Death of the Artists: Marinetti’s Last Stand

Marinetti was both the Malcolm McLaren and Johnny Rotten of his era, the impresario and figurehead of what was early 20th century punk. He charmed his audience with shock and provocation, telling his Russian hosts that the Kremlin was an absurdity, Tolstoy hypocritical, Dostoevsky hysterical, responded to a question about Russian art by asking if it even existed and going off about how women were inferior, and that of course the museums should be burnt down.

from Death of the Artists: Marinetti’s Last Stand in B O D Y’s 2021 Winter Issue.

To read the previous Death of the Artists: Anton Webern in Twelve Tones go here.

Photo – Marinetti on the way to Russia/courtesy of Beinecke Library, Yale.