This monograph offers the first-ever, full-length analysis of the most irreverent book of Italian Futurism: L’anguria lirica, printed in 1934 on tin metal sheets, with design and poetic text by Tullio d’Albisola and illustrations by Bruno Munari. This study, which features the unabridged reproduction of the pages of the tin book, accompanied by the first English translation of the poem, aims to disentangle the complex relationship between text and image in this total artwork. It shows how the endless series of material transformations at its core – of woman into food, of love into desecrating religion, of man into machine, of poetry into matter – fostered a radical change in poetry-writing, thus breaking away from a stagnant lyrical past.
Dalila Colucci, Ph.D. (2016, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa; 2018, Harvard University) is a María Zambrano Distinguished Fellow at the University of Seville. Her publications include numerous books and studies on modern and contemporary Italian literature, art, and cinema, often with an intermedia, transcultural, and transnational approach.
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Abbreviations
Introduction: a Book about a Book
0.1 The Matter of the Book
0.2 A Material Aesthetics: Futurism’s Legacy for the Twentieth Century
0.3 A Case-Study for Futurist Materiality: L’anguria lirica
1 From Free-Word Tables to Tin-Litho Books: the Publishing Industry, Intermedia Innovations, and Second Futurism
1.1 Theory and Practice of the Futurist Book: a Material Contradiction
1.2 L’anguria lirica: the Genesis and Invention of the Tin Book(s)
1.3 Subverting the Canon: Sacred Art, Food Art, and Areopainting
2 A Futurist Kind of Love: Staging L’anguria lirica
2.1 Tullio, Art, and Women
2.2 “A bit of pulpy and sanguineous poetry”: Buzzi and the Watermelon
2.3 D’Albisola’s Erotic Easter: the Divine Comedy as a Pre-Text
3 The Passion and Resurrection of Poetry: a Polymorphic Poetics of Creation
3.1 Futurist Cuisine, Universal Language, and Radio Waves
3.2 From Containment to Agency: a Female Incarnation
3.3 A Profane Book of Revelation: for a New Religion of Materiality
3.4 Ρ p.: Modernity and Ephemerality in the Tin Book
4 A Polymaterial Generation: Aluminum, Tin, and Other Matter
4.1 “Clarity and splendor of metal”: Restaurants, Flats, and Furniture
4.2 Inside-Out: from the Almanacco to Casa Mazzotti
4.3 Chromatic Juices, Compact Aggregations, and Polymaterialism
5 Visual Storytelling and the Hybridism of Material Lyricism
5.1 L’anguria Lirica, Tin and Paper: Munari vs Strada
5.2 Munari’s ‘Useless’ Transubstantiation
5.3 Cinematic Suggestions and Montage
5.4 Vases, Cones, and X-rays: the Changing Forms of Creativity
Conclusions: A Dream of Poetic Materiality: Futurist Legacies for L’anguria lirica
Appendix 1: L’anguria lirica: Italian Text and English Translation
Appendix 2: L’anguria lirica: Tin Edition
Appendix 3: L’anguria lirica: Paper Edition
Bibliography
Index of Names
This monograph is of immediate interest for scholars in the fields of Futurism and Avant-Gardes, also appealing to experts in Art History, Italian Literature, (Visual) Poetry, Materiality, Intermediality, Cultural Studies.