In Development of a Bottle in Space, how is the History and Inspiration discussed?
Much of Boccioni’s inspiration in creating the work can be accredited to the publication of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s "Futurist Manifesto". Marinetti, often credited as the founder of futurism as an artistic and literary movement, produced the manifesto in 1909, which would later serve as the foundation for Boccioni’s very own "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture". Marinetti in his manifesto expresses a passionate loathing of everything old, especially classical and neo-classical artistic traditions. To break with traditional notions, futurists admired and emphasized elements of modern society: speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane, the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature. Boccioni, in his manifesto pertaining to sculptural works, emphasized many of the same ideals as Marinetti, but unlike Marinetti applied the ideals discussed in his manifesto in the works he produced.
The subject matter of Boccioni’s work, a deconstructed glass bottle, fits into the framework of futurism, a movement largely obsessed with recent technological innovations. Technology to mass-produce glass bottles was first implemented in the latter portion of the 19th century and began rapidly expanding around the time Boccioni began to formulate his work in 1912. Boccioni first provided a sketch of Development of a Bottle in Space in his manifesto, as an example of a work that deconstructs the three-dimensional space in and around itself. A year later Boccioni would take his initial sketch and use it as the basis to produce the work’s recognizable form as a bronze sculpture. Once exhibited at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco (1915), Development of a Bottle in Space, has since become part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An original bronze cast (1935) is displayed at the Museo del Novecento in Milan.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti New York City classical glass bottle Panama–Pacific International Exposition futurist Milan bronze futurism Futurist sculpture neo-classical San Francisco New York Futurist Manifesto Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Museo del Novecento