Some thoughts about The Future

When I hear the word Future, I see that colossal sculpture 75 feet high in stainless and chrome-nickel steel of the man and woman -he holding a hammer aloft, she a sickle – entitled “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” created by Vera Mukhina for the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life. Follow us into the future as we build the Glorious Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!

When I hear the word Future, I see those two monumental symbols of the New York World’s Fair- The Perisphere and The Trylon- the first International Exposition whose slogan was “Dawn of a New Day,” whose theme was “the world of tomorrow”. There was only one problem: this advertisement for the glorious future opened April 30, 1939.

When I hear the word Future, I see the iconic sculpture by Umberto Boccioni, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space”, 1913. Thirty years after Nietzsche described his “super-man," Boccioni sculpted a future-man in cast bronze. The face of the sculpture is abstracted into a cross, suggesting a helmet, an appropriate reference for the war-hungry Futurists. Boccioni along with many other Italian artists, enthusiastically embraced Filippo Marinetti’s “Manifeste de Futurisme”published in 1909. The Futurists glorified speed, violence and the working classes, working across a wide range of art forms including painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, theatre and music.

Marinetti celebrated WW1 as an act of Futurism. In 1918 he founded the Futurist Political Party which since it was strongly patriotic, supportive of violence, and opposed to parliamentary democracy, merged with the Italian Fascist Party. In 1922, when Mussolini came into power, Futurism was officially accepted by the Fascists.

When I hear the word Future, I immediately hear echoes of that infamous remark misattributed to Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, or Hermann Goring. The statement “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”, was in fact an altered version of a line in “Schlageter”, a play written by Hans Johst, a poet and playwright member of the officially approved writers’ organization in the Third Reich. When the Nazis achieved power in 1933, Johst wrote the play in honor of a proto-Nazi martyr, to be performed on Hitler's 44th birthday, 20 April 1933. The actual line in the play is, however, slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!" "When I hear 'Culture'... I release the safety catch on my Browning!”

No, I leave The Future to the fanatics. Give me this tsarte khma, this tender Yiddish wisdom:

Chaim Zhitlovsky