Cultural Hegemony and Avant-Gardist Rivalry. The Ambivalent Reception of Futurism in France,

England and Russia

Thomas Hunkeler

On February 14th, 1887, two years before the opening of the 1889 World Fair in Paris, the newspaper Le Temps published a manifesto hostile to the construction of one of the main sites of the fair: the Eiffel Tower. The declaration, signed by numerous artists, writers and journalists, and addressed to one of three general directors of the fair, Jean-Charles Alphand, called for the immediate cancellation of the construction plans in order to preserve the beauty of the city. Rather predictable in its reasoning, the statement nevertheless gives an accurate idea of how French artists and intellectuals thought at the time about the place that France and its capital, Paris, had in the world. Without falling into the exaltation of chauvinism, we have the right, the declaration said, to declare loud and clear that Paris is the city without rival in the world. [] Italy, Germany and the Flanders, rightly proud of their artistic heritage, do not possess anything comparable to ours, and Paris attracts curiosity and admiration from all over the world. In the eyes of the signatories, the construction of what they thought of as a second Babel tower did indeed not only disfigure the city but put Frances international reputation at stake: If foreigners come to visit our fair, they will shout out with astonishment: What? The French have found this horrible thing to give us an idea about their famous taste? They will be right to make fun of us [] (Sirinelli 1996: 31). Instead of being the sign of Frances power, as the organizers of the World Fair would have it, the signatories feared that the Eiffel Tower would be considered by the world as the unmistakable sign of the nations artistic decay: not even

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the commercial America, they wrote, would want this kind of tower on its soil. Of course, affirmations such as these do not come as a surprise in the age of imperialism. The sentiment of national pride that is apparent in the quoted lines is perfectly in phase with the nationalist rivalry that lurks behind the idea of a World Fair and forms an essential part of what Fredric Jameson (1990: 59) called the new imperial world system of the late nineteenth century. But we should also note that it is not only to French artists such as Bouguereau, Coppe or Maupassant (all signatories of the manifesto against the Eiffel Tower) that Paris seemed to be the cultural capital of the world. During a period that stretched from 1880 to well beyond the 1950s, Paris was indeed the place to be, or at least the unavoidable point of reference, for several generations of artists and intellectuals throughout the world. The fact that F.T. Marinetti succeeded to launch his Futurist manifesto in the Parisian Figaro, and not by way of its previous publication in several Italian newspapers, is not only the result of the authors personal francophone history, but also of his perspicuous analysis of the functioning of the global artistic field in these years. It is my contention that we need to rethink the battle for artistic leadership that marks the rivalry between the various avant-gardist movements, but also the emergence and the reception of Marinettis Futurism which will be at the centre of this study, in the light of a fierce fight for cultural hegemony, a fight that happened to a large extent in and on behalf of the city of Paris as the capital of the modern civilised world. Nowhere, to my knowledge, is the fact that Paris finds itself at the very heart of this symbolic battle more clearly stated than in the article La nostra Parigi (Our Paris), written by the Futurist author Giovanni Papini at the outbreak of World War I for the Florentine newspaper Il Giornale del Mattino. The imminent danger of German boots in the streets of Paris brought Papini to issue a vibrant call for arms in favour of a city which he considered to be less the French capital than simply the centre of the civilized world: Paris indeed is not only the historical and administrative capital of France, but one of the meeting points and of the centres of the best spiritual aristocracy of the two worlds [i.e.: Europe and America]. It is not only French, but ours, even particularly ours. In Papinis view, then, Paris needed to be defended by all civilised nations not merely because it was the

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capital of an allied country, but because, in a certain sense, it was the world capital of the arts and ideas. If Paris had come to be identified as the city of light (la citt-luce) or the brain of the world (il cervello del mondo), it was not, Papini insisted, because of the French, but rather because of all the foreigners who had been attracted to it: It is noteworthy that the greatness of Paris is owed not only to the French, but to all the foreigners, who maybe surpass the French also in number, that have worked, suffered and triumphed in Paris, who from Paris and by means of Paris have spread their name and have imposed their soul and their work. Even for the Germans, Papini added, thereby explaining what was in his view the true reason for the war, it was impossible not to long for Paris: Even if the seizure of Paris had no military importance, they are attracted to it like moths to the flame. The hatred with which some of them take Paris for a modern Babylon and a vessel of corruption resembles terribly a love not reciprocated (Papini 1963: 393-394). In the light of both the French artists manifesto against the Eiffel Tower and Giovanni Papinis considerations on Paris, it seems possible to tell a story about the avant-garde which is slightly different from the narrative that still prevails in many accounts of this period. For while it is clear that the European avant-garde was from the very start a cosmopolitan affair, in which artists and manifestoes crossed borders between countries easily and quickly, at least until the outbreak of the war (and even, as in the case of dada, afterwards), the dimension of nationalist rivalry has been curiously obscured by most art historians and literary critics. Paths of mutual influence have been traced far more rapidly than patterns of resistance. What seminal readings like Peter Brgers Theory of the Avant-Garde or Terry Eagletons interpretation of these movements in The Ideology of the Aesthetic tend to underestimate is the socio-historical background of the period, given by the European system of national states and collective nationalism as analysed, for instance, by Eric Hobsbawm or Tom Nairn. The economic notion of uneven development among European national states may indeed be adapted to the cultural sphere to describe the relationship between France as the reigning hegemonic power and underdeveloped nations like Italy, Russia or even England (albeit only in the cultural realm) as its challengers. This is why nationalist motivations and internationalist aspirations should not be seen as opposed to each other, but rather as two sides of the same

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coin. The feeling of cultural inferiority, interpreted on a national level, is precisely one of the reasons that help explain the aspirations towards international fame which so clearly mark the avant-garde.

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The first publication of Marinettis Futurist manifesto was initially planned in Marinettis review Poesia in December 1908 (Lista 2001: 33). Postponed after the terrible earthquake of Messina, the manifesto was eventually published in several Italian newspapers before its now famous first publication in the Figaro on the 20th of February 1909. The scandal it provoked immediately also stems from the fact that, as Lista rightly observes, it was France whose name was associated with modernism at that time, and not Italy, which was usually considered to be the land of the dead in the postromantic eyes of Northern Europe. The provocative character of Marinettis manifesto has often been stated, and its most scandalous passages, such as the idea that a racing car is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, are quoted again and again. What has been overlooked is the fact that the prologue of the manifesto is in fact a rewriting of one of the founding texts of French modernism: of Rimbauds Alchimie du verbe as stated in his Saison en enfer. Whereas for Rimbaud, old-fashioned poetry (la vieillerie potique) can be used as a source for the magical sophisms of his new writing thanks to what he calls simple hallucination I saw very clearly a mosque instead of a factory (une mosque la place dune usine), Rimbaud writes , Marinetti turns this poetic procedure upside down in the narrative prologue of his manifesto. Having spent the night with his friends under the lamps of a mosque (sous des lampes de mosque), talking on the extreme borders of logic and filling the paper with insane writing, he then suddenly decides to leave the house and go for a drive, only to find himself in a factory ditch after a car accident. It is there, in the industrial dirt, that his rebirth to Futurism takes place: Oh! Maternal ditch, half filled with muddy water! Factory ditch (Foss dusine)! Symbolically, Rimbauds move from life to poetry and from everyday landscapes to exotism is reversed in 1909 by a Marinetti who, born and raised in Egypt, now tries to cut himself loose from his exotic and decadent poetic past, as it appears in his early French writings such as LaMomie sanglante (1904) or La ville charnelle (1908).

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At the time of the publication of his manifesto, Marinetti was considered by the editors of the Figaro, and probably by most of his French colleagues, as a young Italian and French poet (Lista 1973: 83). But Marinettis Futurist rebirth was about to change this appreciation and make him a proud Italian. Indeed, it is important to notice that what is being attacked in the manifesto is not so much the decadent Italian culture for which a figure like Gabriele DAnnunzio stood according to the Futurist leader. It is rather a certain image of Italy in the eyes of Northern Europe and, most of all, of France. If Marinetti launches his manifesto in Italy, as he says, its purpose is nevertheless directed in the first place against professors, archaeologists, cicerones and antiquaries: in other words, against the people who promote an image of Italy that is indebted to the past. The famous example of the Victory of Samothrace is in this regard quite significant: an antique work of art originating from southern Europe, exhibited to the eyes of the Parisian public in the Louvre, and which becomes the epitome of a passeist culture. In another famous Futurist manifesto, Contro Venezia passatista (1910), Marinetti will even more explicitly attack the Venice of the foreigners when he calls upon his fellow citizens not to bend in front of all foreigners, whatever be their nationality. But it is only in the wake of the exhibition of Futurist painters in the Parisian Galerie Bernheim Jeune (1912) and the very provocative catalogue, in which the Futurists claimed the first position in art Today, for us, it is Italy that is on the avant-garde of international painting that people like poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire reacted very strongly against what they rightly perceived as a challenge to French cultural hegemony. Apollinaire not only refused to endorse the Futurist claims, but counterattacked immediately in one of his art columns in the newspaper Le petit bleu (February 9th, 1912) by accusing Marinetti, this francophone Italian (Italien gallicisant), of plagiarism: He wants to rouse Italy from its torpor. He has taken France as a model because it is at the head of the arts and letters, and without telling his fellow countrymen it is France that he presents as an example. In Apollinaires view, it is out of sheer ignorance of the French tradition that the Futurist painters imitate the newest trends in painting, such as Picasso, Rouault or Renoir. The Futurists claims for artistic leadership, he concludes, thereby explicitly rejecting their aspiration to conquer Paris, are in fact written for the ignorant Italian

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public, not for the French connaisseurs: As for Futurist art, it makes us smile in Paris; but it should not make the Italians smile, or else it would be unfortunate for them (Apollinaire 1991: 408-412). Apollinaire was not the only influential person in France to react strongly to the Futurists, even if he decided in 1913 to accept something like a compromise by signing his Futurist manifesto, Lantitradition Futuriste. Another interesting example is Pierre Albert-Birot and his review SIC, which appeared from 1916 to 1919. Even if the influence of Futurism on SIC is obvious in his case Albert-Birot met Gino Severini in January 1916 and published a reprint of one of his paintings, Train arrivant Paris, in the second issue of his review , several contributions to SIC hail France and not Italy as the most anti-traditional country. Not without irony, Albert-Birot urges his readers to follow the way of the good old French tradition, which is to deny tradition: Donc la tradition franaise, cest nier la tradition. Suivons la tradition (SIC: 26). Confronted by Apollinaires patronizing remarks or, even worse, in danger of a tacit takeover by French artists or writers, the only possibility for the Futurist group around Marinetti to distinguish itself was precisely to insist on its nationality. It might well be that the Futurists exacerbated nationalism, as it appears for instance in the Futurist Political Programme of 1913 where it is stated among other things that the word Italy has to triumph over the word Liberty , is in fact less one of the constituents of the movement than a violent reaction caused by the feeling of being, once again, expropriated by France. Just how much the Futurists wanted to be taken seriously by their French cousins is demonstrated again in one of Papinis post-war activities: in the semi-monthly francophone review La vraie Italie,which was published from 1919 to 1920. But in the last issue dated May 1920, Papini concedes that his ambition has failed. The review, whose aim was to tell our friends the truth about this mysterious and slandered Italy, in fact did not arouse any interest outside of Italy. Papini angrily admits that three quarters of our readers and of our subscribers are Italian! and then attacks the audience he did not have:

The French are a wonderful people. But their strength is also their weakness. They cannot admit that there are reasons or passions which are not French. [] Other countries, most of all Italy, dont have the right to have an opinion

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about their destiny which does not coincide with the infallible opinion of France. It is not a matter of insincerity. It is a matter of radical incapacity to admit the truths of other peoples, the rights of another nation. Frankreich ber alles! (Papini 1963: 1233-35)

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The circumstances of the English reception of Marinettis Futurism are now well established. Less analysed, on the other hand, is the fact that France also had a role to play in what appears to be quite a complex relationship involving not two, but at least three protagonists. It may thus be useful to recall the major elements of the story before focusing on Frances position in it. As was the case in France, Futurism reaches England mainly through several exhibits of the Futurist painters between 1912 and 1914, and not as a literary movement. More and more, London seems to become a Futurist city, as Marinetti proudly puts it. But in 1914, when Marinetti attempts to depict the so-called Rebel Artists around Wyndham Lewis as an English subsidiary of the Futurist movement with the active help of the painter Christopher Nevison their manifesto Vital English Art is read on the occasion of the second Futurist exhibition in the Dor Gallery and published in the Observeron June 7th , his patronizing gesture provokes an allergic reaction by the group around Wyndham Lewis. Their reply to the newspaper, published on June 14th, states unmistakably that [t]here are certain artists in England who do not belong to the Royal Academy nor to any of the passist groups, and who do not on that account agree with the Futurism of Sig. Marinetti (Lewis 1963: 62). The small accent aigu on the word passist is very significant in the context of the birth of Wyndham Lewis Great English Vortex. Indeed, Lewis group has not only one but two enemies against which it has to defend and from whom it has to distinguish itself: Italy and France. In an article already published at the end of May 1914, before the official break between the Rebel Artists and the Futurists, Lewis challenges the idea that Futurism should be identified with Italy and not with England: Futurism is largely Anglo-Saxon civilisation. It should not rest with others to be the Artists of this revolution and new possibilities in life. As modern life is the invention of the English, they should have something profounder to say on it than anybody else (Lewis 1989: 32). In his thorough study of the

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English avant-garde, Paul Peppis convincingly shows that the Rebel Artists understood Marinettis attempt to co-opt them as an imperialistic act, and that Lewis responded to this attempt by mocking Marinettis automobilism and what he considered the puerile Latin temperament of the Italians. This of course did not keep him from borrowing heavily from the Futurists artistic and political ideas. But if the Italians were, in spite of their undeniable influence on Vorticism, easy to keep at bay for Lewis and his followers, the French were not. Movements such as Cubism and post-impressionism had reached England only recently, but all the more strongly, and the French supremacy in the arts seemed clearly established. It was Roger Fry who in 1910 had introduced Manet, van Gogh, Gauguin, Czanne but also Rouault and Picasso to the English public by exhibiting their work in the Grafton Galleries, two years before he organised the first Futurist exhibition in the Sackville Gallery of London. While certain English artists and intellectuals were openly Francophile, others such as Lewis (who between 1902 and 1909 had spent several years in France) tried to downplay the importance of French culture for the development of English art by associating it in a very Futurist way with the past. In the opening pages of the first issue of Blast. Review of the Great English Vortex dated June 1914, Lewis first polemically associates the Futurists with the impressionists, thereby denying any significant difference to the Italian movement: The Futurist is a sensational and sentimental mixture of the aesthete of 1890 and the realist of 1870. He then goes on to claim the notion of revolution for the English as opposed to the French: It may be said that great artists in England are always revolutionary, just as in France any really fine artist had a strong traditional vein. The long manifesto which follows works much in the same way, even if its typographical presentation is now clearly marked by the Futurist aesthetics it pretends to reject. Under the two headings of Blast and Bless, Lewis tries to define, sometimes not without humour, the position of the Vorticists. What is significant in these pages is that England is systematically compared and opposed, not to Italy, but to France. After having condemned all that devirilises and weakens its inhabitants its climate, the mild Gulf stream, the mountains keeping back the drastic winds , Lewis then goes on to what really interests him: Oh Blast France. What he

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claims to hate most judging by the size of the font is its sentimental gallic gush, its sensationalism and fussiness, but also the parisian parochialism and the fact that Paris is the Mecca of the American. A little further on in the manifesto Lewis grievances are stated explicitly. I only quote three of them: [T]here is violent boredom with that feeble Europeanism, abasement of the miserable intellectual before anything coming from Paris, Cosmopolitan sentimentality, which prevails in so many quarters (Lewis 1989: 34). And: In dress, manners, mechanical inventions, LIFE, that is, ENGLAND, has influenced Europe in the same way that France has in Art (Lewis 1989: 39). And finally: The nearest thing in England to a great traditional French artist, is a great revolutionary English one (Lewis 1989: 42). Since it is almost impossible to deny Frances artistic hegemony in Europe in the years preceding World War I, Lewis chooses, like Marinetti before him, to identify France with tradition and his own country with modernism. His famous definition of the vortex At the heart of the whirlpool is a great silent place where all the energy is concentrated. And there, at the point of concentration, is the Vorticist can thus be understood as an attempt to avoid the Futurist cult of speed while at the same time appropriating its energy. Significantly, it also mirrors Englands insularity while trying to reinterpret its marginal situation with respect to Europe as a central position, the eye of the storm as it were. Lewis attitude towards France was of course highly ambivalent, as shown again in a 1961 painting by William Roberts, one of the founding members of the Vorticist group. The painting depicts a reunion of the group in 1915, with the first issue of Blast at its centre. It seems rather ironic that the meeting took place at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, as a reproduction of the tower in the background clearly demonstrates. The Eiffel Tower, one of the icons of modernism in Delaunays paintings and in Apollinaires famous poem Zone, strongly contradicts Lewis attempt to identify France with tradition. But the true reason of the surprising proximity between British Vorticism and French modernism might well be the period depicted: Spring 1915. War rages in Europe; a war in which France and England fight side by side against a common enemy. The old antagonism is forgotten (and will only reappear after the end of the war); Germany has become the main target of the Vorticists. In the second and last issue of Blast dated July 1915, it is not France but

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Germany that is identified with traditionalism. Indeed, the editorial by Lewis boldly states that Germany has stood for the old Poetry, for Romance, more stedfastly [sic] and profoundly than any other people in Europe (Blast II: 5). For Lewis, as for Papini, the war is in fact cultural: its hidden source is the unreciprocated love the Germans have for the French and, above all, for Paris:

The Germans love for the French is notoriously un amour malheureux, as it is by no means reciprocated. And the present war may be regarded in that sense as a strange wooing. The Essential German will get to Paris, to the Caf de la Paix, at all costs; if he has to go there at the head of an army and destroy a million beings in the adventure. (Blast II: 6)

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The relationship of the different branches of Russian Futurism towards Marinettis group is subject to innumerable and often contradictory narratives. What has been clearly established is the undeniable influence of Italian Futurism on the development of Russian art, even if this influence has sometimes been denied by way of predating certain documents or declarations. It is obvious that the Russians did not have to wait until Marinettis trip to Russia in 1914 to discover Futurism through its manifestoes, through photographs and publications. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the Russian avant-garde discovered Futurism essentially through the Parisian art circles. Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Gontcharova, two important figures of the reception of Futurism in Russia, lived and worked in Paris during these years and maintained frequent contacts with their Russian colleagues. When, in December 1913, the painter Larionov and the poet and art critic Ilia Zdanevitch later known as Iliazd published their Futurist manifesto Why we cover us with paint in the well-known review Argus, their declaration was followed by a notice in which the editors gave some historical information on Russian Futurism: The Futurist movement is born in the Occident. The Parisian attics are its cradle. Its father is the Gallicised Italian Marinetti. (Larionov 1995: 116) The source of this information is obviously Apollinaires already quoted art column of February 1912, in which he had depicted Futurist painting as a simple imitation of the latest developments in French art.

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Two elements are recurrent in the way in which the Russian Futurists position themselves in relation to Marinetti and his movement. If we limit our analysis to Larionov and Gontcharova, it appears that both accept to be influenced by the Italian Futurists while both simultaneously try to downplay this concrete influence by reducing Futurism to a mere province of French and thus Occidental art as opposed to Russian and Oriental art. In his manifesto of Rayonist painting dated Moscow, June 1912 (but most probably written in 1913), Larionov thus criticises the Futurists for not having a true pictorial tradition, a lack which according to him is responsible for the fact that their theory has simply become a part of French painting (Larionov 1995: 21). To criticize the Futurists whose openly displayed hatred for tradition was one of the best-known features of the movement for not being part of a solid (Italian) tradition seems at first to be some kind of mockery or unintentional joke. But Larionov is in fact talking about a fundamental problem of Futurism, be it Italian or Russian. Without the inscription of a national or cultural identity which establishes some kind of tradition (even if this tradition is only a few years old), Futurism can be appropriated by almost everyone. The question of who came first is not a ridiculous detail in the quarrel of the avant-garde; it is crucial precisely to the extent that anteriority is the only thing which cannot be copied. The problem with which the Russian Futurists are thus confronted is that their Futurism seems to be a second-hand product, depending on its Italian counterpart. This apparent inferiority can only be reversed by rewriting history: either by claiming Russias total independence from the West, or by inventing a history of Russian Futurism as preceding, and not following, Marinettis movement. Yet, the third, most interesting solution used by the Russian Futurists is to promote primitivism as opposed to tradition. Culture, writes the Ego-Futurist Igor Severianine in early 1912, is rotten like a roquefort. I am inseparable from the savages [] (Lemaire 1995: 160) For if culture, like roquefort cheese, is associated with France and occidental civilisation, primitivism is not: in general terms, it is rather associated with the East. So it only takes one more step to make the East the source of inspiration of the West and to establish the anteriority of Russia over Italy or France. This is precisely what Gontcharova does when she formulates the following rhetorical question: From where did all the

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occidental artists, whom we have studied for so long without learning the essential, taken their inspiration, if not from the Orient? (Lista 1973: 41) Gontcharovas point of view is of course a perfect example of what Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit termed occidentalism, and what Isaiah Berlin described as a typical reaction of many a backward, exploited, or at any rate patronised society, which, resentful of the apparent inferiority of its status, reacted by turning to real or imaginary triumphs and glories in its past, or enviable attributes of its own national or cultural character (Berlin 1997: 116). It is in the popular Russian art of icons and so-called loubki (a term used for all forms of popular art such as wooden statues, engravings or needlework) that Larionov and Gontcharova are looking for a counterbalance to Occidental art. In a long article published in the almanac The Donkeys Tail and the Target (named after two art exhibits in 1912 and 1913) which was signed by a certain Varsonifi Parkine from Paris (probably a pseudonym for Larionov himself or Ilia Zdanevitch), the Russians are criticized for idealizing Occidental art instead of turning towards their own culture: Alas, we Russians, while collecting entire galleries of Occidental art, dont pay attention to our own things, which not only match its quality, but are maybe even better and more important than all the things coming from the Occident (Larionov 1995: 57). According to Gontcharova and Larionov, the fundamental difference between Occidental and Oriental art is that the first is based on civilisation, while the second is rooted in culture interpreted as the only perpetual origin of art. Therefore, it may be true that Futurism comes from the Occident; but it doesnt matter anymore, since art itself belongs to the Orient, as Gontcharova is purported to have stated: Art comes from the Orient. If it has existed in Occidental Europe during the Stone Age, that very beautiful art has nothing to do with what has been done afterwards (Larionov 1995: 71). The history of the reception of Futurism in France, England and Russia is an essential part of the origin and rise of what we now call the historical avant-garde, a movement we tend to identify a little too easily with anti-war politics, cosmopolitanism and anti-totalitarianism. It is a fact, though, that nationalism is one of the chief motivations not only of Futurism, but of the avant-garde in general. Only a thorough analysis of the intricate mix of the nationalist motivations and the cosmopolitan aspirations that mark the avant-garde might help to shed

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new light on the charge of totalitarianism that literary and art historians hold from time to time against the avant-garde. The most recent debate in France between Jean Clair and Rgis Debray about the totalitarian aspects of the Surrealist movement again misses this aspect, since neither Clair, who tries to uncover what he considers the dark side of Surrealism its propensity for violence, its voluntary concealment of reason nor Debray, who accuses Clair of taking too seriously what he calls a certain theoretical theatricality (Debray 2003: 18) and of underestimating the fraternal impulse of Surrealism, seem ready to accept the idea that the avant-garde as such follows a pattern of imperialist behaviour. Debrays remarks on the importance of Surrealism as the last global poetry in French that helped to enlarge our hexagonal fraternity to overseas (Debray 2003: 32) are meant to defend the movement against Clairs criticism, but they unwittingly point towards the way in which internationalist aspirations may be determined by nationalist motivations. Instead of focusing on the more or less hidden tendencies towards totalitarianism in the Surrealist movement, it seems more promising to question this paradox.

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