Unique Forms: The Drawing and Sculpture of Umberto Boccioni
Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, N1, until 19 April
The year 2009 sees the 100th anniversary of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, celebrated by a major reassessment of Futurism at the Tate in June. Meanwhile, the Estorick Collection has got in first with a small but select show devoted to the leading Futurist Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916). Boccioni is one of those figures we speculate about — would he have developed into an even greater artist had he survived the first world war, or would he have declined into academicism and self-plagiarism? Certainly he was an important figure in his time, perhaps the most significant of the first wave of Futurist artists, which also included Giacomo Balla, Carla Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini. How does he fare here?
Part of the problem is that much of his fame rests on his sculptures, yet most of them were destroyed after his early death. Only four have survived, two of which are in this exhibition. All were shown in a major Boccioni retrospective in Milan in 1916–17, then entrusted to the care of a deservedly forgotten sculptor who stored them in his studio before chucking them out in 1927. Made from plaster, they were fragile and easily broken. A young sculptor called Marco Bisi retrieved the remains of ‘Development of a Bottle in Space’ and rebuilt it, shown here in a bronze version. The other sculpture at the Estorick is the famous bronze from the Tate, ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space’ (1913), a streamlined striding figure exploring the dynamics of human motion.
Boccioni thought he could renew the moribund tradition of sculpture. He wrote a long treatise on it, and developed ideas about how the figure should also embrace its architectural context, which he sought to evoke through the inclusion of such things as real glass windows, light bulbs and balcony railing. It all sounds incredibly contemporary (so many artists in the century following him tried the same thing), but it’s revealing that Boccioni abandoned the idea of including these architectural elements when he made ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space’. Futurism was essentially about movement and how to capture it (the most famous Futurist painting is probably by Balla of a dachshund going for a walk on multiple legs), but Boccioni decided that such repetition did not work. He thought that the idea of movement could be best conveyed ‘through the intuitive search for the one single form which produces continuity in space’. In his striding sculpture he achieved this, giving the figure a flame-like quality to capture the flickering intensity of motion.
This small tightly focused exhibition inhabits one room: a sculpture at each end, with ranks of drawings in between. ‘Development of a Bottle in Space’ is a chunky, satisfying piece, opening up and colonising space in a calmly determined way. The show begins with an ink drawing by Carrà of Boccioni, depicted with a huge sail of a nose. Among the works on paper, the main eye-catcher is a group of four cubisty figure studies, their forms deconstructed and regrouped in potent facets, surging with wing-beats and muscular billows. Appearances come and go among the formal distortions: buttocks and thrusting knee-joints piston through the ellipses and triangles, a driving force that both fragments and unites. Rail travel, bicycling, human dynamism, a galloping horse — the expected staccato disruptions of these subjects are surprisingly lyrical, despite the frenzied emotional temperature of the work. Symbols of harnessed energy, they demonstrate Boccioni’s singular and impressive powers, an artist who could find the movement in a still-life and make it beautiful.
Running concurrently with the Boccioni in the other ground floor gallery is an exhibition of a contemporary Italian artist, Luca Buvoli (born 1963). Italian-born Buvoli is highly regarded (he’s shown at the Venice Biennale and in a host of museum shows) and lives now in New York. He contributes a multimedia installation which comments on Futurism through a combination of film, animation, wall painting and sculpture. It makes its point very quickly: the soundtrack of people with reading difficulties stumbling over the Futurist Manifesto is painful; not a place to linger. Better to go upstairs to the galleries containing the Estorick’s permanent collection which have been rehung with a loan or two from the Tate. Here are a couple of drawings by Boccioni in more naturalistic mode: one of a couple asleep in pencil, the other a charcoal and chalk of a seated woman. Also works on paper by other Futurists — Balla, Russolo, Sironi, Ardengo Soffici, Carrà and Severini. In the second room is a group of works by Morandi (a drawing and an oil, five etchings) and a group of Modiglianis, three oils and two works on paper. It’s a very good way to see these artists — a small number of works in an intimate setting. Recommended.
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