This week we visited two museums in the heart of the Duomo area of Milan. The first was an Umberto Boccioni exhibition at Palazzo Reale and the second was the Futurism wing at the Museo del Novecento. I chose two peices from each museum that I thought captured the essence of Futurism in similar ways. The first is the classic scultpure by Umberto Boccioni, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space”, that depicts a man in motion. With the growth industrialization and the machine age, the futurists were obsessed with the idea of movement. Motion manifested itself in transportation and the general mechanization of products used in everyday life. When we headed over to the Museo del Novecento, I stumbled across a painting by Giacomo Balla that featured shapes similar to those on the sculpture. This painting features Giacomo’s daughter running on a balcony. He chose to represent the motion by repeating the shape of her body over and over again. I thought it was interesting to see a similar concept fleshed out in two dimensions versus three dimensions. I can imagine this style being radical at the time because not only were people being exposed to new style, but they were also having a whole new industrialized world thrust upon them which was probably overwhelming.
