5. To paint the human figure it is not necessary to paint the figure but simply to give its envelopment. Space does not exist. Millions of miles separate us from the sun, yet that is no reason why the house before us should not be encased in the solar disk. In our work we can secure effects similar to those of the X-ray. Opacity does not exist.
They paint all sides of an object as if they saw through it. They will paint a platter on a table and the part of the table covered by the platter; they will paint the entire collar about the neck so that it is visible through the neck. They ignore not only the ordinary conceptions of space, but time does not exist for them. Where in ordinary painting the box of bonbons that is passed at a baptism may be painted closed on a table, the Futurist shows what is inside the box, also the people assembled to whom the bonbons are given, and the infant to be baptized, and perhaps the marriage of the father and mother, the carriages outside the church, etc., etc.[65]
They illustrate further,
The sixteen persons about us in a moving omnibus are in turn and at the same time, one, ten, four, three; they are immobile and yet move; they go, come, bounding along the street, suddenly lost in the sun, then return seated before you, like so many symbols persistent of universal vibration.
How often it happens that upon the cheek of the person with whom we are talking we see the horse that passes far away at the end of the street. Our bodies become parts of the seat upon which we rest and the seat becomes part of us. The omnibus merges in the houses that it passes, and the houses mix with the bus and become part of it.
6. The construction of pictures up to this time has been stupidly traditional.
Painters have always shown things and persons before us. We place the spectator in the midst of the picture.
Heretofore we have looked at pictures; it is the idea of the Futurist that we should look through them, that the pictures should give us new visions of life and things, new sensations, new emotions.
We declare:
That one should hate every form of imitation and glorify every form of originality.