Cubists and Post-Impressionism

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

Futurist sculpture seeks to reproduce a figure or an object attached to and a part of its fleeting and flowing surroundings, its atmosphere, its medium.

It goes further; it seeks to convey not only the impression of the truth that a figure is a part of its environment, but that its atmosphere and environment flows through the figure and the figure through the environment, that nothing is segregated but everything fusing.

The philosophical thought is old, as old as the earliest Greek philosophy, but the attempt to express the thought in stone, wood, bronze, is new.

We may feel sure the attempt is futile, that it cannot succeed, but our scepticism is no reason why a sculptor in his enthusiasm should not make the attempt.

In June and July last a Futurist sculptor, Boccioni, exhibited some of his work in Paris.

One example, “Head—Houses—Light,” was literally a conglomerate of a human bust of heroic size, with hands crossed in front, and the following accessories:

On the top of the head the fronts of several small houses, with doors, windows, and all details just as the sculptor saw the houses many blocks back of his model. The casual observer would be completely mystified on seeing several house fronts start out of the head of a bust; but when one understands that it is a fundamental belief of the Futurists that all that is within the vision, actual or imagined, of painter or sculptor is a part of the picture or bust, the reason why of the houses is plain.

From one shoulder of the figure starts about eighteen inches of a wooden railing and iron grill work, part of a balcony, just as the sculptor glimpsed it a block or so down the street.

A little to the back of the shoulder is a slightly inclined level surface about a foot square; on this surface is the toy figure, an inch high, of a woman in street costume. The figure was probably bought at a toy store, just as the wooden railing and iron grill work might have been picked up at any second-hand shop. The little figure of the woman and the level surface represent some open square that—judging from the diminutive size of the figure—must have been a long distance away, far enough away for a human being to appear no taller than an inch.