Our third reading assignment includes three short manifestos written by avant-garde artists in the early decades of the 20th century. They are as follows:
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909):
Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Aleksei Gan, Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group (c. 1922):
El Lissitzky, Our Book (1926):
Here are some questions to consider as you read:
What possibilities or advances did these authors envision for their immediate futures? What role did they imagine technology would play in shaping those futures? In what ways did these artists anticipate the art and design that would follow? What common views do these authors share and where might they disagree? Which elements of these texts remain relevant for the present, and which elements are problematic?
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