Childhood's grammar

John Baldacchino

pp. 17-35

in: John Baldacchino (ed), Art's way out, Rotterdam, SensePublishers, 2012

Abstract

In 1916 Carlo Carrà (1881-1966) painted Antigrazioso (Bambina) (literally: Anti-Gracious [Girl]). His art had then reached a stage that would leave behind the idea of a futurist utopia. By 1916, just two years into World War I, Carrà's dream of a new world sustained by a freedom borne of a technological absolute was shattered by the terror of the trenches. The war that he and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla and other futurists hailed as the world's "only hygiene" (Marinetti et al., 1914), echoing Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1969, pp. 202ff), turned into one of the worst nightmares in modern history.