14|AULA cd On Febuary 20, 1909, in the parisine newspaper “Le Figaro”, the “Futuristic Manifest”, by the poet Tommaso Marinetti, impassionately proclaimes the need for a new artistic language, the destruction of libraries,museums and cities that had turned into mausoleums from the past. He advocates for an aesthetics of the new era, of speed and machine.The very next year, the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrá, Russolo and Servini proclaim their own futuristic manifest. The Technical manifest of the futuristics publishes, on that same year, a program in defense of the poetics of the dynamism of art. The exalted imitation of any form of originallity is rejected and divisionism is the starting point to arrive to the expression of simultaneous vision and movement. To achieve it they will adopt the cubist principles of decomposition of reality in superimposed planes so the object unfolds and multiplyies in a repeated combination of images that make no distinction between object and surroundings. The first stage of futurism, around the manifests of 1909 to 1912 and “The exposizione de arte libera” in 1910, in the city of Milan, will be crucial and will extend until Boccioni’s death in 1916. His contributions will be key to the works of Moore, Archipenko and Gabo, and in general to the evolution of contemporary sculpture. It will have great influence in the Vorticism, Cubo-futurism, Rayonism and some members of the Der Blau Reiter. Artistic experimentation: artificial light in movement From 1916 on, Marinetti y Balla lead a group of young people who represent the only alternative to the new classism, and embark on a new phase of less relevance than the previous one. The new optical discoveries, linked to the cinema, had a great influence in the movement; they revealed the multiplication of images and moving things in the retina. In the work by Giacomo Balla, from 1913, “Speeding car + light” the movement, the displacement and the light are expressed as photograms of a movie. Light forms part of the vehicle as the wheels or the chasis; it is defined as a bright patch that moves in the same direction of the vehicle. Light, without meaning in itself is materialized and held in a secuential image. Similar treatment is given to the work titled “Lamparco” from 1910, by Boccioni, (pictorially, is post- impressionist, originated from divisionism and pointillism, and evolving towards cubist fragmentation) where he will focus his experimental work in the representation of the artificial light produced by a lampost. It will be expressed as a sequence of iridescent arrows coming from the lamp, captured in an aureole that surrounds the post and holds the light. Impressionists wanted to represent the instantaneous sensations of light, the variation of its perceptive sensations in the different “luminic moments”, not with a sense of continuity but with one of instantaneousness. An example of this are the studies of pictorial series as snapshots of a visual moment, without associating it to the temporal continuity of the frame of a movie; the futurists will try to retain the concept of real movement in a snapshot, unique and instantaneous. It must be said that, eventhough they want to take credit for being the pioneers of the representation of movement in art, we cannot forget that it was done before, as in the egiptian engravings of Abu Simbel, that date between 1284 and 1264 ac, where speed is represented in the figure of Ramses III shooting arrows by the repetition of bows and arms, and the speed of the horses with multiple legs. Exaggerated concern for the movement For Boccioni, light is one more pictorial theme in his work. It’s a material object to represent, that can be defined in the framework of his artistic movement. In his work “Café Campari” he embodies motion in people by blurring the figures subtly, as though they were moved snapshots. Artificial lights fill the atmosphere with yellow tones, and shadows help strengthen direction. The combination of motion in the characters with the energetic movement of light, rehearsed on the work “Lamparco” strengthens this kinetic expression. This mix of movements, taken to the extreme, is also found in the painting “Living the theater” by Carlo Carrá. On this work, the figures on the foreground seem to be made of light instead of matter; they appear as body masses of light. This representation dilutes the figures with its surroundings and eliminates the shadows from the bodies making them look like luminous photons moving in space. “Café Campari”, (1910). Boccioni “Lamparco”, (1910). Boccioni