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Dynamism
of a Speeding Horse + Houses
1914-15
Gouache, oil, wood, cardboard, copper, and
coated iron
112.9 x 115 cm
76.2553 PG 30 |
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Umberto
Boccioni turned to sculpture in 1912 after
publishing his manifesto on the subject on April 11
of that year. The Futurist aesthetic platform as articulated
in this document advocates the use of various materials
in a single work, the rejection of closed form, and
the suggestion of the interpenetration of form and the
environment through the device of intersecting planes.
Here Boccioni assembled wood, cardboard, and metal,
with painted areas showing a Futurist handling of planes
influenced by the Cubism of Pablo
Picasso and Georges
Braque. Boccioni, like Raymond
Duchamp-Villon, made studies of horses from
nature before developing the motif into a nonspecific
symbol of the modern age. Here he used the horse to
demonstrate his observation that the nature of vision
produces the illusion of a fusing of forms: when the
distance between a galloping horse and a stationary
house is visually imperceptible, horse and house appear
to merge into a single changing form. Sculptures such
as the present example are concerned with the apparent
compression of space as an object traverses it, and
with the nature of the object’s redefinition by
that space.
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