FROM THE FRONT PAGE of Paris’s Le Figaro in February 1909, the “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” heralded not only a new cultural movement but, in the same hector- ing breath, its own proleptic obsolescence. “When we are forty, others who are younger and stronger will throw us into the wastebasket, like useless manuscripts . . . !” So declared the Futurist poet and impresario F. T. Marinetti, hurling his now-famous paeans to youth, speed, and the sovereignty of the machine. He vowed to demolish cele- brated monuments, artworks, and academies—those past glories to which Italy’s cultural present remained inden- tured, given the country’s belated modernization. From its beginnings on the eve of Italy’s pre–World War I colonialist campaign in Libya to its last gasps under the Fascist Republic of Salò in 1943–45, Futurism championed every- thing from the “destruction of syntax,” to war on academic pedantry, to war itself. A quickly growing band of Futurist brothers (joined only gradually by a handful of women) authored more than fifty manifestos before 1915 alone, insisting that any masterpiece “be burned with the corpse of its author,” pledging to destroy as much as they created, and declaring scorn for the very public whose attention they relentlessly courted. For a movement that likened the admiration of “old paintings” to necrophilia, the ironies of a major museum retrospective are obvious; Futurism’s scorched-earth rheto- ric poses challenges to any commemoration of its legacy. Pinned behind protective glass in the exhibition “Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the move- ment’s birth announcement, as fragile as a sheet of prized papyrus, now embodies the old news it so tirelessly derided. Nearby, an introductory gallery assembles key works by Umberto Boccioni, whose untimely death in 1916 cut short his remarkable achievements, particularly in sculpture. “I believe I have glimpsed a complete renovation of that mum- mified art,” he wrote in a 1912 letter from Paris, where the churning Hellenistic swirls of the Louvre’s Winged Victory of Samothrace (an early Futurist bugbear) surely lent more to his Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, than he conceded. Indeed, for all the Futurists’ assaults on what they deemed the “auratic” object of art, traditional paint- ing and sculpture took pride of place in their early efforts and remain the work by which they are best known—at least to an American public familiar with only a narrow swath of works from the group’s seminal years before World War I. It is from this limited perspective that Futurism’s his- torical reception remains fitful and fraught, and “Italian Futurism,” organized by Guggenheim curator Vivien Greene, provides a refreshingly expanded view of the movement’s trajectory. Following centenary exhibitions in Europe in 2009, this first comprehensive retrospective on US soil assembles more than 350 works in a staggering variety of media, including photography, film, music, painting, ceramics, architectural design, and seemingly everything in between. It was, in fact, the space between media that occupied the movement’s keenest attention. Futurism aimed to at once transcend the strictures of differ- ent genres and synthesize them into a transformative world- view. Thus, the exhibition offers not only familiar canvases (Carlo Carrà’s Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910–11, and Gino Severini’s Armored Train in Action, 1915) but Giacomo Balla’s ceramic coffee service, Fortunato Depero’s painted puppets, and Enrico Prampolini’s set designs and theatrical couture. This show also includes the creations of no fewer than nine women, together with works rarely exhibited on these shores, such as Tato’s and Bruno Munari’s mischievous photomontages; Virgilio Marchi’s designs for Fantastic City, ca. 1919; Ivo Pannaggi’s watercolor abstractions, redolent of international Constructivism; and the various manifestos that propose or rehearse these diverse works. Read aloud at Futurist serate (evenings), such proclama- tions were inevitably met by vegetable projectiles and evoked summary brawls, bringing the group’s shibboleth of arte-azione into real time and space. “We desperately want to re-enter into life,” reads the 1910 “Futurist Paint- ing: Technical Manifesto.” Fittingly, the exhibition borrows its title from Balla and Depero’s “The Futurist Reconstruc- tion of the Universe,” a 1915 manifesto that broadcasts an explosive ambition. The pamphlet and its related objects propose a wholesale reconfiguration of modern experience, pushing past the confines of frame or plinth to a “total fusion” of Futurist sensibilities. Indeed, as suggested by its “universal” aims, Futurism reached well beyond Italy’s borders. Marinetti’s flair (and funds) for publicity rendered it the first truly international avant-garde movement, as notorious in London or Moscow as in Milan or Rome. Yet Futurism also remained grounded in the circumstances of its origins: Italy’s relatively late unification and an attendant crisis of identity. This mix of local and global orientations has long frustrated analysis. By limiting the show to Italian artists, Greene affords a more thorough survey of Futurism’s evolution than previ- ously undertaken on this side of the Atlantic, with engag- ing didactic materials (photographs, videos, wall texts, and a map) marking the way. While the 1986 landmark exhibition “Futurism and Futurisms” at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice captured the gamut of media that is the move- ment’s defining characteristic, it included related develop- ments, from Russian Rayonism to British Vorticism. Likewise, Tate Modern’s 2009 centennial retrospective saw non-Futurist works—by Georges Braque, Robert Delaunay, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and others—upstage many of their Italian counterparts; Futurist innovations appeared less radical than derivative, with even Boccioni’s pioneering experiments wilting somewhat in the wake of Picasso’s example. “Italian Futurism” SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK Ara H. Merjian For some, Fascist totality is merely the logical upshot of Futurism’s utopian “reconstruction”; for others, the regime’s mounting conservatism betrayed the cultural movement’s dynamic profanations. MAY 2014 313 Fom left: View of “Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe,” 2014. Four works by Enrico Prampolini. From left: Sketch for Stage Design of The Merchant of Hearts, ca. 1926–27; Costume for Propeller Dance, 1928; Costume for Football Dance, 1928; Simultaneous Self- Portrait, ca. 1923. Photo: Kris McKay. Gino Severini, Armored Train in Action, 1915, oil on canvas, 45 5 /8 x 34 7 /8".