Welgemeend August Art Month - 2019

22 Marinetti (e il suo tempo) in Graaff-Reinet – Marinetti (and his time) in Graaff-Reinet – is a characteristic sleight of hand by the painterly magician, Stanley Pinker. On the surface this large painting is a sensory extravaganza: there’s a whirr and a whizz in the air as a Catherine wheel, with a pair of pink court shoes balancing on top, spins through the air; sparklers and Roman candles are lit and ready to go off. Shadows and sunlight play across the whitewashed walls, while the empty chair and garden bench wait invitingly to be filled by passersby. And then there is Marinetti – peeking out from behind a column – the controversial and colourful Futurist painter and theorist who ‘ignited’ European art in the early decades of the twentieth century. Connecting the leading artist and his disruptive, revolutionary times with a seemingly peaceful and quiet rural outpost in South Africa certainly evokes curiosity. Pinker’s theatrical scenario not only delights the eye, but teases the mind – and in the process destabilises preconceptions. This is a superlative example of Pinker’s distilled craft. The painting was completed in the mid- to late 1980s, with South Africa in a state of siege. Throughout the 1980s, waves of violence swept the country. ‘What happened in South Africa during the years 1984 to 1987 was less than a full-blown revolution, yet it had many of its characteristics, and the perversion of idealism into the element of terror and virtue was among them,’ commented Allister Sparks, one of the country’s most robust and incisive political commentators of the apartheid era. (Allister Sparks (1991) The mind of South Africa, the story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid , London: Mandarin, p. 340) We are introduced to Marinetti in this very climate of protest, anger, fear and uncertainty. But why Marinetti and why Graaff-Reinet? Pinker explains: ‘I happened to be in Graaff-Reinet wandering around, making little pencil drawings, and saw the verandah of a house with a swing chair and bright sunlight setting up dramatic contrasts between the glare and blue shadows. While there, the alliteration between Reinet and Marinetti came to mind, and I recalled the famous photograph of the three Italian Futurists when they went to London in 1914’. [Stanley Pinker and Michael Stevenson (2004), Stanley Pinker , Cape Town: Michael Stevenson, p. 74] Pinker’s recollection of the three Italian Futurists in London in 1914 is significant. In June that year Marinetti and two of his compatriots – Luigi Russolo and Ugo Piatti – visited London to present a series of ‘noise concerts’, performed on Piatti’s Noise Intoners or Intonarumori at the Coliseum. Their music making was received with little enthusiasm, as were Marinetti’s earlier attempts to introduce his Futurist aesthetic to the British art scene. ‘The anarchical extravagance of the Futurists must deprive the movement of the sympathy of all reasonable men,’ a writer for The Times stated on 19 March 1912 in response to an exhibition of Italian Futurist painters. In his Futurist manifesto, published in 1909, Marinetti declared his opposition to everything that was traditional, conventional and conservative – in other words, the status quo. He was anti the Catholic Church, anti traditional Italian food, anti Venice; he was pro-war and an early supporter of Italian Fascism. In November 1913 Marinetti had enthused to the UK press: ‘In a few months, we shall have a full Futurist orchestra ready, composed of innumerable new instruments. With wood and string and bell and wire we shall at last be able to reproduce the sounds of the modern world’. [Daniel R. Wilson, ‘Rose Keen and the Futurists’, [blog] Miraculous Agitations , 23 June 2015 [online] http://miraculousagitations.blogspot.co.uk ] The British public was not amused, and the press critical of the affronts to traditional music. Embracing the energy of modern city life, Marinetti’s compatriot Russolo declared: ‘We break through this narrow circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds … the rolling shutters of shopfronts, the hubbub of the crowds, the different noises of the railway stations, forges, spinning wheels, printing works, electric factories, and underground railways. Nor should the absolutely new noises of modern warfare be forgotten,’ he wrote in his Futurist manifesto, The art of noise , in 1913. In our time – Stanley Pinker in Graaff-Reinet (1980s) STANLEY PINKER Marinetti (e il suo tempo) in Graaff-Reinet circa 1980s signed oil on canvas 131 x 183 cm LITERATURE: Stanley Pinker , Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, November 2004, page 74 and 75 Private Collection