Zang Tumb Tumb - The Birth of Futurism

The Birth of Futurism

According to Marinetti, futurism was born as a direct consequence of a 1908 car crash in which, attempting to avoid two cyclists, he crashed his Bugatti and went flying head over heels into a ditch. The experience led directly to the first futurist manifesto, which achieved an extraordinary coup-de-theâtre when he persuaded the editor of Le Figaro to publish the entire manifesto on the front page, February 20, 1909. Amongst a series of exhortations to replace the 'pensive, immobile' traditional literature with 'exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness... the slap and the blow with the fist.' and 'want to glorify war - the only cure for the world', the piece includes the famous quote;

"We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."

In a slightly later manifesto, contemporaneous with Zang Tumb Tuuum, Marinetti sets out a vision of modern book design which would provide the template for what would become known as the artist's book, in direct contrast to the French tradition of Livre d'Artiste.

"I call for a typographic revolution directed against the idiotic and nauseating concepts of the outdated and conventional book, with its handmade paper and seventeenth century ornamentation of garlands and goddesses, huge initials and mythological vegetation, its missal ribbons and epigraphs and roman numerals. The book must be the Futurist expression of our futurist ideas.. even more: My revolution is directed against what is known as the typographic harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and movement of style." Marinetti, Typographic Revolution, 1913,