Abstract: The 20th century marked a new age in the development of European civilization, which projected images begotten by the technological transformation of reality into an artistic space. The rapid growth of technologies and the industrialization of all spheres of life were reflected in artists' works in urbanized images of reality. One of these images was the machine as the embodiment of speed and technical progress. Being a central motif in Italian Futurism (the most dynamic branch of modernism), the image of the car penetrated all artistic spheres of the Italian art of the 1910s to the 1930s, most notably: literature (embodied, first of all, in the Futurists’ manifestos devoted to the Machine), music (the noise music by Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo), and art (machine painting). The interest in the avant-garde visual art of the 1920s to the 1930s, including Italian Futurism, has grown recently. Many scientific articles and monographs by foreign authors focus on the technical aspects of this ambiguous flamboyant direction: the images of electricity, urban architecture, machines, and mechanisms. But the Russian scientific literature lacks in-depth studies of these aspects of Futurism. This article aims to become the first step in studying the “machine” aspect of Futurism, i.e., its historical background, development, and the influence of the image that formed the basis for the main idea of the creator of the direction more than a century ago. The authors consider the use of the image of the machine in various artistic fields—literature, music, and art—and provide a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon.  

Abstract: The 20th century marked a new age in the development of European civilization, which projected images begotten by the technological transformation of reality into an artistic space. The rapid growth of technologies and the industrialization of all spheres of life were reflected in artists' works in urbanized images of reality. One of these images was the machine as the embodiment of speed and technical progress. Being a central motif in Italian Futurism (the most dynamic branch of modernism), the image of the car penetrated all artistic spheres of the Italian art of the 1910s to the 1930s, most notably: literature (embodied, first of all, in the Futurists’ manifestos devoted to the Machine), music (the noise music by Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo), and art (machine painting). The interest in the avant-garde visual art of the 1920s to the 1930s, including Italian Futurism, has grown recently. Many scientific articles and monographs by foreign authors focus on the technical aspects of this ambiguous flamboyant direction: the images of electricity, urban architecture, machines, and mechanisms. But the Russian scientific literature lacks in-depth studies of these aspects of Futurism. This article aims to become the first step in studying the “machine” aspect of Futurism, i.e., its historical background, development, and the influence of the image that formed the basis for the main idea of the creator of the direction more than a century ago. The authors consider the use of the image of the machine in various artistic fields—literature, music, and art—and provide a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon.