The airbrushing of history
Those Italian Futurists were always a bit fascist, banging on in their bombastic and naive manifestos about the need for the cleansing agent of war, etc.
This didn't stop them producing some of the most iconic works in the modernist canon, though: works like Boccioni's dynamic sculpture, Unique Forms Of Continuity In Space, a cubist style automaton figure striding through space as if literally cutting up the atmosphere.
But this was before World War I showed us exactly what type of 'cleansing' total war achieved, a conflict in which Boccioni, the movement's most talented member, was himself killed.
By the 1930s, the decade on which this exhibition concentrates, futurism, though not, unfortunately, fascism, was a spent force and many of the artists exhorting the dynamism of killing machines, in this case military aeroplanes, were just not that great.
The best painting here opens the show. Painted as if we ourselves are in the cockpit, Tullio Crali's Nose-diving On The City shows a plane plummeting into a sea of skyscrapers. The strangest painting must be Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi's Loreto Madonna, depicting a vaporous Virgin surrounded by ascending crucifix-shaped planes.
I admit this is a perversely enjoyable show. Maybe it's the kitsch elements that won me over. It's also quite interesting on a purely historical note - you won't see any of this work in more mainstream shows.
And, to be fair, a lot of the imagery does seem more Boy's Own than fascist propaganda.
Until Feb 20, Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square N1, Wed to Sat 11am to 6pm, Sun noon to 5pm, £3.50, £2.50 concs. Tel: 020 7704 9522. Tube: Highbury & Islington
