MADDY JOSEPH attends Breaking Lines: a dual exhibition of Futurism and the Origins of Experimental Poetry and Dom Sylvester Houédard and Concrete Poetry in Post-war Britain at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.
Italian Futurism was an artistic and literary movement spanning 1909-1944 founded by poet, artist, and political figure Filippo Tommasso Marinetti. Key to the Futurist ideology was the principle that traditional vocabularies and artistic forms of expression were no longer fit for purpose, requiring renewal in order to better reflect the dynamic and industrialised contemporary world.
The Futurists hailed the artistic manifesto and the idea of the art movement as a quasi-ideological group. Leading with Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism (1909), the exhibition charts the movement with a focus on the Futurist treatment of language as sound and vision. The curation itself mirrors this: the exhibition employs a varying range of colour, screens, and text projections to communicate the overwhelming power of the written word.
Central to the Manifesto is the promotion of free verse and unrestricted writing through the use of radical linguistic fragmentation. It centres around the phrase “words in freedom”, pushing for a brutal dismemberment of language from traditional grammar and syntax. Futurist language harnesses techniques such as onomatopoeia and distinct typography to extend into the visual and sonic realm. Fragments of Marinetti’s manifesto are plastered on the walls behind which display the original text; the exhibition itself seems to seek linguistic transcendence and a blurring between the visual and literary arts.
Among the items on display are rare copies of works such as Govoni’s Rarefactions and Words in Freedom (1915), Depero’s The Bolted Book (1927) and the newspaper L’Italia Futurista (1916-18). Tracing the radical experimentations of the Futurists, this exhibition gives clear insight into the ideology and techniques of the movement as well as into the ways in which it gained notoriety.
One of the most striking aspects of the movement and exhibition is the conflation of artistic mediums. Through focusing on the visual and aural elements of the written word, the Futurist artists and writers bridge the gap between art and literature. This cerebral approach to language results in the discarding of conventional vocabularies in favour of a primal vocabulary of spontaneous phonic convention, creating a new and visually striking mode through which the viewer can reconsider contemporary use of language.
This exhibition highly complements the concrete poetry of Dom Sylvester Houédard and other verbo-visual artists working in post-war Britain. Houédard’s work blurred boundaries between literature and visual art due to the perceived conflict of convention and expression of meaning. His work consists of abstract patterns and shapes as well as typewritten characters to generate precise and free-floating geometric forms. Central to this is the display of words in circular or grid-like patterns, inviting the viewer to interact with the work both sequentially and spatially. This is further embodied by the application of key visual elements such as grids and text throughout the exhibition.
Through the development of this new visual language, Houédard found ways to express the ineffable through philosophical dimensions such as transience, contemplation, and the reimagined relationship between the material and divine. His displayed work consisted of abstract poetry in geometric circles, free-flowing notes and typestracts to produce abstract forms and poetry.
The gallery holds pieces by other verbo-visual poets working in Britain during the post-war period. This exhibition draws attention to the concept of concrete poetry, in which the poet’s intent is conveyed as much through form and typographical arrangement as it is through the meaning of the words themselves. These include Edwin Morgan’s Emergent Poems, which are characterised through repetition and idiosyncratic word orders that alter meaning and visually surprise the reader. The techniques of the exhibited poets vary from Morgan’s more direct use of text to a complete abstraction of form. The gallery’s display cases filled with colour and text mirror the creative goals of these artists and poets. The aesthetics of this literary movement are grounded in Futurism. The exhibition communicates the interaction between the two, as well as the origins of the concepts themselves, with the ground-breaking work produced by their artists, both in Italy and Britain.
Breaking Lines is currently showing at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art from 15th January- 11th May 2025
