traits with Boccioni’s Notturno, which was also painted in 1911. Among these traits are the subject and composition, with the female figure in the foreground. Boccioni’s Notturno is less chaotic than Russolo’s.

  77. Although Russolo voiced his dislike of the term cacophony, it is useful in this context.

  78. Bergson, quoted in Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 91.

  79. This simultaneous chaos is related to the following passage from The Art of Noises: “We will enjoy ourselves by orchestrating together in our imagination the din of rolling shop shutters, slamming of doors, buzzing and foot-stepping of the crowd, the varied hubbub of train stations, iron works, thread mills, printing shops, electrical plants, and subways. Nor should the newest noises of modern war be forgotten.” Russolo, quoted in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 131. The futurist painters adopted the phrase “synthesis of what one remembers and what one sees” in February 1912; see Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla, and Severini, “Prefazione al catalogo delle esposizioni di Parigi, Londra, Berlino,” in I manifesti del futurismo, 61. Optical-mnemonic synthesis was another expression to indicate the simultaneity of states of mind; see Boccioni, Altri inediti, 12. Yet another equivalent was the expression complementarismo congenito (congenital complementarism), a concept introduced in the technical manifesto of futurist painting of 1910.

  80. Cited in Archivi del futurismo, 1:112.

  81. Boccioni attacked Anton Giulio Bragaglia and photodynamics, which he had created, because the discipline was based on the principle of optical frame–based scomposizione del movimento (breakdown of movement). Boccioni felt that this technique portrayed reality in a far too cold, mechanical, impersonal, analytical way. In his works, Boccioni wanted to portray the subject together with the subject’s experiences and reaction to movement: he intended to paint, in other words, a personal selection of positions—from among the infinite positions of a body in motion—that the subject’s memory decided to retain. He preferred optical-mnemonic synthesis, the combination of what the subject sees and remembers. Calvesi claimed that Boccioni’s attack on Bragaglia’s photodynamics hid an indirect attack against Balla, who had produced a painting that imitated photographic perception, that is, showed him using his eye as a camera. See Calvesi, Fusione, 114–16, 127–28.

  82. Una-tre teste closely resembles Boccioni’s Visioni simultanee and La strada entra nella casa, both painted the year before.

  83. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 150. According to Maffina (Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 333), only two fragments survived. However, Russolo, as he had done before, re-utilized the back of the central panel of the painting one year later to paint I tre pini (1944). This central panel, which was discovered under a thick, uniform coating of paint during the 2005 restoration of I tre pini, was shown at the 2006 Russolo retrospectives; see Tagliapietra, MART, 34, 42. Other fragments of the painting from the two side panels mentioned in Maffina have appeared in internet auctions. Leadbeater’s essay on sonic forms is found as a chapter of his The Hidden Side of Things of 1913, but based on what Leadbeater claims in the introduction to the book, the essay had appeared earlier in The Theosophist.

  84. Henry Adams hailed electricity as a “god” of the new century, and he adored the dynamo, which
he first saw at the Paris World Exposition of 1900; cited in Fred K. Prieberg, Musica ex machina (Turin: Einaudi, 1963), 89.

  85. Luckily, the center of the canvas survived. I will discuss the principle of synthesizing multiplicity into unity later in this book.

  86. Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-forms, 43. In the preface of the volume, Annie Besant explains that “the drawing and the painting of the thought forms observed by Mr. Leadbeater or by myself, or by both of us together, has been done by three friends—Mr. John Varley, Mr. Prince and Miss Macfarlane.” Though it is impossible to validate the authorship of these works, we can surely attribute to Besant and Leadbeater, if not the actual execution of drawings and paintings, then surely the shapes, colors, formal organizations, and ideas portrayed in them.

  87. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, 204.

  88. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, 208.

  89. See Evangelisti, “Geometrien der Psyche im Werk Romolo Romanis,” in Okkultismus, 23.

  90. In Lista, Futurisme, 58.

  91. This is one of the most often cited statements from the 1910 technical manifesto of futurist painting.

  92. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 149.

  93. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 150.

  94. The mezzotint version is close to Boccioni in the choice of subject, direction of the profile (turned toward the right), and characteristic, arched shape of the frame. In pictorial specifics, however, the oil-on-canvas version is closer to Boccioni’s study: both paintings are executed with the same technique, their dimensions are similar, as is the subject, and they both exploit the same diffraction of light waves, which is clearly derived from Italian divisionism.

  95. In Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 24.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. Buzzi, “Souvenirs sur le futurisme,” 26.

  2. The authenticity of this version has been disputed.

  3. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 89.

  4. The concept of materialization is frequently found in theosophical literature. Russolo borrowed it when he wrote in Al di là della materia of the materializations of the etheric double carried out on the physical plane. Boccioni (Scritti, 203) mentioned materialization in his Pittura e scultura futuriste). Another term for materialization was esteriorizzazione, which Marinetti used in his “Guerra, sola igiene del mondo” (in Teoria e invenzione futurista, 299) and Russolo in his Al di là della materia, 102. On the materialization in theosophy, see Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, 88.

  5. Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 20.

  6. Russolo also studied violin at an early age under the guidance of his father, and he continued to play; on Russolo’s violin, see Carlo Carrà, La mia vita (Milan: Rizzoli, 1945), 153.

  7. According to Buzzi, the masks converge “from every directions toward the head of the player, a head functioning as a black pivot”; Buzzi, “Souvenirs sur le futurisme,” 26.

  8. Calvesi, Fusione, 104.

  9. Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 26. Zanovello dated the review in June 1910, but this is obviously a mistake.

  10. Ibid., 26–27.

  11. Ibid., 27–28. This unsigned critical note accompanied the reproduction of Russolo’s painting in the December 9, 1920, issue of Poesia. In 1933 Russolo sent this critical note to Depero with his signature. See Lista, “Russolo, peinture et bruitisme,” 152n10.

  12. Ibid., 28. Zanovello dates the comment in 1916, which is impossible, as the ex–Caffè Cova exhibit took place in 1919.

  13. Calvesi, Fusione, 152.

  14. Ibid., 214.

  15. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 90.

  16. Lista, Futurisme, 60. Carra’s interpretation is mentioned in Simona Cigliana, Futurismo esoterico: Contributi per una storia dell’irrazionalismo italiano tra Otto- e Novecento (Naples: Liguori, 2002), 302. I could not find this citation in any of Carrà’s writings

  17. The first edition of Arte dell’avvenire adopted Mazzini’s epigraph: “The Arts need someone who can re-tie them. This person will come.”

  18. Ginna’s reading list is cited in Celant, “Futurismo esoterico,” 112.

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

  20. Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-forms, 66–76.

  21. Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-forms, 66.

  22. As late as 1946, Russolo painted two musician-inspired, symbolical portraits, of Mt. Rushmore-kitsch proportions, titled Beethoven and Bach; for reproductions of these two late paintings, see MART, 186–87.

  23. Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-forms, 67.

  24. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, 195.

  25. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, 196.

  26. Calvesi mentions the existence, documented from at least 1853 on, of a mediumistic musical practice within spiritualist movements. This practice he divides into three categories: “music that manifests itself without instruments; music that manifests itself with instruments but without the material aid of the medium; and music that manifests itself through the automatism of the medium-pianist.” Russolo’s La musica belonged firmly in the third category. Surprisingly, in this brief article concentrating on automatic writing, Calvesi (“L’écriture médiumnique,” 47) mentioned neither the painting nor Russolo’s musical activities.

  27. The word enharmonic is used synonymously with microtonal. Russolo adopted the term enarmonia to refer to a musical system that employs the division of the whole step into infinite microintervals, which can be produced by instruments that have the capability to glide (glissando) between pitches.

  28. Though music creates sound-forms, spiritual music is what actually provides the fuel for the spirits to materialize. Spirits materialize via thought-forms, not via sound-forms. The specificity of the reading just offered is both consistent with and demanded by the “scientific” specificity that is always found in theosophical prose, with which Russolo was well familiar. This detailed reading was thus within Russolo’s horizon of cultural references.

  29. Lista, Futurisme, 60.

  30. Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-forms, 27.

  31. Cited in Gasparotto, MART, 81. Curiously, Gasparotto misses this almost literal reference to La musica and instead links this text to Russolo’s 1941 Giovane romantica, a painting that she considers the “pictorial translation” of these words.

  32. Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-forms, 11–12; Galbreath, “A Glossary of Spiritual and Related Terms,” 390.

  33. The “flexible blue ribbon” description comes from a review of the painting by Attilio Teglio, cited in Zanovello, Russolo, 26.

  34. Cited in Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 13.

  35. Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 141; Helmholtz is mentioned on page 140.

  36. Lista, “Russolo, peinture et bruitisme,” 153. Although Helmholtz’s research was undoubtedly important for Russolo—this is also attested by an important mechanical feature of the intonarumori, whose sound box is essentially a Helmholtz resonator—equally influential on Russolo was Leonardo’s research in acoustics.

  37. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, 195–96. The book was printed in 1913, but it includes articles published from 1901 on.

  38. See Winternitz, Leonardo da Vinci as a Musician, 109–11.

  39. I discuss the spirale di rumore in depth in chapter 8.

  40. Buzzi, “Russolo ferito (January 1918),” in Archivi del futurismo, 1:378.

  41. Cited in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 164. Continuity, a concept that carries philosophical and occult implications, is also found in Leonardo da Vinci’s writings, which is probably where Russolo encountered the concept. In his Roman lecture of May 1911, Boccioni prophesied a period when “pictorial works will be whirling musical compositions of enormous colored gases”; Boccioni, Altri inediti, 11. Given Buzzi’s statement that Russolo worked on La musica for years, and knowing that Russolo showed the first version of the painting in May 1911, it may well be that Boccioni in this passage in his lecture had the syn
esthetic features of La musica fresh in his mind. It could therefore be concluded that this Russolo work influenced both Boccioni’s lecture and his theory.

  CHAPTER 5

  1. Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 18. On Russolo’s technical limitations, see Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 70. Though Russolo may well have been technically weak, technique is not everything. Given that history of the arts in the twentieth century is not so much a history of technically executed virtuosic artifacts as it is a history of ideas, Russolo more than deserves his place.

  2. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, 91.

  3. Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 16.

  4. Cited in Maffina, Luigi Russolo e l’arte dei rumori, 134.

  5. Quoted in Zanovello, Luigi Russolo, 13.

  6. His leaning toward science, and his adoption of a trial-and-error-based procedure, does not, of course, make him a positivist scientist. Russolo was anxious to keep the internal mechanism of the intonarumori hidden from the players and listeners, designing his instrument cabinets to that end, because he wanted the intonarumori to provide a magical experience. Russolo operated within what Umberto Eco defined as the construct of miraculous technology—technology as magic; see Eco, “Scienza, tecnologia e magia,” in A passo di gambero (Milan: Bompiani, 2007), 103–10, esp. 106. This attitude is confirmed by the orphic character of Russolo’s language and aims. On the orphic, see the passage from Umberto Eco’s Opera aperta quoted in chapter 3.

  7. Marinetti, “Quinte e scene della campagna del battaglione lombardo volontari ciclisti sul lago di Garda e sull’Altissimo: La presa di Dosso Casina II,” Gazzetta dello sport (February 7, 1916); reprinted in Enrico Crispolti, “Zang Tumb Tuum I futuristi vanno alla guerra. Giochi, burle e travestimenti dei futuristi del battaglione ciclisti,” Bolaffiarte 79 (May 1978): 15.

  8. Francesco Cangiullo, Le serate futuriste (Naples: Editrice Tirrena, 1930), 183.

  9. Russolo, Al di là della materia, 184.