Morton Schamberg

Morton Schamberg
Fanette Reider
ca. 1911
oil on canvas
Williams College Museum of Art,
Williamstown, Massachusetts

Morton Schamberg
Estella
1912
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Morton Schamberg
Self Portrait
1912
platinum print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Morton Schamberg
Self Portrait
ca. 1912
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Morton Schamberg
Figure
1913
oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Morton Schamberg
Composition
 1916
pastel on paper
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Morton Schamberg
Composition
1916
pastel on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

Morton Schamberg
Painting
1916
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Morton Schamberg
Painting IV (Mechanical Abstraction)
1916
oil on panel
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Morton Schamberg
Painting VIII (Mechanical Abstraction)
1916
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Morton Schamberg
Telephone
1916
oil on canvas
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

Morton Schamberg
Untitled (Mechanical Abstraction)
1916
oil on panel
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Morton Schamberg in collaboration with
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
'God'
1917
gelatin silver print
 (Dada sculpture of found materials) 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Morton Schamberg
View of Rooftops
1917
gelatin silver print
(unique print, formerly owned by Charles Sheeler)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Morton Schamberg
Fruit Bowl
1917
drawing
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Morton Schamberg
Bowl of Flowers
1918
watercolor on paper
(Schamberg died in the flu epidemic of 1918) 
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

The Fifth Ode

What lissom boy among the roses,

Sprinkled with liquid scents, proposes

To court you in your grotto, fair

Pyrrha? For whom is your blond hair

Bound with plain art? Alas, how often

Will he bid changed gods to soften,

Till, poor landlubber, he finds

The sea so rough with inky winds:

Who now, poor gull, enjoys your gold

And always careless, always bold

To love, hopes on and never knows

The gold is tinsel. Sad are those

For whom you shine, untried. For me,

Beholden to the great god of the sea

A votive tablet will recall

Drenched garments on his temple wall.

– Horace (65-8 BC), translated by Keith Douglas (1940)

Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla
Portrait of sculptor Carlo Fontana
1907
oil on canvas
Estorick Collection, London

Giacomo Balla
La Mano del Violinista
1912
oil on canvas
Estorick Collection, London

Giacomo Balla
Dinamismo di un Cane al Guinzaglio
1912
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Museum of Art, New York

Giacomo Balla
Orbite Celesti
1913
oil on canvas
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Giacomo Balla
Automobile in Corsa
1913
graphite and crayon on paper
Estorick Collection, London

Giacomo Balla
Velocità Astratta
1913
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Giacomo Balla
Velocità Astratta
1913
oil on canvas
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Giacomo Balla
Velocità di una Automobile + Luce
1913
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Giacomo Balla
Velocità Astratta + Rumore
1913-14
oil on board in artist's painted frame
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Giacomo Balla
Dinamismo d'Auto
1913-14
drawing
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Giacomo Balla
Vortex with Radiations
1913-14
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Giacomo Balla
La Primavera
ca. 1916
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Giacomo Balla
Fuochi d'Artificio
1917
stage-set for Ballets-Russes, reconstructed in 1997 by Elio Marchegiani
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Giacomo Balla
Fuochi d'Artificio
ca. 1917
lithograph
(after stage design for Ballets-Russes)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Giacomo Balla
Pleasing Numbers
1919
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giacomo Balla
Continuous Lines
ca. 1929
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Giacomo Balla
Arte Astratta
1955
screenprint
Brooklyn Museum

from Dreams About Clothes

But now, his baby face unlined and bald, 

The old-clothes man comes down the street,

Singing the little song he sings.

His overcoat is all humped up in back

To hide his powerful wings. 

Snow melts at the touch of his bare feet.

He passes me unseeing, yet how much

Of mine's already in his sack!

Tell me something, Art.

You know what it's like

Awake in your dry hell

Of volatile synthetic solvents.

Won't you help us brave the elements

Once more, of terror, anger, love?

Seeing there's no end to wear and tear

Upon the lawless heart,

Won't you as well forgive

Whoever settles for the immaterial?

Don't you care how we live?

– James Merrill (1972)

Umberto Boccioni and Futurist Delusions

Umberto Boccioni
Self-portrait
1910
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Self-portrait
1905
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
States of Mind: Those Who Go
1912
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was the leading artist of Italian Futurism.  During his short life, he produced some of the movement's iconic paintings and sculptures, capturing the color and dynamism of modern life in a style he theorized and defended in manifestos, books, and articles.  Born in Reggio Calabria, Boccioni attended technical college in Catania, Sicily, and began his artistic career as a talented draftsman.  He moved to Rome in 1899 to train as an artist, first taking drawing lessons with Giovanni Maria Mataloni, an artist who specialized in publicity posters.  Boccioni's skill  in creating compelling compositions in cartoons and posters stayed with him throughout his career.  . . .  Wanting to discover a city with a more established artistic avant-garde, Boccioni went to Paris in 1906; he found the city and its modern artists exhilarating.  The following year, he moved to Venice (with stops in Russia, Warsaw, Vienna, and Padua), where he learned printmaking.  His prints of this period depict friends, neighbors, and his mother.  They also hint at his burgeoning interest in the industrial city, which became a more constant subject after his move to Milan in August 1907."   

Umberto Boccioni
Man Laying Paving Stones
(study for The Street Pavers)
1914
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Composition study for The Street Pavers
1914
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
The Street Pavers
1914
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Boccioni was a member of the Futurists, Italian artists who announced their existence in 1909 with a manifesto published on the front page of the French paper, Le Figaro.  The group called for the abandonment of the past in favor of celebrating modern life and aimed to celebrate the metropolis in "multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution."  Such canvases as The Street Pavers offered Boccioni the opportunity to revolutionize this scene of backbreaking work and to celebrate the powerful form of the modern laborer.  Through his inventive use of pulsating color and rhythmic brushwork, the artist activated the surface of the canvas, making the faceless figures of workers almost indistinguishable from the urban context."

Umberto Boccioni
Man Lying in a Field
1907
etching and drypoint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Landscape with Industrial Plants
1909
drypoint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Head of the Artist's Mother
1915
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
The Artist's Mother at a Table
1910
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
The Artist's Mother
1915
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Development of a Bottle in Space
1913, cast in 1950
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"In March 1912 Boccioni wrote, "These days I am obsessed by sculpture!  I believe I have glimpsed a complete renovation of that mummified art."  A month later he published the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture and by June 1913 he had produced eleven sculptures, including Development of a Bottle in Space.  Rather than delineating the contours of his subject, a bottle, Boccioni integrated the object's internal and external spatial planes, which appear to unfold and spiral into surrounding space."  

Umberto Boccioni
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1913, cast in 1950
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"The Futurists' celebration of the fast pace and mechanical power of the modern world is emphasized here in the sculpture's dynamism and energy.  The figure's marching silhouette appears deformed by wind and speed, while its sleek metal contours allude to machinery.  World War I broke out the year after Boccioni created this work.  Believing that modern technological warfare would shatter Italy's obsession with the classical past, the Futurists welcomed the conflict.  . . .  

Boccioni was killed in action in 1916, at the age of thirty-four."

Umberto Boccioni
The Athlete
1907
drypoint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Study of a Man's Forearm
ca. 1908
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

– quoted texts from curator's notes at the Metropolitan Museum