The Image of the Machine in Italian Futurism: Manifestos, Music, Paintings

Avdeev Vasilii Aleksandrovich PhD in Art History Postgraduate at the Department of the Study of Art of the Contemporary Art Institute 121309, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Novozavodskaya, 27 a 2theweapon@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Lavrova Svetlana Vital'evna Doctor of Art History Chief Editor of the Bulletin of Vaganova Ballet Academy 191023,, Russia, Leningradskaya oblast', g. Sankt Peterburg, ul. Zodchego Rossi, 2 slavrova@inbox.ru Other publications by this author

The twentieth century became a new era in the development of European civilization, which projected images generated by the technological transformation of reality into the artistic space. The rapid growth of technology and the industrialization of all spheres of life are reflected in the urbanized images of reality in artists' work. This process has covered all artistic areas, both in the visual field and in sound. In their search for original artistic forms that correspond to the spirit of the new time, the Italian Futurists became real pioneers, sweeping away the norms and values of the past from their path. The first of their leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's manifestos was published in 1909 in the newspaper Le Figaro. He extolled the beauty of the car and new technologies, the appearance of cars with their unattainable speed, power, and movement.

In the history of Italian Futurism, one of the most interesting artistic phenomena of the twentieth century, several stages of a surge of interest in the aesthetics of cars can be noted. The machine as the embodiment of speed and technological progress has been the central motif of the pathos of this most energetic current of modernism since its birth. The popularity of the image of the machine as a source of inspiration for Futurists could be argued only by electricity (it was not by chance that Marinetti originally wanted to call his direction electrification ^{[1, p.11]} and [somewhat later] air flight.) The rapid growth of technologies and the industrialization of all spheres of life were reflected in urbanized images of reality in the artists' works. This process covered all artistic spheres of Italian art, most of all: literary (embodied, first of all, in the Futurists' manifestos dedicated to the machine); musical (noise music by Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo); visual (mechanical painting).

The machine in Futurism's literary works

Italian Futurism was the first art direction in the history of art that loudly declared the car as the object of its inspiration. Its goal was to display all the manifestations of modern life on canvas, paper, and metal. The first artistic act of Futurism was the manifesto of the same name, published by Marinetti in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909. In addition to the provocative poetic text, the manifesto contained a program of 11 points summarizing the general provisions of the revolutionary plan for the "renewal of the world," which can be divided into two prominent themes: the first – energy, force, aggression, war, total renewal and destruction of the old; the second – industrial progress, delight in the feeling of speed, admiration for the age of machines, and total industrialization.

Undoubtedly, the central motif of Futurism's first manifesto is the image of a car, a racing car, this "predatory shark" rushing through the streets of the city in a race with death, giving an indescribable feeling of speed and freedom, an intoxicating sense of liberation from armchair wisdom, reasoning, and prudence. The narrator, who ecstatically conveys the delight of mastering the power of the car, easily recognizes Marinetti himself, the spoiled son of wealthy parents, who, unlike most of his followers, could afford a rare luxury at that time – his own sports car. "A racing car, whose hood is decorated with pipes resembling snakes with roaring breath, sounding like buckshot bursts, is more beautiful than the Nika of Samothrace" ^{[2, p. 106]} – perhaps the most famous passage of this text, which is strongly associated with both the artistic current and Marinetti himself.

Shortly after the first manifesto, Marinetti publishes Let's Kill the Moonlight (1911), a verbose, confused poetic work (reminiscent of the style of his scandalous adventure novel Mafia-Futurist, released two years before), the dynamic action of which unfolds among the attributes of the modern world: electric light, a railway, and an airplane with a monstrous engine of one hundred horsepower. In the text The Multiplied Man and the Kingdom of the Machine (1910), released between the two most famous appeals, Marinetti again devotes a separate passage to the motor: "Motors […] they have a personality, a soul, a will […] You need to flatter them, take care of them and never treat them rudely and not tire them […] If you do this, you will suddenly see that this machine made of cast iron and steel, this motor, built according to accurate calculations, gives not only its full productivity but also double, triple, much more and much better than could have been foreseen by the calculations of the designer" ^{[2, p. 71]}.

Gradually, Marinetti's position, who praises the image of the machine, is replaced by that of a fan of everything new that brings with it technological progress, urbanization, social development. In the appeal, "We deny our symbolist teachers, the last lovers of the Moon," Marinetti denies the aesthetics of the landscape, this stupid anachronism, praising the multiplied man who mixes with iron, feeds on electricity, and understands only the pleasure of daily danger and heroism." The leader of Futurism suggests modifying the plots of the nineteenth century with colorful posters that violate the calm greenery of meadows and railway bridges that erase the natural relief of hills, tunnels that drill the blue belly of mountains ^{[2, p. 78]}. The Futurists' obsession with everything new and expressing progress, the denial of everything that symbolizes the past, leads Marinetti and his friends to create a cult they themselves gave the name "modernolatry."

After conducting a series of shocking, scandalous performances, Marinetti received support from young modernist artists from Milan, who keenly felt that their artistic searches in the mainstream of Post-Impressionism did not give the desired result. Having got acquainted with the leader of Futurism's program and the manner of his influence on the public, Umberto Boccioni, together with Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini, decided that "we should come up with something similar in painting" ^{[3, p.15]}. A year after the first manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurist Painting was published. The poetic text, written clearly with Marinetti's participation, still ends with program points. Still, the theses here are mostly negative, negative in nature, scolding any imitation of predecessors, hackneyed plots, linear texture, decorative secessionists, and the theme of nudity, as a positive proposal, introducing only the idea of dynamism and sincerity in the image, as well as declaring the desire to "express the ebullient life of steel, pride, fever and speed" ^{[2, P.128]}.

The list of all the manifestos published by the Futurist movement during Marinetti's lifetime, starting with the first one published in 1909 and ending with the Manifesto of Futurist Words of Music of the Alphabet in Freedom, written by him in 1944 together with Tullio Crali, his most faithful and consistent fan, is more than two hundred texts ^[4]. Even in this last manifesto, created in the year of Marinetti's death and never published, it is said that the voice of the poet of machines is heard in the cry of the new primitive man. In total, there are about a dozen and a half manifestos, in whose name the word "machine" and "mechanical" directly appears, including the text already considered Multiplied Man and the Kingdom of the Machine, published in 1910. Four years after, Marinetti wrote the manifesto Geometric and Mechanical Brilliance and Numerical Sensitivity (1914), dedicated to a new syntax and only metaphorically referring to the images of the dreadnought and the power plant ^[5].

Then, with a large gap in time, Mechanical Art (1923) was published by Ivo Pannaggi, Vinicio Paladini, and Enrico Prampolini (who signed it later, after he made his edits to the text), which became the pinnacle of Futurism's interest in machine aesthetics, replacing the pre-war pathos of vitalism and dynamic sensations. Here, Pannaggi and Paladini insist on the need to continue following the original destructive principles proclaimed by Marinetti, explaining that this stems from the "current all-encompassing presence of modern mechanics" ^[6]. "There are no more nudes, landscapes, figures, symbols, no matter how Futurist they may seem, there is only the chugging of locomotives, the wailing of sirens, the rotation of gears, and that neat, decisive mechanical feeling that defines the atmosphere of our sensitivity. Gears clear our eyes of fog and indecision; everything becomes more sharp, decisive, aristocratic, distinct. We feel mechanical, and we feel built of steel, we are also machines, we are also mechanized by the atmosphere" ^[7].

The authors of the manifesto insist on the need to distinguish between the appearance and the spirit of the machine because when creating mechanical art, European artists almost always stop at the appearance of the machine; therefore, the result is dry, geometric colors (similar to drawings), which, even if they are rhythmically and constructively balanced, lack an inner world. They are more related to craft than art: these plastic constructions depicting real mechanical elements (screws, gears, supports, etc.) do not have genuine expressiveness, being exclusively an end in itself ^[7].

The manifesto ended with appeals to understand that a machine is, first of all, an idea and a spirit, and not an appearance; to use the image of mechanical elements without regard to real mechanics, due to technical parameters and scientific laws; to follow the rhythm of the machine in creativity, offering the artist endless analogies for inspiration. In the same year, Paladini, one of the authors of the Manifesto of Mechanical Art, publishes Estetica Meccanica, where he argues that the machine, which is an integral part of us all, becomes the starting point of the Futurist program, offering "new forms of struggle, new aspirations and, in general, the renewal of the atmosphere." The atmospheric and disembodied nature of Manet, Renoir, and Medardo should be replaced by "geometrization and solidification in the direction of a unique and indestructible architecture, thought and calculation, antisensorialism, and antigraciousness, hard and metal art"^[8].

The manifesto of mechanical art really "stirred up the beehive" of the Futurists, causing controversy and fascination with the topic of "machine art" among them. One by one, new "mechanical" manifestos began to appear. In 1924, Fedele Azari, an Italian pilot who joined the Futurists and created the first paintings that marked the beginning of the aerial painting style, published a text called For the Company for the Protection of Machines (Futurist Manifesto. In fact, this is a song of praise for the machine: "The machine has enriched our lives, the machine has multiplied our existence, the machine has destroyed distances, the machine has increased our standard of living" ^[9]. Citing as an example of the exceptional usefulness, irreplaceability, endurance of machines, cases that he personally witnessed in the war, Azari calls not only to love but also to take care of cars.

The following year, the futurist Luigi Colombo (Fillìa) published the manifesto The Mechanical Idol (1925), a lengthy poetic text calling for the creation of a new religion of machines. "A mechanical idol," says Fillìa, "can be represented in a thousand forms (for each machine has its own special meaning), but it always remains a symbol that embodies the synthesis of human faith" ^[9]. Without stopping on the topic of religion, Fillìa publishes the manifesto Mechanical Sensuality (1926), a philosophical text in a style devoted to describing a modern mechanical civilization that is fundamentally different from the previous ones. "Every person has an atavistic intuition that exhausts certain emotions: until yesterday we did not discover this because the environment did not give us any other way out, but mechanical civilization absorbs us with all activities, intensely occupies us, causes us new sensations" ^[10].

The general fascination with the theme of the car did not pass by the leader of Futurism. In the bulletin, Page of the Art of Futurism, Marinetti publishes a short appeal, "The Aesthetics of the Machine" (1926). "A Futurist poet should have that typical passion for today's life, which Boccioni called modernity. He should love what people have invented […] invented the most wonderful thing: the machine […] There is no salvation beyond the aesthetics of the machine and its mechanical geometric splendor, which we Futurists have been preaching and glorifying for 16 years" ^[11]. In the same year, the indefatigable Fillìa, together with little-known colleagues P. Courtoni and A. K. Caligaris, published a pamphlet, Futurist Art, with the subtitle Sacred Mechanical Art. The manifesto asserts the goal of Futurist art as a mechanical interpretation of the universe, "raising painting to the height of modern life, which makes it a spiritual continuation through all sensitive forces" ^[12]. According to the manifesto's authors, the machine is designed to end the former spiritual world of man, offering the prospect of a world of mechanical superhumans instead. In conclusion, the manifesto authors extol the image of a "mechanical idol" close to each of them: a bicycle, an airplane, a power plant turbine ^[12].

In general, the subject of Futurist artists' manifestos is moving further away from painting, approaching admiration for the aesthetics of industrial products. This passion for industrial design products reflects the soon-to-come success of the Italian industry in creating perfect samples of equipment in all areas – from the automotive industry to the design of household appliances ^[13]. Starting in 1927, Futurism joined literary works in the theme of the machine. Fortunato Depero is one of the most famous figures in Futurism's "second wave" and the most successful commercial artist of the direction. In a lengthy text, there is visual complexity. The 1915–27 motor simulator "Depero" quite without modesty declares himself a pioneer of machine art, who anticipated using "a complex fusion of abstract, dynamic, transparent, bright, penetrating into the movement of plastic expressions." "A picture in a frame, whether it is a landscape, a portrait, a composition drawn on one plane, or a sculpture created from static matter, today as an artistic expression does not satisfy our machine sensitivity, electro-fast, magically artificial and ultra-noisy" ^[14]. In the Manifesto to Industrialists published after the "Plastic Complex" (1927), Depero was already openly admiring Italian-made products while simultaneously advertising himself as a Futurist artist and sculptor who can "further glorify your products, with the dignity of truly modern art.." ^[15].

In 1930, the Manifesto of Aeronautical Painting was published, signed by a number of Turin Futurists headed by Fillìa. Putting aside other subjects, the authors of the manifesto extol the "new symbols" of the modern era, translated into plastic images; "cosmic landscapes," which are revealed to us without exceeding any earthly value; "spiritual aerial organisms, plastically representing new deities and secrets created by machines" ^[16]. The choice of an airplane as the main object of creativity among a wide range of "mechanical idols" should not be surprising, given the rapid development of aviation, which caused enthusiasm in many countries at that time. In Italy, this trend became dominant in the early 1930s, immediately after Italo Balbo's transatlantic flight, one of Mussolini's closest associates from the very beginning of the fascist movement. The propaganda made Balbo a modern hero and a prototype of the man of the future and was designed to demonstrate the capabilities of Italy as an advanced scientific and industrial state. Published in 1933, the manifesto Aeronautical Painting signed by all the main futurists of the "first" and "second" waves finally determined the direction of Futurist painting's development towards the image of flight, both when viewed from the ground and when viewed from the cockpit of an airplane. From now on, the word "Futurism" was inextricably linked with the epithet "aero," which immediately led to the appearance of "aeromusic," "aerosculpture," "aeropoesia," etc.

"Music of machines" Italian Futurism

The first attempts at a total transformation of the sound sphere were the manifestos of Francesco Ballila Pratelal: Manifesto of Futurist Musicians (1910) and Music of Futurism: Technical Manifesto (1911). Both manifestos created theoretical foundations for practical ideas in the field of Futurist art. A little later, the manifesto The Art of Noise (1913) appeared by Luigi Russolo, who initially acted as a member of the Futurist artists' circle. No less intense were the practical searches that were reflected in the Russian futurists: Arseny Avraamov, the creator of the famous Horn Symphony, which became a practical embodiment of the ideas of spatial music and the art of noise, as well as Nikolai Kulbin, Arthur Luorié, and Mikhail Matyushin. The roar of engines cutting through the entire soundscape of the twentieth century struck terror into some artists and inspired others. The first Futurism musical manifesto did not undermine the foundations of musical thinking. For the most part, it was a critique of the established stereotypes in musical composition and the very system of music's existence. The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, published on October 11, 1910, logically followed the literature and painting manifestos ^[17]. It was written by Pratella, the most outstanding of the musicians and ideologists of Futurism, the creator of the Futurist opera La Sina d'Vargoun. Pratella and Marinetti first met on August 11, 1910, when an intermezzo from the opera was performed at the Municipal Theater of Imole.

In the Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, Pratella appeals to creative youth because only young people can understand him as they are hungry for something new, relevant, alive. He talks about the process of degradation of Italian music, falling to the level of "vulgar melodrama." Having joined the Italian musical society, he was able to experience firsthand the "intellectual mediocrity" and "commercial baseness that placed Italian music below the Futurist evolution of music in other countries "^[17]. Pratella lists composers from other European countries who, from his point of view, were making great strides towards the Futurist music revolution. For example, he writes about how Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss overcame the past with their innovations. He expresses his sincere admiration for the Englishman Edward Elgar, who destroys the past, resists the strengthening of symphonic forms, and finds new ways to combine instruments to create various effects corresponding to Futurist aesthetics ^[17].

Pratella argues that Italian composers, whose "stagnant schools, conservatories, and academies are like traps for young people, and in which the impotence of professors demonstrates conservatism, constrains any attempts at innovation" ^[17]. Pratella expresses his most profound regret that young, talented musicians, who are mainly focused on writing operas under the protection of publishing houses, do not cope well with the tasks assigned to them and, due to the lack of a solid ideological and technical basis, their operas are rarely staged ^[17]. Speaking about the symphony, he claims that it is a "refuge for unsuccessful opera composers," whom he has already mentioned earlier, "justifying their failures, the death of musical drama." Pratella points out that they confirm the traditional statement that "Italian composers do not know how to create a symphonic form. And only the composer's own impotence is to blame for this double failure" ^[17].

Russolo's The Art of Noise was the third in a series of musical manifestos. It became the most revolutionary musical document that undermined the fundamental sound foundations of musical art. As a new musical poetics, Russolo suggests the use of all kinds of noises and new noise instruments intonarumori (noise generators, or instruments that produce noise). His desire to break the cycle of pure sounds and go out into the infinite space of noise becomes the starting point of ideas that realized themselves further in the concrete music of the second half of the twentieth century and then at the beginning of the twenty-first century. "In ancient times, life was completely silent. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of machines, Noise was generated. Today, Noise triumphs and completely dominates the feelings of a person" ^[18]. The transformation of the attitude toward sound followed in parallel with the development of machines. And it is precisely these circumstances that have become the source of a variety of noises, a situation in which the sound familiar in a musical context no longer has priority over noise sounds.

In their call for the complete destruction of all established structures, be it the social and educational structures of conservatories and museums or the aesthetic and thematic foundations of creativity, the Futurists realized that only "noise" could provoke such a revolution. For a long time, noise was forbidden in artistic practice. Indeed, the existence of art galleries and concert halls proves that art and music sought to move away from the noise curtain of cities. Therefore, the perception of noise by the Futurists can be interpreted as a desire to destroy sound stereotypes. Futurist noise becomes a kind of weapon to "destroy museums and all sorts of academies." Whatever the motives behind the propaganda of "noise," it (noise) will always be perceived as a destructurization because it dissolves existing cultural differences, including the differences between sound relief and background, between programmed and random sound phenomena.

Russolo's manifesto, The Art of Noise, determined the vector of development of new music of the second avant-garde, particularly the specific music of Pierre Schaeffer and then the specific instrumental music of Helmut Lachenmann. The musical evolution parallels the development of machines, which has created a bright variety of "noise competition." With the help of noise, the circle of so-called "pure sounds" was opened. Today, noise has become a side phenomenon of technological progress in real life and a source of creative inspiration in composing practice.

In his original manifesto, published in Le Figaro, Marinetti could only imagine the sound as a car accident, in which an unharmed Futurist artist, aka a mechanical artist, enjoys the fusion of metal and dirt in the "infernal ditch" of the irresistible traditionalism of Italy's cultural past. Later, in the music of the second avant-garde, the idea of a collision of cars in Lachmann's work becomes the basis for explaining his idea of sound perception in perspective, which involves a certain physical reaction to the corresponding sound, when it is important for the listener to understand not the source of the sound, but what actually happened. In the context of Futurism, noise was an evidential component of industrial modernity, a representative of the dynamic urban aura and evidence of an ever-increasing speed. If the sound past is a gloomy oppressive silence, then the future belongs to speed and a wide sound-dynamic amplitude. Marinetti defines noise as the audacious artist's audiovisual dynamism, replacing orderly practices with the chaos of adventure. Three years passed before Marinetti approached the concept of noise as a creative discipline in his next manifesto, The Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature, in 1912, where he states that Noise is a manifestation of the dynamism of objects ^[19].

At this stage in the Futurist evolution, Marinetti uses noise in much the same sense as the famous social anthropologist Jacques Attali, who presents "noise as an outbreak of violence, the destruction of the code and an attack on the norms of the social sphere in which it works." The French sociologist and post-Marxist Attali, in his study Noise: the Political Economy of Music (1977), tries to draw an analogy between the way of organizing sounds and the way of organizing society ^[20]. In this case, the way music exists reflects the way of modern production and contains the rudiments of technical evolution. Attali was the first to point out the specifics of the interaction model, the ability to predict historical events, and the emerging new social formations. Noise is essentially the same as music, which is also a Futurist beacon of technology, an ominous mirror image of the production method. Attali believes that "in all cultures, noise is associated with dirty sound, and is perceived in a negative context, rather than as a weapon, or desecration" ^[20].

However, if initially noise was used exclusively as a weapon against the dominant hegemony of traditional Italian art, then, logically, it should have acquired the status of a special Futurist art. The function of noise consists of several aspects: an auditory resource of the social "organization" of the world, capable of evoking an emotional, non-mimetic sense of industrial modernity, and as a deconstruction of the traditional sound environment. This reflexive process of auditory perception arises precisely under the influence of Russolo since Futurism sought to move from a reaction to traditional creative practices to the creation of new forms. The Futurist use of noise works according to this dual logic. Promoting a sound object from noise to the status of art attacks existing cultural norms and proclaims a new mechanized, enhanced order of auditory sensations. Marinetti's use of the word "noise" is in itself a conscious intermediary, an adjective descriptor of industrial and mechanized actions demonstrating speed and power. In contrast to the theory of the new noise function presented by Marinetti from aesthetic and social positions, Russolo not only theorized the concept of noise music but also cataloged sound objects, dividing existing noises into six categories and engaged in the development of tools, presenting an instrument for each of the six categories of noise:

1. rumble, explosion, the noise of falling water, diving noise, growling. 2. whistling, snoring, snuffling. 3. grumbling, rustling, grunting, gurgling. 4. hissing, crackling, buzzing, stomping. 5. the noise of beating on metal, wood, stone, leather, clay, etc. 6. voices of people and animals, shouting, laughing, howling, moaning, crying.

The widest range of diverse and competing noises makes it possible not only for imitation but also for combinations that allow you to form new sounds. Together with the artist Ugo Piatti, he created several instruments called intonarumori, bright noise modulators with corresponding sound-like names: "Fuse" (Scoppiatore), "Croaker" (Gracidatore), "Truncator" (Stroppiciatore), "Voyschik" (Ululatore), "Rumbler" (Rumble), "Squeaker" (Scraping), "Gurgler" (Gorgogliatore), "Crackler" (Crepitatore), "Howler" (Rombatore), "Rumbler" (Tuonatore), "Whistler" (Sibilatore), "Buzzer" (Ronzatore), "Cruncher" (Crumpler). Russolo's representation of noise as a sound attribution of an invisible machine is similar to replacing an anthropomorphic object with a machine, which also becomes an object of admiration. Russolo's presentation as an inventor, artist, and composer, as the Grove Dictionary says about him, hides the devaluation of his compositional efforts compared to his work as a creator of intonarumori (noise instruments). This also downplays his merits as a creator of new aesthetic ideas in his work as an artist. Perhaps there is nothing to argue about in this assessment since it sounds somewhat ironic: Russolo's Futurist music traditionally in the history of music refers to the music of the past.

The only sound material that left a real trace, making it available to researchers, is the first seven bars of the score of the noise piece The Awakening of the City (1913–14). Four instruments with which it would be possible to play this score were destroyed during the Second World War. The loss of Russolo's works inevitably distorted our understanding of his work and drew attention to these, although certainly progressive, but in some cases still speculative, theoretical, and mechanical aspects. The study of the extant fragments of Russolo's The Awakening of the City serves as an example of the contradictions characteristic of the era between traditional thinking and the exciting possibilities of the manifestation of Futurist thinking in his work. This pairing is present in Russolo's musical works, which, due to the loss of almost all of his music, leave aside the main techniques of his compositional thinking. However, it is difficult to determine where Russolo would follow traditional musical values.

A researcher of musical Futurism, B. Brown, in his translation of Russolo, draws attention to the fact that at the time of the creation of The Art of Noise, relatively few people actually read Russolo's essay ^{[22, p. 5]}. Brown, nevertheless, draws attention to the most important, from his point of view, fragments of the text that speak about the prospects of his ideas for twentieth-century music. The first provisions of the "doctrine of concrete music allow us to find aesthetic connections with twentieth-century musical figures like Schaeffer and John Cage" ^{[22, p. 7]}. The reputation that developed around Russolo as the inventor of noise machines existed for a long time in Paris after he departed from the city where he accompanied avant-garde films on his rumorarmonio (noise harmonium). The Art of Noise (1913), in which Russolo exchanges ideas with Marinetti and his manifesto, published in the newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909, demonstrate the inconsistencies of progressive and traditional ways of thinking and create a dissonance in his ideas. Comparing these two manifestos, we notice that each of the authors calls for joint creative interaction of a group of like-minded artists, although only the author subscribes to this text in both cases. Despite the claims of self-renewing originality based on scientific discoveries, the manifestos, one way or another, reveal the connections of Futurism with the recent past, even though they are trying in every possible way to get rid of its traces.

Despite Marinetti's self-aggrandizing and harsh rhetoric about renewal, the manifesto is rooted in the late nineteenth century's political, cultural, and philosophical trends. It is known that contemporary Italian intellectuals such as J. Papini, J. Prezzolini, and A. Soffici criticized the Futurists for their "lack of originality" ^{[22, p. 10]}. At the same time, the question arises whether this criticism was directed at Marinetti. Marinetti likely advocated the connection of technology and music, which was reflected in Pratella's Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music in 1911. Thus, Marinetti's example stimulated the development of Russolo's musical ideas. The awareness of this new form of expression becomes the central theme of Russolo's musical and noise works. His idea of noise machines as musical instruments (the first of which was ready a month after the manifesto's publication) is projected exclusively on the future of music. And it is this representation of noise material that has become commonplace since the 1940s with the advent of musique concrète. Just like all other Futurists, the authors of manifestos, Russolo presents the concert space in a peculiar way – the hall will never be a museum again, and the performer will not become a curator: "We, futurists, deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner disturbed our emotions and deeply touched our hearts. Now that there is enough of this type of music created, and we are much more able to enjoy the noise of trams, the roar of car engines, the clatter of cars, and the sounds of the confrontation of the crowd, we prefer this rather than listening to Heroic or Pastoral Music again" ^[18].

The expansion of timbre resources is certainly the most innovative factor of Russolo's compositional thinking. It involves the expansion of ideas about sound pitch and the variety of rhythmic material, so the octave can be divided into quartertones instead of semitones since this division provides "dynamic continuity." The use of endless noise vibrations can serve as a rhythmic counterpoint. Thus, Russolo's vision of music covers not only the manifestation of noise as a musical material but also some aspects of the expansion of sound space, using soundscapes from modern urban life, the possibilities of the machine age, and a conscious emphasis on the ever-increasing dynamism that characterizes the art of Futurism in general. More traditional ideas about music affect the formal properties of a musical-noise composition, which for Russolo seems more abstract than imitative. Although many Futurists highly appreciated extreme subjectivity, abstraction was by no means uncommon in their art. "In paintings such as Rainbow Interpretations, the artist Giacomo Balla relied on a completely scientific spectral analysis of light," says Brown ^{[22, p. 12]}.

Based on this, one could also assume that Russolo was interested in the artistic response to the scientific properties of sound. It certainly provides a fairly wide range of observations regarding the nature of overtones in noise sound, which suggests that this was exactly the case. On the other hand, Russolo tried his best to emphasize the "logic" of his music, which seems to be more traditional than the sound objects themselves. Marinetti's liberation of sounds from syntax and grammar was clearly a source of inspiration for Russolo. Such a separation of sound from imitative associations in Russolo's music could well have come from Marinetti, which in the end, does not imply or deny the existence of musical syntax. Russolo did not actually discuss the problems of finding a new musical syntax or grammar as such, except for the assumption that noise can be regulated by harmonic and rhythmic means, giving us reason to believe that these elements played a decisive role in his music and in particular for the principle of "dynamic continuity." The traditional concept becomes a signal that Russolo treats his activities at a certain stage as an evolution, and yet not a revolution. In this light, one can also consider Russolo's "emancipation of the timbre" in the same context as the Schoenberg emancipation of dissonance. Obviously, he sought to update the musical resources available to the composer at that time and did not offer to completely replace them. Russolo's desire for practicality both in the designations and in the comments on the performance of his works meant that he tried to combine new ideas with existing ones about musical composition. The term "theme" in Russolo's article "Orchestra of Noise Instruments" may have a metaphorical meaning. Still, it may also signal that traditional musical methods of musical foundations were present in Russolo's practice ^[23].

Such pragmatism suggests the Futurist composers' possible practice of using intonarumori, along with standard orchestral instruments. Russolo notes that he added timpani and xylophone in addition to the orchestra of noise instruments. Pratella offers a combination of traditional and non-traditional instruments in his opera Eroe. Nevertheless, here, at least from Russolo's point of view, it becomes clear that he prefers new tools by themselves. Futurist music, as Russolo convinces us, from the point of view of the aesthetics of musical composition, seems less radical than one might imagine. Nevertheless, that such compromises exist in principle suggests that Russolo's compositions demonstrate a certain pragmatism, if not conservatism, which served to organize the musical material. In the first seven first bars of the Awakening of the City, one can find evidence that Russolo eliminates any associative connotations with the help of the absence of traditional instruments.

Brown, in his article exploring the cases of interaction of his contemporaries' major musicians with Russolo and his noise instruments and music written for them, writes about the case when Stravinsky met Russolo and heard his music during his trip to Milan in 1915; Diaghilev and Prokofiev were also present at this concert ^{[20, p. 15]}. Six years later, three Futurist music concerts took place in Paris, which could not but influence Casella, Honegger, Millau, Ravel, and Stravinsky. The performance of rumorarmonio in 1929 took place with the participation of Edgard Varèse. It was a series of four keyboard instruments based on the principle of the hurdy-gurdy, developed by Russolo in Thiene and Milan in the period starting from about 1921 and continued further in Paris in 1928–1929. They combined his intonarumori's basic principles and sound qualities (and probably some of their mechanisms), presenting the equivalent of several separate instruments in one case. It resembled a harmonium, and the fourth version was somewhat larger, resembling a small organ. The first two were built in parallel approximately from 1921 to 1924 in Thiene, the third, about which there is no detailed information, in 1925–1926, and the fourth in 1927–1929. Between 1928 or 1929 and 1931, the last rumorarmonio was installed in Studio-28 in Paris, where it was used to accompany silent films and at some other events. The plan to produce this version of the tool on an industrial scale did not lead to anything. As a result, none of the intonarumori that Russolo developed with his assistant (and restorer of paintings), Piatti, have survived. However, some instruments have been reconstructed according to drawings and descriptions left by Russolo.

Undoubtedly, in the history of Futurism, the greatest influence in the field of music as an adept of the noise music of machines was played by Russolo, originally one of the members of the first circle of Futurist painters, who found greater opportunities in notes and sounds for implementing the postulates of Futurism than in lines and colors. Undoubtedly, Marinetti's literary and personal example stimulated the development of the musical ideas of the author of Awakening of the City. The themes of Futurist art that can be found in Marinetti's manifesto are repeated in Russolo. First, we need to believe in the omnipotence of technology and the future and not retreat into the past. Instead of preserving traditions, the Futurist should plunge into the unknown, rejoicing in the age of cars, raising it to the level of an artistic object that celebrates speed and dynamism, exalting conflicts and irreconcilability of positions, and exploring all these relationships in the modern life of the city. The goal is a way of artistic expression that will be flexible enough to express the range of experience available to someone in the coming century, his speed, mobility, and faith in unprecedented scientific progress.

Music is a messenger of transformations because changes in the noise sphere determine the processes of social change, according to Attali. Listening to music is listening to the surrounding noise, realizing that its appropriation and control reflect power, essentially political. The Futurists, in their call for the complete destruction of all established cultural structures, be it the social structures of conservatories and museums or the aesthetic and thematic structures of the methods of artistic production, which in their assessments stupefy the dominance of the dogma of nineteenth-century art, realized that it was "noise" that could provoke such a revolution. War and revolution are interrelated elements. Thus, the perception of noise in Futurism can be interpreted as a desire to destroy traditional cultural and political forces, as a declaration of war against conservatism and traditional thinking. Futurist noise becomes a weapon with which they can destroy museums and libraries through sound agents, and this weapon is aimed primarily at academism.

"Machine painting" of Italian Futurism

Unlike the First Manifesto of 1909, mostly dedicated to Marinetti's complete admiration for the machine and technological progress, in the manifesto of the Futurist painters, published a year later, the theses are mostly negative, negative in nature, denouncing in all ways the imitation of predecessors, hackneyed plots, linear texture, the decorativeness of the secessionists and the theme of nudity, as a positive proposal introducing only the idea of dynamism and sincerity in the image, as well as declaring the desire to "express the ebullient life of steel, pride, fever, and speed." What were the Futurist artists' successes in implementing technogenic images, including images of cars, on their canvases? Among the most famous Futurist works of the "first wave" can be called the Dynamism of the Car by Russolo (1912), depicting a rapid silhouette dissected by pointed planes that change the usual square appearance of a self-moving carriage of the 1910s. Such "geometric treatment" of a familiar unsightly silhouette, designed, in accordance with the title of the work, to show the dynamism and speed of the machine, resembles how "prototypes of the dream car from the 1960s" ^{[24, p.52]}, although associations with the cockpit of a jet fighter of the same time seem even more plausible. However, it is impossible not to note Russolo's self-plagiarism, who compositionally and technically copied his earlier work The Uprising (1911), actually replacing the rebellion's central socio-political element.

Most likely, the car's appearance as the subject of the picture of one of the most romantic Futurists of the first wave, who was fond of music no less than painting, did not happen without acquaintance with the cars owned by Marinetti. The driving style of Futurism's leader (described by him in the first manifesto of 1909) obviously was also embodied in the image of rushing and sweeping away everything in its path, depicted by Russolo. The image of technical objects is also found in some other early Futurist works. So, in the unique degree of skill and emotional impact of Boccioni's early Futurist work States of the Soul, the left canvas of the triptych, entitled Goodbyes (1911), depicts a steam locomotive arriving in clouds of smoke, pushing the space with its steel gray-green body, not devoid of aesthetically perfect technical details: a pipe, a cylinder of a smoke box, its pointed cone depicted on the side, a safety valve, angular elements of the driver's cab and an aggressively protruding screw tie. Everything, even the side number depicted in bright yellow schematic numbers, corresponds to the desire to convey the car's aesthetic character, its power. In contrast to Russolo's schematic style, Boccioni complements the central figure with elements of an industrial landscape – an electric tower, a gloomy building with the rhythms of blind windows, a schematically depicted railway car.

In other Futurist works devoted to the images of the technogenic world – What the Tram Told Me by Carlo Carrà (1911), The Speed of the Car's Rotation (1910), The Racing Car (1912), and The Speed of the Car (1913) by Balla, A Memory of the Journey (1911) by Balla. Severini, almost devoid of figurativeness, abstract and mosaic, but quite consistent with the concept of depicting dynamism as the simultaneity of different plans developed by Boccioni as the main ideologist of the Futurist painters, there are neither the transfer of perfection of technical design nor hints of admiration for machine aesthetics. In Futurist Painting in the 1910s, writes the authoritative Russian Futurism researcher E. Bobrinskaya, "the image of mechanical movement and the new technical world did not occupy a dominant position at all. In the dynamics of the new industrial and urban reality, they saw rather a mythologized image of their 'religion of life,' in which the central place belonged to the thirst for absolute power and immortality." This vitalistic aspect in the perception of the technical world distinguishes the works of the 1910s from the paintings of the 1920s, which also addressed the themes of the machine world ^{[1, p.22]}.

The second period of Futurism, chronographically separated from the first by the end of the First World War, was characterized by decline and confusion in the Italian artistic environment. In general, there was confusion in Italian Futurist painting, a cooling of interest in Boccionian ideas, and the transition of most Futurists to other artistic and ideological positions. Bobrinskaya calls the first post-war period a time when the feeling of exhaustion of the former forms, the former ideological postulates dominated ^{[1, p. 78]}. Extravagance, critical attitude, and a call to order instead of extremism, revolutionary pathos, and a thirst for destruction – a trend that swept all cultural circles of Europe at that time ^{[1, p.78]}. The creation and design of Futurist cabarets, the invention of "lifestyle" – clothing, furniture, interior items – what the old and new colleagues of Marinetti were doing at that time, especially Balla, Depero, and Prampolini. All of them, as well as the Futurist architect V. Marki, were united by the House of Arts construction project and, later, the Theater of Independents, which for more than ten years was led by Anton Guilio Bragaglia, another veteran of the Futurist movement ^{[1, p.85]}. At the same time, under the influence of the revolutionary example of Soviet Russia, an interest in industrial and machine subjects was formed in Italian Futurism. The appearance and development of similar ideological artistic trends – the Dutch De Style, the German Bauhaus, the French "Purism" and Russian Constructivism could not but leave a trace in Italy, where Futurism inevitably lost its positions as the "advanced avant-garde," giving way to Dadaism and Surrealism ^{[1, p. 78]}.

The quintessential interest in machine aesthetics, which replaced the pre-war pathos of vitalism and "dynamic sensations," was the Manifesto of Mechanical Art, signed by Pannaggi and Paladini and later by Prampolini in 1922. The Italian researcher M. E. Versari bluntly says that the appearance of such a document "in many respects is evidence of the moment of instability and reorganization that the Italian Movement experienced in the early 1920s". This poetic text draws the Futurists' attention to the forgotten aesthetics of industrial forms, praised by Marinetti in his first manifesto in 1909 ^{[25, p. 232]}. According to Pannaggi and Paladini, the need to continue following the original destructive principles proclaimed by Marinetti is paradoxically explained by the fact that it stems from the current all-encompassing presence of modern mechanics ^[6]. "There are no more nudes, landscapes, figures, symbols," no matter how Futurist they may seem, "there is only the chugging of locomotives, the wailing of sirens, the rotation of gears, and that neat, determined mechanical feeling that defines the atmosphere of our sensitivity. Gears clear our eyes of fog and indecision; everything becomes more sharp, decisive, aristocratic, distinct. We feel mechanical, and we feel built of steel, we are also machines, we are also mechanized by the atmosphere" ^[7].

The poetic flight in Marinett's spirit does not explain the fundamental novelty of the new manifesto, and the authors are forced to go into specifics: "However, it is necessary to distinguish between the appearance and the spirit of the machine. When we were talking about metal, all these screws and nuts, pulleys and gears, we were misunderstood. We need to clarify our idea: the posters and works of Futurism published at the exhibition and commented on around the world have pushed many brilliant artists, Italians, French, Dutch, Belgians, Germans, and Russians to mechanical art. But they almost always stop at the exterior of the machine; therefore, the result is dry geometric colors (similar to drawings), which, even if they are rhythmically and structurally balanced, lack an inner world; They are more related to craft than to art: these plastic constructions depicting real mechanical elements (screws, gears, supports, etc.) do not have genuine expressiveness, being exclusively an end in itself " ^[7]. The manifesto ends with calls to understand that a machine is, first of all, an idea and a spirit, and not an appearance; to use the image of mechanical elements without regard to real mechanics, due to technical parameters and scientific laws; to follow the rhythm of the machine in creativity, offering the artist endless analogies for inspiration" ^[7].

The uncertainty of the theoretical position of the authors of the Manifesto of Mechanical Art, Versari, characterizes it as "an unstable theoretical equilibrium, masking difficulties in the search for a certain stylistic and ideological conceptualization of artistic modernity in the early 1920s" ^[6]. Pannaggi and Paladini illustrated their vision of the new Futurist art with two graphic works, Proletarian and Mechanical Composition. In the last rather primitive drawing, Pannaggi depicted a "linear set of gears and engines," adding the letters HP (English Horse Power – horsepower) to the composition, so he will sign his subsequent works. Paladini's composition is also a "conglomerate of intersecting shadows of gears, pistons and a human silhouette in a flat, two-dimensional image" ^[6].

The question of the primary source of Pannaggi and Palladini's artistic ideas continues to remain open. Some researchers (E. Crispolti, A. K. Toni) see traces of the influence of French Purism in their early works' style. Such a statement does not seem unfounded if we recall that Purism, which arose in 1918, claimed to be a product of a man-made civilization, inspired by the impeccable interaction of parts of well-established mechanisms and the clarity of geometric structures. The Purists also had their own manifesto entitled After Cubism. In addition, one of the influential participants in the movement was the above-mentioned Ferdinand Léger, who also praised the aesthetics of cars. Despite the call for victory over natural chaos with the help of technological achievements of the mind, the main subject of the Purists' images was still life. For example, in Léger's painting Mechanical Elements (1926), technical elements and mechanical devices were much less common, stylistically similar to Pannaggi and Paladini's considered graphic works ^[26]. The Italian researcher A. D'Amelia notes that in addition to Purism, Constructivism, and metaphysical painting, the influence of Balla's latest plastic achievements can be traced in the style of Paladini's paintings – The Proletarian of the Third International, The Ninth Hour (1922), Mechanical Rhythms (1922–1923). Indeed, Pannaggi and Paladini met and became close at the Theater of Independent Bragaglia, where Balla worked, under whose strong influence they fell, becoming one of his most promising students ^{[23, p.231]}.

Enrico Prampolini, in a review of one of these exhibitions, praises Paladini's work Power Plant, highly appreciating its artistic qualities, and notes that the author "perceives the machine spiritually as a source of inspiration" [ibid.]. Nevertheless, the place where "mechanical art" was born – the Bragaglia Theater – had a dominating influence on the scope of the manifesto program. This is also why the new creators of "mechanical art" began to pay special attention to scenography and theatrical productions on the theme of machines and mechanics, which continued until 1927 when the Pannagi's ballet to Stravinksy's music was staged at the Theater of Independent Artists with Russian dancers ^{[25, p.236]}. Obviously, the most significant painting by the creators of the manifesto remains the Rushing Train (1922) by Pannaggi, first presented at the Bragaglia Art House in 1923. According to D' Amelia, in this picture, the artist managed to "combine the old aesthetics of speed and the new mythology of the machine" ^{[25, p. 231]}. The work, made in the style of early Futurism on the verge of abstracting geometric forms, is filled with an extraordinary emotional charge. "A powerful locomotive rushes diagonally towards the viewer as if launched into space by the power of a motor. Its approach excites the perception by blurring accelerating shapes, the engine's noise and the wheels' rumble, the shrill screech of a whistle, and the impetuosity of air flows ^{[27, s. 236]}. In addition, the machine's energy is also contrastingly expressed here by a schematic image of fire – a flame in the mouth of a locomotive boiler ^{[28, p.]}.

Before disappearing, "mechanical art" passed a short stage of "increased spiritualization" in the image of the machine world, the artistic expression of which, according to E. Bobrinskaya, was "a hard, automatic rhythm based on repetition stopped and were based on strictly outlined forms of the geometric world of technology, clear edges of emphasized three-dimensional volumes, local color, a predilection for hard metal surfaces with a cold shine" ^{[1, p.89]}. Interestingly, the works made in a similar style were presented by Depero in 1917 in his graphic series (perhaps the best of all that he created), consisting of drawings The Magic Door, Gravity and Weightlessness, The Mediterranean Perspective, etc. The three-dimensionality of these works, compared with his later numerous flat images of human puppets (the so-called "Depero style"), create a sense of combining the idea of mechanicism and metaphysical content in the spirit of Giorgio de Chirico. At the same time, the most famous paintings representing mechanical art are The Proletarian of the Third International (1922) by Paladini, The Figures in Love (1923) by Balla, The Sisters (1922) and The Rational Man (1928) by Nikolay Diulgheroff, Mechanical Landscape (1927) by Fillìa (Luigi Colombo). They produce a double impression of a combination of cold geometric abstraction and a certain lack of expressionlessness, incompleteness of artistic means. Probably a logical continuation of the artistic search, which was started in Italy by Balla. The appearance and development of the style of aerial painting was the result of Balla and continued by Paladini, Pannaggi, Diulgheroff, and others. Aeropitttura became the most significant phenomenon in second-wave Futurism, but the theme of mechanicism no longer played a significant role there.

…

Among the creators of the manifestos of "first-wave" Futurism, the only one of the authors who paid attention to the car was Marinetti himself. But at the same time, Marinetti was not a pioneer in this field. The French journalist M. Dukan wrote Modern Songs in the middle of the nineteenth century – a collection of poems where scientific discoveries were celebrated for the first time. The poet F. de Maria, who was published in the same literary collections as Marinetti, already wrote in 1905 about the creation of an artificial man, whose brothers gave humankind steam, electric cars, the wireless telegraph, and radio ^{[29, p. 124]}. But the greatest impression on the leader of Futurism was made by the works of M. Morasso, an Italian publicist and the future primary author of the publication Cars and Sports. His books New Weapons: The Machine (Turin, 1905) and The New Mechanical Appearance of the World (Milan, 1907) could not pass unnoticed for Marinetti. According to the Italian art critic M. Bosinco, Morasso, for the first time, pointed out the processes of aesthetic and ethical transformation that the emergence of new technology brings with it, presenting the car as a new hero of the myth of speed, where "the gods of the new world, rushing on their cars, defy death and, thus, achieve epic beauty and generosity" ^[30]. Morasso's texts have become a vivid example of the aggressive and militant component of the passion for speed and the car as symbols of a new sensitivity ^[31]. The famous writer Edoardo Sanguineti even stated that "the first act of Futurism should be dated 1905, the date of publication of New Weapons" [Cit. on 31].

Young, energetic artists came to the fore of the Futurist movement after the First World War: Prampolini, Fillìa, Depero, Pannaggi, Paladini, etc. Starting with the "mechanical art" of 1923, over the course of four years, these authors published numerous texts and appeals, where technical progress and machine aesthetics were the central motifs. The reasons for the sharp turn of young Futurists to industrial topics should be sought primarily in the social and political events of that time. The proletarian nature of the appeals and artistic efforts of Pannaggi and Paladini clearly indicates their orientation towards their Russian avant-garde colleagues, who at that time had not yet fallen into disgrace and were in the service of the new government. After Anatoly Lunacharsky's famous speech at the Second Congress of the International, where the Soviet politician designated Futurism as a "revolutionary ally," the Italian Futurists themselves began to show increased interest in the young art of the Soviet country. It also played a role after the First World War; Futurism was no longer perceived as a movement at the forefront of the artistic avant-garde.

On the other hand, the leader of the movement himself was disgusted by any proletarian theme. Marinetti is not a representative of the "oppressed class," but a product of industrial progress, the era of inventions and implementations, competition, survival under the sun of the strongest and most successful. Even if the fervent appeals of the Futurist leader denounced "limited bourgeois values," he remained inside a comfortable zone of this very consumeristic society, the world of luxury cars and bohemian life. The change in Italy's political course and the simultaneous development of industry, achievements in the production of high-quality goods, and, especially, the global success of transatlantic flights finally pushed the topic of machines and mechanisms, which carries a pronounced social connotation, to the periphery of the Futurists' interests. Aireal painting was chosen as the main artistic embodiment of the movement.

The study of Futurist paintings shows that, despite the "machine pathos" of the movement's ideology, the choice of the machine as the central plot of the picture was not typical for Futurist artists. This is clearly seen in the paintings of the "first-wave" Futurists, who did not give the car the leading role in their manifesto that it played for Marinetti and preferred to call their cult "modernolatry." Their passion for everything new changed from the delight of contemplating, owning, and controlling a device that embodies strength and power to the perception of this term in its literal meaning. In addition, it also mattered how important the psychological side was for them. Presenting life as an object of the image, primarily as an expression of the ideas of speed, dynamics, and "élan vital," the Futurists sought to create a "style of movement." To do this, they believed, it was necessary to combine the achievements of the impressionists, who managed to decompose the colors and ideas expressed by Paul Cézanne in his desire to depict through the geometricism of forms. By transforming randomness into regularity, it is possible to achieve the appearance of a new artistic language ^{[29, p. 142]}. But as soon as the Futurist painters tried to depict the rhythm and interaction of objects, their desire focused on transferring modern subjects and painting "states of mind."

The question of the artistic realization of the ideas of "second-wave" Futurism, especially its most radical and revolutionary direction – "mechanical art" – remains relevant for the present time. Speaking about the twists and turns of the formation and short-lived fate of "mechanical painting," the Italian researcher M. E. Versari mentions the influence of Constructivism's ideas on the theoretical construction of the Paladini and Pannagi's manifesto. Shortly before Enrico Prampolini decided to support young artists by adding his signature to the manifesto, he attended the International Congress of Progressive Artists in Dusseldorf. Contrary to the initial desire of the participants (including Prampolini, who represented Italy) to agree on the organization of annual international exhibitions and festivals, the Constructivist International, represented by such significant figures of left-wing modernism as Theo Van Doesburg, Gerhard Richter, Ell Lissitzky and others, insisted on transcending the artistic framework, engaging in the social transformation of society, and "rather change today's world."

After returning to Italy and reading the manifesto's text, Prampolini insisted on removing meaningful references to "sirens, engines, gears" so that the machine would not be understood in its external aesthetic manifestation, made up of mechanical elements. Instead, the words already quoted above appeared about the need to search for the machine's spirit through its numerous analogies. At the same time, Prampolini argued that the constructivists confused the external form with the spiritual content, eventually creating machine art and not the art of the machine age ^[6]. At the same time, in Prampolini's own works, there was a desire to depict cars in their details. So, while designing the cover of the American magazine of modern art Broom, the issue where the second version of the Manifesto of Mechanical Art was printed, he made a photomontage of a photo of a huge industrial engine and letters. According to Versari, in this way, the artist, contrary to his own manifesto, presented the expression of the constructivists' vision of the machine as a new God, who "imposes himself on human development not as a fully controlled method, but as a totalizing historical force acting on human individuality" ^[6]

…

Italian Futurism is a complex polyvalent historical and artistic phenomenon covering a vast historical period whose ideas captured the imagination and caused a wave of followers on almost all continents. Futurism is unique, among other things, in that it has manifested itself in almost all areas of life – not only artistic, but also social, material, political, and so on. In this, the Futurists followed the aspiration of their leader Marinetti (who tirelessly propagandized the goals and objectives of the movement) and the plan for a Futurist reconstruction of the Universe in accordance with the manifesto of the same name by Valentine de Saint-Point and Fortunato Depero. There is no unambiguous opinion in which areas of creativity Futurism was most successful at the moment. This work shows the main stages of the most vivid and visual manifestations of it, the spiritual and artistic heritage of which had been felt for a long time.

The pathos, challenge, and shocking texts of the Futurist manifestos are undoubtedly the movement's hallmark. Suffice it to say that the artistic manifesto as a literary phenomenon acquired its modern verbal and semantic meaning thanks to Futurism, although it was invented long before that. The Futurists' music, mainly due to Russolo's courage and talent, became the germ of what is now called avant-garde and noise music. The modern electronic music scene would be impossible without the creative heritage of the brilliant Futurists. The question of the significance of Futurist painting for modern art is not so unambiguous because the Futurists' paintings are not as scandalously known as the manifestos and music. At the same time, fine art (painting, first of all) has almost always been the hallmark of a movement in modern history, whether it is Realism, Romanticism, Impressionism, etc., ahead of such giants as literature, architecture, and music in this meaning.

For these reasons, in this work, the use of the image of the machine in Futurism is considered an example of these three artistic areas – the literary form of the manifesto, music, and painting. As some critics claim, the style that proclaimed the car as its symbol did not end its existence in 1944, along with the death of Marinetti, its leader and ideologist. Proof of this is the development of modern noise music and the paintings of those Futurists who, having outlived their mentor, continued to create even at the end of the twentieth century. It is enough to recall Tullio Crali, one of Marinetti's closest associates, who created images of winged (already jet) machines in the style of aerial painting until the mid-1980s. And as for the new Futurist manifestos, time will tell because futuro – the future – always throws unexpected surprises.