The Futurist Invasion of Great Britain, 1910-1914: Marinetti's Fi RST London Visit (1910)

The Futurist Invasion of Great Britain, 1910–1914
Dominika Buchowska and Steven L. Wright
F. T. Marinetti’s first visit to London in 1910 unknowingly served as a harbinger of

what British society would experience in the years preceding the Great War: a rapid
succession of changes that challenged the fundamentals of art, literature, architecture
and music. Suddenly, the accumulated principles garnered from the test of ages pitted
themselves against the intangible phantom of the ‘new’ that embraced creativity and
minimized or eliminated dependency on tradition. A decade earlier, many believed
that large segments of society would be experiencing a cultural renaissance. Change
did indeed occur, but it arrived from the Continent. This ‘foreign invasion’ of the
fine arts that took aim at tradition shocked and disarmed Edwardian society. A key
leader of the invasion was Marinetti and his fellow Futurists. Elements of English so-
ciety offered a warm welcome, but many others considered it an Italian oddity replete
with bravado and noise. Academics and aesthetes dismissed Futurism as another ba-
nal and whimsical art movement originating from Europe and felt that it lacked
substance; however, Britain’s nascent avant-garde developed a particular affinity for
Futurism, especially for its nationalistic overtones. When this ‘foreign invasion’ was
combined with the simmering political issues of women’s suffrage, Irish Home Rule,
Welsh coal miners’ unrest and anarchists’ disruptions, it signified to many a precipi-
tous decline of not only the existing social order but an erosion of Britain’s political,
military, economic and cultural dominance on an international scale. In mid–1914,
when Marinetti tried to co-opt the British avant-garde and threaten its ‘Englishness’,
they abandoned Italian Futurism and founded Vorticism, a distinctly nationalistic
and anti-Futurist movement.
Keywords: 1912 European tour of Futurist paintings, British modernism, Post-Im-

pressionism, Vorticism, Cubism, C. W. R. Nevinson
Marinetti’s first London visit (1910)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, British art and culture were still
enjoying the safe and cosy atmosphere of entrenched pictorialism and sen-
timentalism. This world was, however, soon to experience a tremendous
upheaval as the British Empire was about to collapse and life on the island
was to undergo an irrevocable change. In the face of colonial decline, the
country’s political, military and economic powers gradually shifted away
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202 Dominika Buchowska / Steven L. Wright
to other nations and compounded fears of an irrevocable loss of Britain’s

global supremacy. The working classes prepared themselves for the era of
democracy; political unrest seized Ireland; the royal family experienced a
turbulent period; and several symbolic events such as Kitchener’s defeat in
the Boer War (1902), Shackleton’s failure to reach the South Pole (1912)
and the sinking of the Titanic (1912) signalled that momentous calamities
were looming on the horizon.
With the First World War approaching, British politics had to concen-
trate on domestic issues and mobilize against foreign threat, while the arts
had to respond to avant-garde artistic developments taking place elsewhere
in Europe. When in Roger Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910
and 1912 some of the modern works of art reached Britain, this came as
a shock to British audiences. However, it could not even prepare them for
the real revolution that was brought to the English capital by the Italian
Futurists in 1912.
Marinetti’s first public appearance in London had taken place in April
1910. When he entered the Lyceum Club, a supporter described him as
being “adorned with diamond rings, gold chains and hundreds of flash-
ing teeth”.1 While outwardly flamboyant, he possessed an unquestion-
able self-confidence and was determined to make Futurism the avant-garde
movement of its day. In his “Discours futuriste aux Anglais”, Marinetti
praised the British for their “warlike patriotism”, “powerful individualism”
and for the “rotating steel turrets of its dreadnoughts”.2 He found certain
Englishmen praiseworthy, especially achievers like Ernest Shackleton or
Charles Rolls and the courageous soldiers of the Boer War. The majority
of the address, however, consisted of a long series of invectives: “Every
good Futurist should be discourteous twenty times a day,” Marinetti ar-
gued. “So I’m going to be discourteous with you, bravely confessing all the
ill we think of you English”! Marinetti deplored “the sluggish ideology of
that deplorable man, Ruskin” and his admiration for pastoral lifestyles as
well as English gentlemen who were almost all homo-sexual for a while.
The British were victims of their own traditionalism which, he argued,
took on a decidedly “medieval hue, [where] the stench of musty archives
and the jangling of chains still abides”. An unhealthy obsession with the
aristocracy combined with a mania for always appearing chic caused the
British to shun impulsiveness. Marinetti thought they had little interest in
the future or thirst for revolution. He described the British as the “most
contradictory people on Earth” who loved the “pleasures of the flesh”,
1 Goldring: South Lodge, p. 64.

2 Marinetti: Critical Writings, pp. 89–93.

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The Futurist Invasion of Great Britain 203
but while visiting Continental Europe, “made a great show of chastity”.

Perhaps most bitingly, Marinetti castigated the British proclivity for trav-
elling to Italy, for sniffing out “all the vestiges of our oppressive past” and
then returning home with some “miserable little stone that was trampled
over by our forebears”. He was under no illusion about their attitudes to-
wards Futurism. “You who are among the many who disapprove of Fu-
turist convictions”, he claimed, “but who nevertheless force yourselves to
applaud me because of the duty of hospitality, go ahead and brutally break
the block of your beautiful English courtesy and hoot lengthily at me, at
your pleasure and freely”.3
Ironically, Margaret Nevinson, a member of the Lyceum Club and
personally responsible for the lecture, was the mother of Britain’s only
anointed Futurist artist, C. R. W. Nevinson. Although she found Futur-
ism’s desire to destroy the past and make war against classical music, art
and literature a “shallow and insubstantial piece of Latin bombast and
exuberance”, she nevertheless felt that Marinetti was a “stimulating com-
panion” and “brilliant conversationalist”.4
Soon after Marinetti’s seminal visit in 1910, events began percolat-
ing within Britain’s arts community. Earlier exhibitions of French art and
German and Austrian design piqued the interests of a specialized few
but remained inconsequential for the general public.5 This indifference
disappeared in summer 1910 when the Brighton Municipal Art Galler-
ies mounted an exhibition entitled Modern French Artists. The mayor had
sponsored the exhibition for European tourists as an entente cordiale, thus
highlighting a cultural interchange within the Anglo-French alliance cre-
ated six years earlier. The exhibition’s final section elicited boisterous criti-
cisms. Britain had never experienced such art. While critics collectively
labelled the works ‘Neo-Impressionist’, some took comic delight in delin-
eating specific styles: the Fauves, the Pointillists, the Vibrists, the Symbol-
ists and the Intimists. One critic cynically argued that “movement in art
is like progress in peoples, it is preferable to stagnation, but it does not
constitute improvement; swine may be put in quite violent motion down
steep places”.6
3 Ibid.
4 Walsh: Hanging a Rebel: The Life of C. R. W. Nevinson, p. 39.
5 Britain’s first encounter with post-Impressionist paintings occurred in January-February
1905, when the Grafton Galleries exhibited ten Cézannes amongst three hundred other
works. Critics were skeptical, including Roger Fry, who considered Cézanne an insignifi-
cant Impressionist.
6 [D. P.]: “Exhibition of Modern French Art at Brighton”, p. 229.

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The cultural assault continued in autumn 1910. To many, the absur-

dity of Roger Fry’s exhibition, Manet and the Post-Impressionists (8 No-
vember 1910 – 15 January 1911), demonstrated one certainty: artists had
turned fine art on its head. Once recognizable subjects became represented
by unrecognizable shapes, interchangeable forms and unrealistic colours.
For many of the 25,000 visitors it was the first time that they had seen
works by Manet, van Gogh, Cézanne and Picasso. Critics were neither im-
pressed nor amused. “[We] declare […] this art is itself a flagrant example
of reaction”, wrote the Times. “It professes to simplify, and to gain simplic-
ity it throws away all that the long-developed skill of past artists has ac-
quired and perpetuated”.7 The Morning Post warned that if the movement
was going to spread, as the curators predicted, “the source of infection […]
ought to be destroyed”.8 Traditionalists quickly pointed to Max Nordau’s
controversial but popular theory of degeneration,9 which blamed modern
art for the psychological decadence and disease endemic to Western life.
Such responses slowly began to take a hold on the intellectual debates
on the fine arts, pitting historical convention against individual creativity.
Only a small minority realized that, like it or not, the new movements
could not be dismissed as a trivial fad of fashion. Although not yet willing
to find the new art ‘appealing’ or to consider it ‘art’ at all, they nevertheless
conceded that it represented a “curious intellectual phase of the twentieth
century” intent on revolutionizing accepted standards.10
7 Those who opposed and disliked the exhibit did so not necessarily because of the “primi-
tive” techniques and its “foreignness”, but because of what it implied for the greater social
and moral conductivity of Britain. See Woolf: Roger Fry: A Biography, p. 124; Stansky: On
or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World, p. 229.
8 Ross: “The Post-Impressionists at the Grafton: The Twilight of the Idols”, Morning Post,
p. 3. Ross argued that the exhibit revealed the existence of a “wide-spread plot to destroy
the whole fabric of European painting.”
9 The two volumes of Entartung were printed in 1892–93 by Carl Duncker in Berlin,
quickly to be translated into French (Dégénéréscence. Paris: Alcan, 1894), Russian
(Vyroždenie. St.-Peterburg: Pavlenkov, 1894), English (Degeneration. London: Heine-
mann, 1895; New York: Appleton, 1895), Italian (Degenerazione. Torino: Bocca, 1896),
as well as various other languages.
10 “The Post-Impressionist Exhibition”, The Builder, pp. 405–406. While separated by
many differences, the artistic movements shared one common bond: painting and sculp-
ture should not remain the exclusive purview of the “complacent elite”.

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The first Futurist exhibition in London (1912)

Marinetti’s London visit in 1912 coincided with the opening of the Ex-
hibition of Works by the Italian Futurists Painters at the Sackville Gallery
on 1 March. Just as the British were tepidly beginning to understand new
art, the fragile balance was upset by a disreputable exhibition, combined
with Marinetti’s impassioned recitals and riotous performances. The cata-
logue11 caused as much controversy as the paintings themselves, infuriat-
ing many unwary viewers with its inclusion of the Foundation and Mani-
festo of Futurism, followed by a joint artist statement, The Exhibitors to the
Public, and a brief explanation of the paintings by Boccioni, Carrà, Rus-
solo and Severini. The artists declared that they were “absolutely opposed”
to the art of the Post-Impressionists, Synthetists and Cubists because “they
obstinately continue to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all the static
aspects of nature. […] We, on the contrary, with points of view pertaining
essentially to the future, seek for a style of motion, a thing which has never
been attempted before us.”12 Embodying the avant-garde ethos, the artists
insisted that modern painting could not exist “without the starting point
of an absolutely modern sensation.”13
The critics remained unconvinced, but that was precisely what Mari-
netti had hoped for. However, not all 40,000 people who viewed the ex-
hibition14 found it absurd. The antagonistic, aggressive and oppositional
nature of the Italian movement was designed to cause outrage: radical
provocation encourages radical reactions, and this – according to Mari-
netti’s publicity strategy – offered a fertile territory for Futurism to expand
its influence. The press referred to Futurism in several unflattering ways.
Writing for the Daily Chronicle, Charles Lewis Hind felt confident that
“England as a whole will laugh at or loathe these works”.15 The Evening
News believed that Futurism had “fallen flat as a breathless pancake”. Af-
ter the manifestos and theories had been translated into paintings, they
resembled “the most imaginative linoleum [or] the cut-paper work of a
11 Exhibition of Works by the Italian Futurist Painters. London: Sackville Gallery, 1912. It
has been reprinted in Piero Pacini, ed.: Esposizioni futuriste: 1912–1918. Ventisei cataloghi
originali in copia anastatica con presentazione e schede. Firenze: Studio per Edizioni Scelte,
1977, and Enrico Crispolti, ed.: Nuovi archivi del futurismo. Vol. 1. Cataloghi di esposizio-
ni. Roma: De Luca; CNR – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 2010.
12 Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, and Giacomo Balla: “The
Exhibitors to the Public”, p. 46. This was a translation of a declaration first published in
the catalogue of the first leg of the show at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris.
13 Ibid., p. 46.
14 Figures given by Charles Harrison in English Art and Modernism, 1900–1939, p. 86.
15 Hind in Daily Chronicle, 4 March 1912.

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Colony Hatch Kindergarten.”16 P. G. Konody wrote in the Pall Mall Ga-

zette: “To analyse these Futurist pictures is simply impossible […]. The
majority of them strike one as the pictorial rendering of confused night-
mares.” He acknowledged that Britain’s art world had lately endured a
bevy of new movements that broke from tradition, but the Futurists ex-
ceeded absurdity when they declared war upon all art from both past and
the present. While grudgingly accepting that this brand of art communi-
cated emotions, he reminded Futurists that they had forgotten an equally
important tenet: “Communicating emotions can only be accounted art
if it is delivered in intelligible language”.17 Philip Burne-Jones, son of the
famed Pre-Raphaelite artist, echoed the sentiments of many Londoners
when he referred to the Futurists as nothing but “a band of maniacs […]
outside the pale of art altogether”.18 Many British art lovers agreed and
found the partisanship of the Futurists hard to accept. The situation was
further exacerbated by the fact that the exhibition at the Sackville Gallery
opened on a day when one million miners went on strike and militant
suffragettes commenced their window breaking activities. It was no won-
der that to many people Futurism seemed to act as a cipher of Britain’s
continuing domestic unrest.19
Roger Fry offered a surprisingly tolerant, albeit, cautionary review. He
found that the paintings represented more of a “psychological or scientific
curiosity than a work of art”. Fry hoped that the Futurist’s dogma would
have the capacity to grow and mature. While great design relied on emo-
tion, he felt a more positive kind – something nearer love than hate –
could enable the patron to grasp the artist’s intentions more completely.20
Socialite and author Osbert Sitwell reacted favourably – at least in hind-
sight. Years later, he recalled that the exhibition’s “lack of sensitiveness”
and “literary dynamism” had caused a sense of prophecy to pervade the
whole gallery. “The twentieth century”, he wrote nostalgically, “with its
unparalleled disasters and catastrophes, had at last smashed and bungled
its way into the realms of art”.21 Walter Sickert, well-known painter and
founder of the New English Art Club, moderately criticized the Futur-
ist’s tendency to over-explain their works. He took issue with critics who
labelled the work immoral and, instead, judged them to be “austere, brac-
ing, patriotic, nationalist, positive, anti-archaistic, anti-sentimental, anti-
16 Evening News, 2 March 1912.

17 Konody: “The Italian Futurists: Nightmare Exhibition at the Sackville Gallery”, p. 6.
18 Pall Mall Gazette, 4 March 1912.
19 Rainey: “The Creation of the Avant-garde: F. T. Marinetti and Ezra Pound”, pp. 195–219.
20 Fry: “Art. The Futurists”.
21 Sitwell: Great Morning, pp. 115–116.

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feminist [and] anti-pornocratic”. He thought it would behove England to

pay attention to the show as the nation could learn a great deal from the
movement.22
The Futurist invasion into the English art world was not limited to
one exhibition. There were further shows in 1913 and 1914, all accompa-
nied by recitals and performances. On 19 March 1912, Marinetti delivered
at the Bechstein Hall a lecture and a poetry reading entitled, “Futurism
in Literature and Art”. The presentation contained “such an impassioned
torrent of words”, wrote the Times, “that some of his audience begged for
mercy”.23 Marinetti’s continued berating of Britain as a “nation of syco-
phants and snobs, enslaved by worm-eaten traditions, social conventions
and romanticism”, electrified segments of the avant-garde audience, whom
one critic cynically identified as “long-haired gentlemen” and “ladies with
Rossetti eyes and lips”.24
The Futurists disregarded such ‘passéist’ criticism and rather relished
the planned and unplanned attention their public appearances in London
generated. Elements of London society, including Viscountess Warwick
and Lady Cunard, warmly welcomed Marinetti and lavishly entertained
his entourage. The Italian ‘rebels’ found London and its environs inspir-
ing, especially the buzzing, energetic life, the crowded streets, the indus-
trial development and technological progress, which neatly matched their
ideal of where Futurism could and would thrive. 25 To them, London was
“the Futurist city par excellence”.26 They were impressed with the major
advances made in public transport, particularly the Underground and the
double-decked London buses, and the large quantity of automobiles. The
popularity of the music-hall excited Marinetti and he made use of these
venues for several performances during a later visit.27
Whether the British liked it or not, it seemed that London had be-
come Futurism’s second home. While elements of English society offered
a warm reception, many others began to feel that Futurism lacked endur-
ance and relegated it to an Italian oddity replete with bravado and noise,
unworthy of deep analysis or focussed attention. Academics and aesthetes
dismissed Futurism as another banal and whimsical art movement origi-
22 Sickert: “The Futurist ‘Devil-among-the Tailors’”, pp. 147–152.

23 [Anon.]: “The Aims of Futurism.” The Bechstein Hall is today known as the Wigmore
Hall.
24 [Anon.]: Daily Chronicle, 20 March 1912.
25 Walsh: C. R. W. Nevinson: This Cult of Violence, p. 46.
26 Cited in Walsh: C. R. W. Nevinson: This Cult of Violence, p. 46.
27 Tannenbaum: 1900: The Generation Before the Great War, pp. 394–398; Cheshire: “Fu-
turism, Marinetti and the Music Hall”.

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nating from Continental Europe. Of all new art movements hitting British
shores, the nascent avant-garde developed a particular affinity for Italian
Futurism and its nationalistic overtones. It was only later when Marinetti
tried to co-opt the British avant-garde and threaten its ‘Englishness’ that
they abandoned Italian Futurism and founded Vorticism, a distinctly na-
tionalistic and anti-Futurist movement.28
Marinetti’s visit to London enthused him so much that he decided
that the place was perfect for the development of Futurism. In his exu-
berance, Marinetti asserted that works by Boccioni, Severini, Carrà and
Russolo had attracted buyers for substantial sums: “The colossal success
of London increases in a fantastic fashion. More than 350 critical reviews
in a month and four days, because the galleries did not want the paintings
to depart, given the crowds of paying visitors. Sales to date are more than
11,000 francs!”29 The reality, however, proved differently. Marinetti ex-
aggerated the press response he had received. In real terms, his activities
earned about twenty reviews with some hardly mentioning the exhibition.
Only Boccioni and Carrà sold their exhibited works. Marinetti’s ‘success’
may have been wishful thinking and is contradicted by Severini’s undated
letter to Boccioni, probably of mid-March 1912, in which he described
how different his visit worked out in comparison with his original inten-
tions. “As I told Marinetti, things went very well from the point of view
of morale-boosting and spreading Futurism, but the sales didn’t bring in a
ha’pence. […] Kindly ask Marinetti to send me 150 Lire for my return to
Paris. […] Without Marinetti I cannot leave!”30
28 Brooker: Bohemia in London: The Social Scene of Early Modernism, pp. 93–112; Edwards:
Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer, pp. 95–137; Adams: “Futurism and the British
Avant-garde”, pp. 9–17.
29 “A Londra, il successo colossale aumentò in modo fantastico. Più di 350 articoli critici
in un mese e quattro giorni, poiché la galleria non voleva lasciar partire i quadri, data
l’affluenza della folla pagante. Le vendite superano ora gli undicimila franchi. Boccioni ha
venduto il suo quadro La Ville monte per 4000 franchi netti, al celebre pianista Busoni,
arricchitosi in Inghilterra e in Germania, il quale volle avere quel capolavoro per la sua
villa di Berlino. Russolo, Carrà, Severini hanno venduto pure a prezzi molto alti.” Letter
of 12 April 1912 to F. B. Pratella, in Drudi Gambillo, and Fiori: Archivi del futurismo,
pp. 237–238.
30 The letter is reproduced in Coen: Illuminazioni: Avanguardie a confronto, pp. 94–95:
“Come ho detto a Marinetti, le cose sono andate benissimo dal lato morale e estensione
Futurismo, ma nemmeno un ghello di vendita. Mando giornali, ma ce ne sono moltissimi
che verranno dopo. Prega Marinetti di mandarmi 150 lire pel ritorno a Parigi, ti prego di
appoggiare... La mia partenza dipende dalla risposta di Marinetti; cerca di sollecitare per-
ché è impossibile e inutile che io resti qui. Senza Marinetti non posso partire. Pensa se sono
allegro. In ogni modo per noi la mia venuta e stata utilissima; del resto ti scriverò a lungo
da Parigi. Inutile dirti che farò per i tuoi amici tutto quello che è in mio potere.” The
editor, Ester Coen, like Drudi-Gambillo previously in the Archivi del futurismo, p. 235

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The exhibition may have been lacking in sales, but it attracted crowds,
provoked strong reactions, especially from artists and intellectuals who
believed that an unstoppable zeitgeist was inching Britain toward the in-
evitable birth of a new era.31 It seemed that change was on the horizon.
Modernism engulfs London

Eight months later, Fry launched at the Grafton Galleries the Second Post-
Impressionist Exhibition, British, French and Russian Artists (5 October – 31
December 1912). A critic admitted that, when combined with the Futurist
Exhibition, the art world – as all phases of life – was in the throngs of a
renaissance where new points of view and a new order might emerge. Un-
fortunately, because the exhibition “misapplied theory and affectation”, it
was embraced anxiously, and although it wanted to be taken seriously, it
only culminated in being perceived as “ridiculous” and “absurd”.32 The
catalogue’s introduction only added to the bafflement by exclaiming that
the artists “do not seek to imitate form, but to create form; not to imitate
life, but to find an equivalent for life. […] In fact they aim not at illusion,
but at reality”.33 For many it was all too much. The rallying cry of “art for
art’s sake” amounted to nothing but a last resort of artists for whom no
other sake existed.34
Futurism returned to London in spring 1913, possibly at the behest of
critic Charles Lewis Hind, who had come to appreciate the movement’s
relevance, as well as other benefactors. A solo show, The Futurist Painter
Severini Exhibits His Latest Works, was arranged for Gino Severini at the
Marlborough Gallery for 7 April to 7 May 1913, which truly highlighted
his significance for the Futurist art movement and displayed all the key
tenets of Futurism: city life, modern transport, speed, dancing, bodies in
motion, etc. Specific works included L’ Autobus (The Motor Bus), Il treno
Nord-Sud (The Nord-Sud Railway), Danseuse à Pigalle (A Dancer at Pi-
galle’s), La Danse du “Pan Pan” au Monico (The Dance of the “Pan-Pan”
at the Monico) and Ballerina spagnola al Tabarin (A Spanish Dancer at
dates the letter 1 March 1912. However, Somigli presents convincing arguments for dat-
ing it 15 March instead. See his Legitimizing the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European
Modernism, p. 256.
31 [Anon.]: “Is There a ‘New Spirit’ in Architecture?”
32 [Anon.]: “The Post-Impressionist Exhibition.”
33 Fry in the catalogue, Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, 1912, p. 3.
34 Orton: “Present Day Criticism”, p. 232.

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the Tabarin).35 O. Raymond Drey, writing for Blue Review, thought that
Severini’s perceptions were “hectic rather than profound and imaginative”.
Drey accused him also of cowardice. “The real force behind Severini’s de-
light in the movement of omnibuses and can-can dancers, behind all his
dexterity in expressing the ‘dynamism’ of swirling fêtes and tube railways,
is not joy, but fear. And fear”, he concluded, “is a bad master of the arts”.36
The limited critical response to the show did not match Severini’s
enthusiasm for London and his admiring hosts. He believed that the city’s
technological advancements and scurrying inhabitants displayed a vibrant
restlessness worthy of being captured on canvas: “Motor-omnibuses pass-
ing and re-passing rapidly in the crowded streets, covered with letters,
red, green, white, are far more beautiful than the canvases of Leonardo or
Titian”.37 Although the city needed change – like Marinetti he considered
the National Gallery a collection of “dead things”38 – at its core, London
was a perfect place to sow the seeds of Futurism.
One aspect surrounding Severini’s visit that did bear fruit was its im-
pact on the young avant-garde artist, C. R. W. Nevinson, who had ex-
perimented with several media but had not yet found his own style. Af-
ter viewing the exhibition and meeting Severini, Nevinson, according to
Frank Rutter, started to “become thoroughly impregnated with the prin-
ciples of Futurism”.39 If society questioned recent exhibitions, it was in the
confines of London’s Royal Academy of Arts that upholding tradition and
opposing the new art movements became a raison d’ être. More than any
organization or personality, it controlled how the country interpreted fine
art. Academic instruction, public lectures and exhibitions concentrated
solely on old masters and deceased artists, whose talents had so far been
undisputed.
William Blake Richmond, Academy member and class lecturer, ad-
dressed the problem to impressionable students in an oft-repeated lecture.
Mirroring the institution’s ethos, he found little to admire about the new
movements. His lectures reflected the growing concerns of many Edward-
ians: tolerating new art was indicative of inevitable decline, affecting mo-

36 Drey: “The Galleries. Gino Severini”, pp. 213–314.
37 Severini: “Get Inside the Picture.”
38 “I shall not go to the National Gallery, because the sight of dead things is always unpleas-
ant for anyone who is full of strength and life. Now, all museums and galleries are cem-
eteries, and I have not the time to sob on the tombs of the poor primitives of the charm-
ing artists of the Renaissance. For the majority of them, I feel nothing but contempt.”
Severini: “Get Inside the Picture.”
39 Art in My Time, p. 165.

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rality, tradition and political stability. Richmond urged caution and an

unquestioned reliance on accumulated traditions:
The latest far from being necessarily of permanent value may be at its best only
a passing fashion […] while at its worst, it may be no more than the symptom of
a disease […]To seek to create a new art is but to court the certainty of failure.
Such an attempt would be as fatuous as an attempt to create a new morality or
an entirely new religion.40
Such views were enclosed in the walls of the Academy; the city and its
art went its own way, ignoring what the traditionalists claimed, produc-
ing revolutionary culture, opening new exhibitions. The Post-Impressionist
and Futurist Exhibition at the Doré Gallery (1913–1914) sought a chron-
ological and intellectual review of painting styles that, as the catalogue
emphasized, had “made some noise in the world”.41 The vagueness of the
exhibition title was also reflected in the arbitrary categorizing of the artists
participating in the event. The exhibition concentrated on Post-Impres-
sionists, Fauvists, Neo-Impressionists and Intimists. Only Severini repre-
sented the Italian Futurists. It also included works by English modernists /
avant-gardists whom the public had begun to associate vaguely with Fu-
turism. They were correct in this instance: extensive elements of Futurism
had seeped into the works of the young British artists.
An anonymous critic praised the curator’s admirable intentions, but
labelled the exhibition a “ponderous jest” foisted on the public. For those
who needed a hearty laugh, the gallery afforded a plethora of “repellent”,
“piff-paffery” and “absurd” works by ungodly “unartists” such as Cé-
zanne, Gauguin, Picasso, Van Gogh, Delaunay, Marc, Matisse, Severini,
Lewis, Wadsworth, Etchells, Nevinson and, surprisingly, Sickert. 42 The
relative absence of the Italians did not lessen the harsh criticisms. To many
visitors, the artists were little more than “cranks and notoriety hunters”
incapable of their own individual pursuit.43 Sir Claude Phillips from the
Daily Telegraph asserted that
of those who are, rightly or wrongly, acclaimed as the precursors of the more
virulent Post-Impressionism of the moment, a fair representation has been se-
cured. And next to them, opposite them, overflowing everywhere, elbowing out
the milder and less brazen votaries of modernity are the British and foreign Cub-
40 William Blake Richmond Lectures, 1894–1912. Royal Academy of Arts Archives, London,
England, Accession #2059.
41 Bullen: Post-Impressionists in England, p. 461.
42 [Anon.]: “Post-Impressionist and Futurists Exhibition.”
43 Quoted in Walsh: C. R. W. Nevinson: This Cult of Violence, p. 61.

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ists, the humorists of the movement, with just one Futurist to give an added zest
to the piquant display. 44
After viciously criticizing the English artists individually, Phillips identi-

fied an issue that perplexed aesthetes and the public alike about the vari-
ous avant-garde factions:
Within the group of the British extremists, though they may present an undi-
vided front to the common enemy, there is just at present civil war; a most terrific
thwacking of shields, a splintering of swords, and cleaving of helmets is going
on […]. For not even Cubism seems to bring with it equanimity; these valiant
knights of the new movement, these geometers of the brush, are as quarrelsome,
as little in agreement among themselves, as were the irascible doctors.”45
A critic for the Daily Sketch ridiculed the exhibition by publishing Nev-
inson’s, Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, Delaunay’s The Football Team and
Wadsworth’s The Omnibus upside down.
In order to show that it doesn’t matter we have used one of these photographs
sideways and the other two upside down. If you prefer them the other way you
can turn the pages round to get their full effect. If you do not think them works
of wondrous beauty, and if they do not interpret for you life in all its aspects, you
are a degenerate, or else you haven’t a good soul.46
Even modernist critics found it difficult to write anything positive about

the exhibition. Clive Bell, art aficionado and member of the Bloomsbury
Group, admitted in a patronizing way that “Futurism is a negligible acci-
dent, the aim of which is to squeak ‘I am advanced – I am advanced’.” Bell
dismissed the English avant-garde as mere plagiarists. Nevinson did not
escape the accusation either, although he fared better than most. “Nevin-
son bears the Briton’s burden more lightly than his fellows”, Bell wrote,
“probably because he is cleverer than most of them. He is clever enough
to pick up someone else’s style with fatal ease; is he not clever enough to
diagnose the malady and discover a cure”. Bell pleaded with his country-
men “to shut themselves up for six months, and paint pictures that no-
one is ever going to see. They might catch themselves doing something
more personal if less astonishing than what they are showing at the Doré
Galleries”.47
The notion of plagiarism reappears again in a review by an unidenti-
fied critic commenting on the Doré Gallery exhibition: “The Futurists
44 Phillips: “Post-Impressionists”, Daily Telegraph [1913].

45 Ibid.
46 “You Wouldn’t Think These Were Paintings, Would you?” Daily Sketch, p. 5.
47 Bell: “Art. The New Post-Impressionist Show”, p. 172.

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stole the Cubists’ clothes and have put them on the wrong way”, or: “The
Futurists, like Severini, […] have borrowed these planes to express impos-
sible emotions in paint.”48 He seems to be wanting to say that Britain was
too great to have to resort to foreign influences.
Equally strange was the response of critic John Cournos, writing for
the avant-garde oriented magazine, The New Freewoman. He judged the
exhibition to be “a chaos of toppling cubes” and “an experiment that is a
failure [… comprising] little genius and much insolence”. He was espe-
cially dissatisfied with the British contribution, labelling it English Cub-
ists: “Of that dynamic quality of which modern art boasts, there is none”,
Cournos argued. “They have little power even to irritate you – these stu-
pid cubes, cubes without reason and cubes without soul, cubes as tedious
to the eye as the sound of dominoes at the Café Royal is to the ear”.49
The ‘Decline in art’

as a reflection of a ‘Decline of the Empire’?
Previously, patrons and critics alike often grouped new art movements
within the all-encompassing rubric of Post-Impressionism. Although
not intended, the Doré Gallery exhibition demonstrated to those patient
enough to learn that new art was not monolithic. Unfortunately, the con-
fusion caused by constant labelling and relabelling meant that, for the un-
trained eye, all avant-garde factions essentially meant the same thing. Fu-
turism, Post-Impressionism and Cubism became interchangeable terms.50
Critics only increased this confusion when they ineptly brought into play
newly invented names. “There are futurists and cubists and fauvists and
orfeists [sic!] and post-impressionists and post-prandial impressionists”,
wrote an anonymous reviewer. “The squares and angles school is well rep-
resented”. 51 The only positive aspect of this attention was, perhaps, that
works by both Italian Futurists and the budding British avant-garde were
reaching a wider audience and, potentially, were appealing to more diverse
and popular tastes. The biting and reactionary commentary, however, did
little to convert stalwart opponents of the avant-garde. Had the Great War
not caused Britain to become so jingoistic, a genuine interest in new art
movements might have developed within a few years.
48 Unknown author, unknown paper, 1913.

49 Cournos: “The Battle of the Cubes.”
50 Vorticism was founded in May/June 1914, and therefore not included.
51 [Anon]: “Picture Puzzles at the Doré: Post-Impressionist and Other Fatuities.”

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Some critics mourned Futurism’s impact on native artists and felt that
those who had joined this inferior group of international avant-gardists
tarnished Great Britain’s prestige. However, an anonymous critic sarcasti-
cally assured readers that, although some artists had joined the movement,
the hardened core of the British art remained intact. “A few recruits of
stamina, like Mr. Wyndham Lewis and Mr. Nevinson, may have been
gained to Cubism or Post-Impressionism in England,” he wrote. “But one
has only to turn to the Institute of Painters in Oils in Piccadilly, or to the
Society of British Artists in Suffolk-street (sic) to realize that the great
heart of British Philistinism beats as steadily as ever; that no deep wound
has been made in the vile body of conventional painting”.52 It seemed that
this critic lacked admiration for both Futurism and the bulk of British
traditionalism.
This ‘nationalistic’ argument, however, had more to do with interna-
tional politics than artistic style and quality. It gained credence during
Marinetti’s visit a few weeks after the Doré Gallery opening. The percep-
tion of Britain’s status as an Empire in decline fitted nicely with those who
viewed Futurism’s cultural invasion of London to be an extension of Italy’s
imperial reach in its war against Turkey in North Africa.
In his work, Italy’s War For a Desert, journalist Francis McCullagh
criticized not only Italy’s misadventures in Libya in 1911, but also the
“cult of the cannon” espoused in Marinetti’s poem, La Bataille de Tripoli.
His “adoration of slaughter is almost as great a sign of degeneracy as the
Futurist movement itself”, McCullagh wrote. “[I]t is only morbid and
cowardly degenerates who go into paroxysms of excitement and sing wild
paeans when they see an artillerist pointing a cannon at an enemy three
miles off and unable to reply.” More contemptible to McCullagh, however,
was the fact that the Futurists wrote such “drivel” and were “dictating the
policy of Italy.” He felt that it was extraordinary that a nation like Italy
(the only one in Europe!), whose claim of respect was entirely based on
its artistic and literary achievements, was “suddenly and of its own accord
rattling into barbarism”. He lamented “a delicate and gifted Italy abasing
herself so gratuitously before the brazen idol of militarism”.53 McCullagh’s
publication angered Marinetti so much that, during a brief respite from
his lectures, he and Umberto Boccioni drove to the critic’s home and, in
52 G. R. H.: “Gallery and Studio. British Artists and Post-Impressionists.” As a founding

member of the Camden Town Group and respected artist, Walter Sickert’s participation
confused the critic: “What has Mr. Sickert to do in that gallery? one (sic) wonders, for it is
obvious that these stragglers come not from victory but from defeat”. The public also was
confused as Sickert’s skepticism to new art – in particular Futurism – was well known.
53 McCullagh: Italy’s War for a Desert, pp. XV, 4, 397–399.

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pure Futurist fashion, challenged him to a duel. McCullagh declined the

violent ‘invitation’ and offered the pair a cup of tea instead.54
In autumn 1913, Harold Monro, publisher and owner of the Poetry
Bookshop, devoted a significant portion of his journal Poetry and Drama
to Futurism. He suggested that the notoriety surrounding the movement
over the past three years demanded study. He was of the view that Futur-
ism’s importance was not confined to Italy or Sackville Street, nor was it
responsible for rebel thought or ragged verse; rather, he felt, it amounted
to an attitude of mind, a condition of soul focussed on thought, imagina-
tion and hope. “Futurism”, he argued, “chiefly asks of man that, instead of
walking backwards with eyes of regret fixed on the past, he turn around
and walk face forward, in love of the future”. Monro believed that, in gen-
eral, there was something beneficial to Futurism and that it could be com-
pared to “frenzied Whitmanism, adulterated by an excessive, if diverting,
admixture of meridional eloquence”.55 Monro would alter this seemingly
positive view within a few months.
In November 1913, Nevinson invited Marinetti to London to deliver
a series of lectures and to perform at venues including the Cave of the
Golden Calf, the Poetry Bookshop, Clifford Inn Hall and the Doré Gal-
lery. Journalists, artists, authors and civil servants inquisitively attended
the performances as they were hoping to understand more fully the co-
nundrum of Futurism.
Imagist poet, Richard Aldington, thought that Londoners were unsure
as to whether they should laugh or not. Slightly mocking his countrymen,
Aldington was delighted to see a “glum Anglo-Saxon” watch Marinetti’s
“prodigious gestures” and added: “It would be humorous if M. Marinetti
were not so serious.” The poet in Aldington, however, found Marinetti’s
prose shapeless and disorganized. “Their great drawback”, Aldington ar-
gued, “is their utterly unrestrained rhetoric, their use of abstractions, their
vagueness […They] are born in confusion and may perish in it”.56 Wynd-
ham Lewis, who had become a convert and whose recent work reflected
Futurism’s influence – more urban and technological and less pastoral –
wrote to a patron of the arts: “Marinetti declaimed some peculiarly blood-
thirsty concoctions with great dramatic force […] He will be lecturing
again soon […] and will no doubt be worth hearing”.57
On 18 November, Marinetti performed at Monro’s Poetry Book-
shop. He gave a demonstration of how Futurism disposed of grammar and
54 Reported in Walsh: Hanging a Rebel: The Life of C. R. W. Nevinson, p. 72.

55 Monro: “Futurism”, p. 263.
56 Aldington: “M. Marinetti’s Lectures”, p. 226.
57 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p. 98.

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syntax in its poetry and explained that such rules may still be necessary
for explaining philosophical ideas and negotiating affairs, but no longer
required for poetry. “It is the last element of those fixed forms,” Marinetti
stated, “which Futurism is to get rid of”.58 Edward Marsh, patron of the
arts and private secretary and personal confidant to Winston Churchill,
attended the evening reading. He offered poet Rupert Brooke an appraisal
of Marinetti’s performance:
He is beyond doubt an extraordinary man, full of force and fire, with a surpris-
ing gift of turgid lucidity, a full and roaring and foaming flood of indubitable
half-truths. He gave us two of his ‘poems’ on the Bulgarian War. The appeal to
the sensations was great – to the emotions, nothing. As a piece of art I thought
it was about on the level of a very good farmyard imitation, a supreme music
hall turn.”
Obviously not impressed, Marsh concluded that Marinetti’s repertoire

amounted to an “aide-memoire for a mimic”.59 The critic for the arts jour-
nal, Academy, attended the Doré Gallery presentation on 20 November
191360 and described it as “pure joy”. “We cannot describe them; nobody
but a Futurist could”, he wrote enthusiastically. “We have not the text; it
would be useless if we did. Signor Marinetti gave us the whole thing, and
we reeled out into Bond Street gasping for breath and hearing strange
noises in the November wind”.61
Marinetti was quite giddy after performing, on 16 November, at the
Golden Cave Cabaret Club, telling a journalist that victory was in sight.
“People sneered at us only a few years back,” he explained. “Now they are
not quite satisfied yet that right is on our side, but they are beginning to
admit that there is something wrong with the old order of things. […] In
a few years they will be with us”.62
Marinetti’s London visit in November 1913 became the apogee of Fu-
turism’s influence on the English avant-garde. Weeks earlier, Wyndham
Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Frederick Etchells and others had seceded
from Roger Fry’s Omega Workshop and its Post-Impressionist decorative-
ness. To honour their Italian colleague, on 18 November these English
rebels organized a celebratory dinner at the Florence Restaurant on Rupert
Street. Marinetti did not disappoint his admirers, performing the “Siege
58 Quoted in The Standard, 19 November 1913.

59 Hassall: A Biography of Edward Marsh, p. 252.
60 See Lewis: The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, p. 53, where he writes: “F. T. Marinetti (1878–
1944), the Futurist leader, was often in London from 1912 to 1914. He lectured at the
Doré Gallery on November 20th, 1913”.
61 [Anon.]: “Futurism at the Doré Gallery.”
62 Quoted in “Noise, an Element of Art”, Pall Mall Gazette, 18 November 1913.

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of Adrianople”, replete with thumping clashes and bombing noises. This

event reflected not only the closeness between the two groups but also
the enthusiasm these English artists felt for the Italian movement and its
titular leader. The relationship seemed limitless. Six months later, Wynd-
ham Lewis called Marinetti “the intellectual Cromwell of our time”, ac-
knowledging that “England has need of these foreign auxiliaries to put her
energies to rights and restore order”. Lewis wrote that Marinetti’s ability
“to instil into people the importance of the Present, the immense impor-
tance of Life” was of great significance.63 Despite such courtesies, Lewis
remained somewhat cautious not to let the Italian leader hijack the bud-
ding English avant-garde movement that he himself was intent to lead.
Even Nevinson became concerned about the pervasive influence of Mari-
netti’s rhetoric and Severini’s aesthetics. He wrote to Lewis after the din-
ner party: “I had quite a great deal of difficulty in preventing Marinetti
from again expounding and proposing his philanthropic desire to present
us to Europe and be our continental guide”.64 Marinetti’s intention to in-
troduce these English supporters to European artistic salons and monitor
their artistic progress raised concerns. This simmering discontent would
soon rise to full revolt.
Dissent between the Italian and the English avant-gardes

The December issue of Monro’s Poetry and Drama also revealed weak-
nesses in the artistic camaraderie. He appreciated the necessity of the Fu-
turists to infuse new life into Italy, understanding that, to be successful,
they had to abandon all connections with the past and unlock the shackles
that had impeded cultural development. Monro also understood that, at
its core, Futurism was an avowedly Italian movement aimed at Italians.
Its main purpose was to find new literary and artistic forms to express the
burgeoning spirit of modernity. “We admire his [Marinetti’s] extraordi-
nary inventiveness”, Monro stated. “We were enthralled by his declara-
tion, but we do not believe that his present compositions achieve anything
more than an advanced form of verbal photography”.65 A few weeks after
Marinetti’s autumn visit, Henry W. Nevinson, a professional journalist
and the father of the artist C. R. W. Nevinson, attempted to explain in the
63 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p.100.

64 Walsh: “The Eminent English Futurist, C. R. W. Nevinson and English Futurism in
Peace and War”, p. 21.
65 Monro: “The Origins of Futurism”, p. 389.

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Manchester Guardian why Marinetti and Futurism, although the bane of

cultural élites, was heralded by others:
It is a movement of revolt, of strenuous rebellion against comfortable life and
armchair contentment. It shudders at the monotony of the regulated, the famil-
iar and the established repetition. That a thing has been done once is sufficient
reason why it should never be done again. […] No wonder Marinetti burst like
a bombshell upon our land. But there is a fine light in a bursting shell, and it
makes a fine hole in the panoply of indifference.66
In spring 1914, the Futurists presented an Exhibition of the Works of the

Italian Futurist Painters and Sculptors at the Doré Gallery. It ran from 13–
30 April 1914 and comprised of eighty works by Boccioni, Balla, Carrà,
Severini, Soffici and Russolo. Marinetti arrived in London ebullient as
always. This time, however, he alienated former supporters and caused
confusion amongst the public. At the Doré Gallery, he presented a series of
lectures, comprising The Siege of Adrianople and his latest manifesto, Dy-
namic, Multichanneled Recitation,67 complete with onomatopoeic effects.
Other conferenze consisted of lectures on Futurist paintings and Futurist
clothes.68
This time, Marinetti’s performances had become too familiar and his
boisterous personality too common for the press to take his appearance
seriously any longer. Moreover, the Futurist label had become a fad and
was being attached to almost anything with modernist or experimental
overtones, especially in art and literature.69 One critic identified the Fu-
turists as representative of “The Confetti School of Painting”.70 In a re-
view headlined “Futurist Puzzles”, another critic judged the exhibition to
be provocative, referring to it as “an orgy of colours, of lines, of plants”.
His review included comments overheard from patrons: “ ‘It is like my new
pyjamas’ says one of them pointing his finger to a wonderful mixture of
yellow, purple, and blue.” He went on to note that “the most amusing vic-
tim of Futurism is an old servant hanging the last paintings on the walls.
It is not very easy to find out the top and bottom part of the paintings,
and the poor old man had to ask the manager about every one of them”.71
66 Nevinson: “Marinetti: The Apostle of Futurism.”

67 See Marinetti: Critical Writings, pp. 193–199.
68 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p. 104.
69 Ibid., p. 108. During the winter 1913 and early spring 1914, Futurism had reached “prop-
er society”. Sir Edward Marsh’s costume for the Albert Hall Picture Ball was a Futurist
picture designed by Wyndham Lewis. Several attendees wore Futurist costumes at both
the Artists’ Revels and the All Fools’ Ball.
70 [Anon.]: “The Confetti School of Painting.”
71 [Anon.]: “Futurist Puzzles: Baffled Critics at the Dore Galleries.”

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The reviewer for The Evening News claimed that the British public
saw in Futurism nothing more than a “helter-skelter conception”. It only
espoused “the cult of violence for its own sake”, and as an art form it
did not represent “composition but decomposition”.72 The Daily Express
called it “lunacy masquerading as art”, arguing that because so much was
incomprehensible, people had persuaded themselves that it must be full of
meaning and significance. “There is a premium on wild, bizarre novelty,”
the article insisted, “and the pursuit of truth and beauty has been almost
abandoned”.73
Last developments before the First World War

Marinetti delighted in the controversy he generated. He seemed more
emboldened than ever to conquer London’s cultural spheres despite the
plethora of negative press coverage.74 Toward the end of his visit, Mari-
netti brought Futurism to the music-hall for fourteen performances spread
over seven days. It was the perfect venue, he thought, because it was “with-
out traditions, masters, or dogmas, and it feeds on the rapidly passing
events of the moment”.75 The uninhibited atmosphere of the music-hall
permitted both the performers and the audience to connect directly to
each other. At the Coliseum, one of London’s most popular music-halls,
the Grand Futurist Concert of Noises performed Awakening a Great City
and A Meeting of Motor Cars and Aeroplanes with an orchestra of twenty-
three newly invented Noise-intoners.76
At the first performance, Marinetti gave a talk on Futurist principles,
which after fifteen minutes was drowned out by the noise of the heck-
ling crowd. The audience had come to be entertained, not to be lectured.
Marinetti abandoned his plan for further lectures at the Coliseum and
enriched the musical presentations with playing some recent gramophone
recordings.77 The owner of the hall, Sir Oswald Stoll, played a record by
Elgar who, because of Pratella’s praise of his music in the Manifesto of
72 Evening News, 17 April 1914.

73 [Anon.]: “Lunacy Masquerading as Art.”
74 [Anon.]: “The Futurists Again.”
75 Marinetti: Critical Writings, p. 185.
76 Walsh: C. R. W. Nevinson: This Cult of Violence, p. 81. The poster advertising the event
promised “The Performance of Two Noise Spirals [...] composed and conducted by Lu-
igi Russolo [with]: Buzzers, Exploders; Thunderers; Whistlers; Murmerers; Gurglers;
Rattlers; Cracklers and Roarers [...], electrical instruments invented and constructed by
Luigi Russolo and Ugo Piatti”.
77 In 1914, during his stay in London, Marinetti began to record his poetry on 78 rpm

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Futurist Musicians, was considered to be a Futurist disciple.78 The Daily

Graphic accurately caught the tenor of the crowd: “The audience seemed
to be of the opinion that Futurist music had better be kept for the future.
At all events they show an earnest desire to not have it present”.79
The British avant-garde’s disassociation from Futurism began in
March 1914 with the founding of the Rebel Art Centre. The severance oc-
curred on 7 June when Nevinson included the names of fellow avant-garde
artists from the centre as signatories on “A Futurist Manifesto: Vital Eng-
lish Art”. Suddenly and without consent, these artists found their names
printed on Rebel Art Centre letterhead alongside those of the ‘usurpers’,
Marinetti and Nevinson. By attempting to affiliate the English avant-
garde to Futurism, Nevinson greatly antagonized his fellow avant-gardists.
The English rebels who did not want to be associated with Marinetti did
not wait long to respond to this unsolicited absorption into the Futurist
family. In a letter of 13 June 1914 to the New Weekly they stated:
There are certain artists in England who do not belong to the Royal Academy
nor to any of the passeist groups, and who do not on that account agree with Fu-
turism of Signor Marinetti. An assumption of such agreement either by Signor
or by his followers is an impertinence. We, the undersigned, whose ideals were
mentioned or implied, or who might, by the opinions of others, be implicated,
beg to dissociate ourselves from the ‘Futurist’ manifesto which appeared in the
pages of the Observer of Sunday, June 1.80
The Daily Express understood correctly that the Vital English Art mani-
festo had not offended mainstream artists as intended, but alienated the
avant-garde artists with whom an alliance might have been feasible.81
Such a presumptive provocation outraged Lewis and his colleagues, who
quickly mounted an attack on the pages of the Times, the Observer and
the Daily Mail.
The Futurist evening planned for 12 June 1914 at the Doré Galleries
included Marinetti speaking and giving a vivid performance with Nev-
inson, as the only remaining Futurist supporter, lecturing and reciting
gramophone discs. To date, none of the original five disks have been traced. See Berghaus:
“F. T. Marinetti’s Concept of a Theatre Enhanced by Audio-Visual Media”, p. 108.
78 Apollonio: Futurist Manifestos, p. 32.
79 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p. 105; [Anon.]: “Futurism Glorifies the
Music Hall.”
80 Aldington, et al.: “Futurism: Letter to the Editor”, New Weekly 1:13 (June 1914): 406.
The letter also appeared in The Observer of 14 June 1914 and The Egotist 1:12 (15 June
1914), p. 239, and was signed by Richard Aldington, David Bomberg, Frederick Etchells,
Edward Wadsworth, Ezra Pound, Lawrence Atkinson, Henri Gaudier Brzeska, Cuthbert
Hamilton, William Roberts, Wyndham Lewis.

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the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism. Events, however, did not go

according to plan. Lewis and his compatriots disrupted proceedings by
constantly heckling, overturning chairs and letting off fireworks. The po-
lice arrived to restore calm. Soon afterward, the British group formally
launched their new movement – Vorticism. The putsch was complete.82 By
their bold pronouncement repudiating the foreign influences of Futurism,
the Vorticists declared that only they, as Anglo-Saxons, could advance the
arts of Britain against the reactionary forces of domestic complacency and
compete with the art movements abroad. Portraying themselves as British
patriots, the Vorticists intended to revitalize an Empire in decline by ag-
gressively reasserting its cultural leadership. In the last months before the
war, the Vorticists aligned their objectives with those of the government
and the press to diminish and eliminate the forces of degeneration.83 As
the acrimonious split played itself out, the public became disinclined to
accept either movement. Despite serious aesthetic differences between the
two, it seemed that the public had experienced enough. Two months later,
the Great War began, thus bringing Vorticism – Britain’s only Futurist
inspired avant-garde movement – to a gradual and painful halt.
The British reaction to and frustration with Futurism was symptomat-
ic of a much larger issue: understanding the momentous cultural changes
occurring in the years before the Great War. Once the conflict had erupt-
ed, many in society hoped that the wave of blasé degeneracy that had sub-
merged British culture and had given it a “mistaken morbidness” would
come to an end. The war, they argued, would serve as a “violent tonic” and
“purifying antidote” for English art that had fallen victim to the Euro-
pean fads of Futurism, Post-Impressionism and Cubism.84 Perhaps, most
importantly, many believed that victory would end the precipitous social
decline and erosion of Britain’s international dominance. Not surprisingly,
military victory in the First World War accomplished neither, and Britain
retreated to the delusory comforts of a mythical Edwardian Era.
82 Haycock: A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War, pp. 187–189.
83 Peppis: Literature, Politics, and the English Avant-garde Nation and Empire, 1901–1918,
pp. 7–15. After war had commenced, the Vorticist shifted the external threat from Italian
Futurism to Prussianism and aligned itself with government objectives to defeat Imperial
Germany.
84 Colton: “The Effects of the War on Art.”

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Authenticated

The Futurist Invasion of Great Britain, 1910-1914: Marinetti's Fi RST London Visit (1910)

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The Futurist Invasion of Great Britain, 1910–1914

Dominika Buchowska and Steven L. Wright

F. T. Marinetti’s ﬁrst visit to London in 1910 unknowingly served as a harbinger of

Keywords: 1912 European tour of Futurist paintings, British modernism, Post-Im-

Marinetti’s ﬁrst London visit (1910)

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to other nations and compounded fears of an irrevocable loss of Britain’s

1 Goldring: South Lodge, p. 64.

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but while visiting Continental Europe, “made a great show of chastity”.

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The cultural assault continued in autumn 1910. To many, the absur-

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The ﬁrst Futurist exhibition in London (1912)

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Colony Hatch Kindergarten.”16 P. G. Konody wrote in the Pall Mall Ga-

16 Evening News, 2 March 1912.

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feminist [and] anti-pornocratic”. He thought it would behove England to

22 Sickert: “The Futurist ‘Devil-among-the Tailors’”, pp. 147–152.

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Modernism engulfs London

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35 Walsh: C. R. W. Nevinson: This Cult of Violence, p. 55.

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rality, tradition and political stability. Richmond urged caution and an

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After viciously criticizing the English artists individually, Phillips identi-

Even modernist critics found it difﬁcult to write anything positive about

44 Phillips: “Post-Impressionists”, Daily Telegraph [1913].

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The ‘Decline in art’

48 Unknown author, unknown paper, 1913.

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52 G. R. H.: “Gallery and Studio. British Artists and Post-Impressionists.” As a founding

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pure Futurist fashion, challenged him to a duel. McCullagh declined the

54 Reported in Walsh: Hanging a Rebel: The Life of C. R. W. Nevinson, p. 72.

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Obviously not impressed, Marsh concluded that Marinetti’s repertoire

58 Quoted in The Standard, 19 November 1913.

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of Adrianople”, replete with thumping clashes and bombing noises. This

Dissent between the Italian and the English avant-gardes

63 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p.100.

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Manchester Guardian why Marinetti and Futurism, although the bane of

In spring 1914, the Futurists presented an Exhibition of the Works of the

66 Nevinson: “Marinetti: The Apostle of Futurism.”

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Last developments before the First World War

72 Evening News, 17 April 1914.

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Futurist Musicians, was considered to be a Futurist disciple.78 The Daily

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the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism. Events, however, did not go