In praise of Rapunzel's witch

She was the baddie. The one who snatched little Rapunzel when she was just a new born. The wicked witch who confined poor Rapunzel in a solitary fortress for years. Away from the whole world, where no one could see her or talk to her or influence her in any way.

Sure we all have hated her for her heartless acts. But did it ever strike you that this wicked wicked witch could have been a brilliant chemist of her time. Who hit upon some kind of an amazing shampoo, conditioner or a secret formula perhaps, which she used on Rapunzel's hair. Just what was it that this wicked witch concoted that made Rapunzel's hair so strong, sturdy, long yet lovely? Did she put Rapunzel on some out-of-this-world diet? Better still did she chant some wild chants to nourish Rapunzel's hair? Whatever it was, she must have cared a hell lot for Rapunzel's hair than she did for the poor girl as such.

I sometimes wonder, why this wicked witch was never employed in modern day shampoo and oil commercials. She was a nasty piece of work but anyone would fall for her secret hair care formula!

'Futurism' is 100 years old

''Turn aside the canals to flood the museums!… Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammers and wreck, wreck the venerable cities, pitilessly! Burn down those libraries, get rid of those museums. Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, in to the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the absurd!"

These were the words of Filippo Marinetti, part of the Futurist manifesto published in 1909 in Le Figaro, a French newspaper. As I started reading this manifesto printed eight feet high up on the entrance wall of the exhibition hall at the Tate Modern, London, I felt as though someone had punched me in my face, pulled the carpet from under my feet. The words I read and re-read was the blueprint for an avant garde movement of its time. For the words rejected the stillness of life, the human habit to preserve, to revel in the past, shunned immobility... in fact it was a complete rejection of the past. I was transported to an era, which from the audacity of the words of the manifesto, the agile strokes of paintings, the racing sculpts appeared to be a philosophy way ahead of its time or to be honest, far more modern than today's times.

I witnessed change like I never had. I imagined myself in an era where cars had just started zipping on half baked roads, bridges were being built and hooting steam trains bellowing thick black smoke were connecting places, making distances shorter. I imagined the whole enthusiasm of man being able to at long last fly on an aeroplane and conquer the blue skies. I imagined man entering an era of speed, timelessness and globalisation. I could imagine men revolting and tearing down the walls of conservatism, monarchy and feudalism. I imagined man breaking free from the heavy chains of tradition and creating a movement of dynamism and raw energy. That was the kind of impact futurism was having on me.

Look at the painting at the top. Titled as 'The Revolt', painted by Luigi Russolo in 1911, it captures a mob of protestors marching against a movement establishment which is represented in blue. But such is the force and the raw energy of man that you can see the rules of the establishment (the blue houses in a row) bending, give in to the force. Such was the impact that futuristic art was supposed to have on the minds of the viewer. According to Marinetti, art should represent the movement. To shape their art they drew upon new ideas of perception, experimental photography and multi-sensory responses, and the simultaneous interleaving of memory and experience. He was deliberately provocative in his wholesale rejection of the past. With his radical words, he sent shock waves not only in the art and literary circles of his time but also across the masses. I don't know about the others but Marinetti's radicalism sure was giving me an art attack. I suddenly felt like fishing out a brush and some paints and splashing agile strokes and vibrant angles and set the canvas on fire.

















The sculpt above titled 'Unique forms of continuity in Space is a bronze by Umberto Boccioni done in 1913. It potently capture the beauty, the raw energy, the fire and enthusiasm of the running man. Most importantly it captures the era of speed man was entering in to.


As I moved from one exhibition hall to another, I witnessed the effect the manifesto had had across Europe. Futurism had not only spread across France, Italy, England and Russia, but it had taken new forms like Cubism, Orphism, Vorticism, Cubo-futurism, etc. It represented the night life (right: Paris night life), machines, instruments, man's genius, the changing cityscapes, the power of the masses, revolutions and war. Just a few years after the publishing of the manifesto, the first world war broke out and Marinetti encouraged fellow futurists to join the army and go on the war front and live so as to represent their experiences in their art.

2009 saw Marinetti's seed of madness- 'Futurism' complete a 100 years. Today, man has moved to the forefront of technology, conquered new heights, moved in to a digital age. But despite all this, I think Marinetti was a visionary, a courageous one, who was born way ahead of his time. Someone who revelled in the taste of iron and steel, and gave the human retina a whole new treat.

If you are interested in reading the manifesto, here it is. But before reading it just imagine yourself wearing a frock coat or an Edwardian attire, and reading the newspaper on a crisp February morning in 1909 ;)...

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character.
8. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
9. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
10. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
11. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.