La strada entra nella casa

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
La strada entra nella casa (Umberto Boccioni)
La strada entra nella casa
Umberto Boccioni , 1911
Oil on canvas
100 x 100.6 cm
Sprengel Museum Hannover

La strada entra nella casa ( The street enters the house ) is a painting by Umberto Boccioni . The work was created after Boccioni's stay in Paris in November 1911, a very intensive period of creativity. Initially titled simply with a balcony , it was shown for the first time a year later under the title La rue entre dans la maison , on the occasion of the first futurist exhibition organized abroad in the Parisian gallery Bernheim-Jeune from February 5 to 24 1912. of the 35 exhibits in March 34 were in London shown in the Sackville Gallery, in April in Berlin in Herwarth Walden's Sturm paintings located in the "private property" gallery, the catalog now led only 24 as "not for sale" and on. The exhibition went to Brussels, Hamburg, The Hague and Amsterdam. In Berlin, the banker and collector Albert Borchardt acquired this painting, along with other paintings. Today it is in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover .

Image description

The main character, shown in different shades of blue, is shown from behind and overlooks the hustle and bustle on the street from an elevated point of view, the balcony. It is a kind of repoussoir that leads the viewer into the depths of the picture. On the street below, construction workers are digging a pit and putting up wooden sticks to erect scaffolding for a new building. This part of the picture forms the center and impresses with its intense colors, which range from a rich yellow to orange to brown. The colors of the event are broken up by the workers' robes, which are held in various shades of blue. The scenery is framed by rows of houses that seem to collapse towards the center of the picture and also increase in color from a pastel-colored violet to a light blue and finally to yellow towards the center. To the right and left of the houses there is also a woman on a balcony looking down at what is happening. Uwe M. Schneede describes it as follows: “A city scene breaks in on the woman.” Boccioni probably also got an inspiration for the work La strada entra nella casa from his place of residence in Milan, the upper floor of the house at number 23 in Via Adige, where he lived intermittently from 1908 to 1913. The area was characterized by rapid industrialization . According to Laura Mattioli Rossi, this painting shows the construction of the Besozzi Marzoli factory, but other works such as La città che sale are also said to be influenced by this location.

Principle of simultaneity

In the foreword to the catalog for the exhibition in the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, Boccioni wrote in 1912:

"When you paint a person on the balcony (interior view), we do not limit the scene to what the narrow window square allows us to see, but we try to capture the sensations of the eye of the person on the balcony in their entirety give: the sun-shimmering hum of the street, the two rows of houses on his right and left, the flower-adorned balconies; that means: simultaneity of the atmosphere, consequently change of location and dissection of objects, dispersion and overlapping of the details, which are freed from the current logic, one independent of the other. "

The description of the picture for The life of the street penetrates the house in the Berlin exhibition catalog read:

“The prevailing impression of the picture: when you open a window, all the noise of the street, the movements and the representational nature of things outside suddenly enter the room. The painter does not limit himself, like a photographer, to reproducing what he sees from the small, square section of his window. He brings everything to the picture that can be overlooked from all sides on an open balcony. "
Umberto Boccioni: Visioni simultanee (Simultanvisionen) , around 1912, oil on canvas, 60.5 × 60.5 cm, Von der Heydt-Museum , Wuppertal

Although the writer and critic Guillaume Apollinaire to Futurism as "poor imitation of Cubism saw" - he wrote, for example, in response to the exhibition of the Futurists at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, which took place from 5 to 24 February " Quant à l'art futuriste, il fait un peu sourire, à Paris, mais il ne faudrait pas qu'il fît sourire les Italiens, ou bien ce serait tant pis pour eux. ”- this is how he noticed during an exhibition of Boccioni's works suggested that Boccioni is the most important theoretician of futurism. In his art theoretical work Pittura Scultura Futuriste (Dinamico Plastico) / Futuristic Painting and Sculpture (pictorial dynamism) , published in 1914, he offers an execution and a summary of his understanding of art aesthetics. But the basic tendencies can already be seen in the foreword to the exhibition in the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, which has already been partially cited. If these principles were previously only formulated theoretically, they are reflected in practice for the first time in the work The street penetrates the house / La strada entra nella casa , and also in the work Visioni simultanee / Simultanvisionen , which was created around the same time. A central principle of futuristic aesthetics is that of simultaneity, which they declared to be specifically their own, which soon led to a dispute with Robert Delaunay and the French Cubists. If we follow the futuristic view, then simultaneity means the connection of objective perceptions with the subjective associations of thoughts and feelings stimulated by sensations. The idea of ​​the simultaneity of the different levels of memory in perception was inspired by the writings of Henri Bergson , which he must have known since 1910. Bergson referred to this as "durée". It was intended as an analogue to the experience of the big city with its manifold sensory impressions. Richard Huelsenbeck describes the simultaneity as follows in his book En avant Dada, written in 1920 :

“Simultaneity is against what has become for becoming. While I z. For example, when I realize, one after the other, that I slapped an old woman yesterday and washed my hands an hour ago, the scream of the brake of an electric tram and the clatter of the brick falling from the next roof fall in my ear and mine at the same time Eye (my outer or inner) straighten up in order to catch a quick meaning of life in the simultaneity of these events. [...] I immediately realize that I am alive. [...] Simultaneity is a direct reference to life. "

Boccioni transferred this principle artistically through the repetition of one and the same pictorial element on the one hand (the woman on the balcony repeats herself on the sides, in different clothes, but in the same pose), but also through the mutual penetration of the objects. The repetition of the observing woman thematizes the simultaneity of the perspectives, but is also an invitation to the viewer to perceive the complexity of the events associatively. The mutual penetration of the objects leads us to another central point, dynamism. In his work Pittura Scultura Futuriste (Dinamico Plastico) he defines dynamism as follows:

"Dynamism is the simultaneous action of the characteristic movement that is inherent in the object (absolute movement) and the change that the object undergoes as a result of the change in location in relation to the moving or motionless environment (relative movement)".

According to Boccioni, this movement inherent in the object, the “absolute movement”, can only be grasped purely intuitively and cannot be grasped intellectually or analytically. He accuses the Cubists of this analytical thinking, who “dissect” objects. Even if he polemicises strongly against Cubism, he applies ideas from it in his works. So he splinters the objects to give us an all-encompassing view. The idea of ​​absolute and relative movement was also heavily influenced by the ideas of Henri Bergson. The absolute movement is not limited to the object, but the objects penetrate one another and are interdependent. The objects in the plant overlap and influence each other. Boccioni relates them seamlessly to one another. The horse protrudes into the balcony and into the lady's head, the houses collapse. The title The Road Penetrates Into the House already implies the breaking up and merging of different spheres, namely the private with the public space. Occasionally the title is translated as The noise of the street invades the house , which suggests the attempt to reproduce acoustic stimuli optically.

Relationship outside to inside

For the exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum 2004, the curator Vivien Green remarked in an essay that the private, domestic sphere is a traditionally feminine one and that these two specifically masculine and feminine areas overlap here. The relationship between the interior and exterior space is addressed in various early pictures by Boccioni, for example in the portrait of Signora Massimino , which was created in 1908 and in which the actual action on the street also takes place. Both spheres, however, still appear in isolation. In the work La sorella al balcone / The sister on the balcony 1909, created in 1909, the railing still separates, but the boundaries begin to blur. Using lines of force, a term that first appeared in the foreword to the exhibition catalog of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris in 1912, Boccioni tried to blur the boundaries of the objects and to show the connection between the objects and their outside world, because these form an “extension of the rhythms ". These lines of force reflect a certain state of mind and thus directly involve the viewer. Boccioni calls this psychological transcendentalism . The lines of force form a synthesis between the futurists 'emotionally expressive vision of dynamism and the cubists' analytical and formal approach. The divisionism , which is more than just an artistic medium for Boccioni, particularly suited to represent the dynamism and the penetration of the individual objects pictorially. At the same time, it forms a paradox to the iconoclastic attitude of the Futurists towards past art, as Divisionism developed parallel to French Neo-Impressionism and has its roots in earlier artistic traditions. The divisionist technique is suitable due to the individually highlighted pigments to reproduce light in a suitable manner, which in addition to movement "destroys the materiality of the body". In Maurizio Calvesi's Futurism there is a more detailed consideration of the mystical cult of light in Futurism. The work as well as the principles applied in it enter into a synthesis between Divisionism on the one hand and Cubism on the other. The work La tour / Eiffel Tower Pictures by Robert Delaunay from 1910 can be seen as an inspiration for this work . In Pittura Scultura Futuriste , Boccioni suggests that by this time he already had knowledge of Cubism in Paris. Uwe M. Schneede assumes that he was familiar with La tour / Eiffel Tower pictures from 1910 through a publication from 1911. Delaunay himself and the so-called Orphic Cubists - a term coined by Apollinaire for a group within Cubism that tended towards abstraction - were strongly influenced by the manifestos of Futurism and were able to apply their statements artistically through a precise knowledge of Cubism. Apart from the building facades that appear to be collapsing, however, no clear statement can be made as to the extent to which Boccioni took up Delaunay's suggestions and implemented them in this work.

Bibliography

  • Henri Bergson: Matière et mémoire - essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit . Paris, 1910
  • Umberto Boccioni: Les exposants au Public . In: Les peintres Futuristes Italiens . Exhibition catalog Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, February 5 - 24, 1912 (new edition: Florence 1978)
  • Umberto Boccioni, Carlo D. Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini: The futuristic painting - Technical Manifesto ; German translation by Christa Baumgarth (first Italian La pittura futurista - Manifesto tecnico . Milan 1910); in: Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann : Futurism . Hamburg 1993
  • Umberto Boccioni: Pittura Scultura Futuriste (Dinamismo Plastico) . Milan 1914; Futuristic painting and sculpture (pictorial dynamism) ; German translation by Angelika Chott, ed. by Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt, Dresden 2002
  • Maurizio Calvesi: Il futurismo. La fusion della vita nell`arte . Milan 1977; Futurism - Art and Life . German translation by Michael Koulen, Gerhard Meier, Cologne 1987
  • Ester Coen, Umberto Boccioni: Exhibition Boccioni: a Retrospective, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 15, 1988, to January 8, 1989. New York, 1988
  • Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin HD Buchloh: Art since 1900 - Modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism . London 2004
  • Guillaume Apollinaire, Béatrice Riottot El-Habib (eds.): Apollinaire critique d´art. Publié à l`occasion de l`exposition "Apollinaire critique d`art" conçue et réalisée au Pavillon des Arts . Paris, 1993
  • Marianne W. Martin: Futurist Art and Theory 1909–1915 . New York 1978
  • Brian Petrie, Umberto Boccioni, Henri Bergson: The Burlington Magazine . Vol. 116, no. 852, 1974, pp. 140-147
  • Les Peintres Futuristes of Italy . Exhibition catalog Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, February 5 - 24, 1912 (new edition: Florence 1978)
  • The Italian Futurist Painters . Exhibition catalog. The Sackville Gallery London 1912; (New edition: Florence 1978).
  • The futurists . Exhibition catalog, Society for the Promotion of Modern Art, publisher Herwarth Walden, Berlin (1912); (New edition: Florence 1978).
  • Umbro Apollino (Ed.): The Futurism - Manifestos and Documents of an Artistic Revolution 1909–1918 , Cologne, 1972
  • Laura Mattioli Rossi (Ed.) Et al .: Boccioni's materia. A futurist masterpiece and the avant-garde in Milan and Paris . Exhibition catalog, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 6 to May 9, 2004, ISBN 0-89207-303-9
  • Eberhard Roters (Ed.): Me and the city - man and city in German art of the 20th century . Exhibition catalog, Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, 1987
  • Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann : Futurism - History, Aesthetics, Documents . Hamburg 1993
  • Uwe M. Schneede: Umberto Boccioni . Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-7757-0449-3
  • Berliner Festspiele , Languages ​​of Futurism , October 2, 2009 to January 11, 2010, exhibition catalog ISBN 978-3-86859-066-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L'exposition des peintres futurists en 1912 Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, à Paris ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.centrepompidou.fr. Excerpt from the presentation of the exhibition Le Futurisme à Paris, une avant-garde explosive (French), shown at the Center Pompidou in Paris from October 15 to January 26, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.centrepompidou.fr
  2. ↑ Die Sprachen des Futurismus , Berlin 2009, p. 301. There is no information available about whether all the pictures announced in the catalogs were actually hung. Number of pictures according to the respective exhibition catalogs Paris, London and Berlin. The Berlin exhibition catalog was drawn up in three languages ​​in German, English and Danish.
  3. ↑ Hanno Ehrlicher: The art of destruction: fantasies of violence and manifestation practices of European avant-garde . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-05-003646-X , S 118–119
  4. ↑ Uwe M. Schneede: Umberto Boccioni . Stuttgart 1994
  5. ↑ Umberto Boccioni: Les exposants au Public . In: Les peintres Futuristes Italiens . Exhibition catalog Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, February 5 - 24, 1912 (new edition: Florence 1978). Translation from French.
  6. ↑ The Futurists . Exhibition catalog. Berlin 1912, p. 3
  7. ↑ Guillaume Apollinaire, Béatrice Riottot El-Habib (ed.): Apollinaire critique d´art. Publié à l`occasion de l`exposition "Apollinaire critique d`art" conçue et réalisée au Pavillon des Arts . Paris, 1993
  8. ^ Richard Huelsenbeck: En avant Dada - To the history of Dadaism . Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-921523-21-4
  9. ↑ Laura Mattioli Rossi (ed.) Et al .: Boccioni's materia. A futurist masterpiece and the avant-garde in Milan and Paris . Exhibition catalog, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 6 to May 9, 2004, ISBN 0-89207-303-9