On the Statue of the Übermensch

The embodiment of the term was artistically possible and blunt

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by the Italian artist Umberto Boccioni is one of the most prominent works of the Futurist school and one of the most important sculptures in the history of art. On February 20, 1909 the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the first Futurist Manifesto in Le Figaro in Paris. In 1910 five artists — Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla, Severini — signed the Manifesto of Futurist Painting in Milan. This would be followed by an exhibition in 1912 that would resonate widely among critics and expand and spread further within artistic circles. Although the movement gained fame after the Great War due to its alignment with Fascism on philosophical grounds, its greatest works were produced before the war.

Marinetti proclaims in the Manifesto of the Futurist Art Movement:

The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.1

Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character.2

We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.3

We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.4

We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.5

The Futurists viewed war as a good in itself; they made heroism and the Nietzschean ethics of the Übermensch the anchor for their artistic aims, and abandoned the anarchic fever that relies on transcendental principles of rights and duties, while rejecting all forms of attachment to museums and the exaltation of the dead. The Futurists saw museums as places where art dies, whereas their era depended on electricity, high-speed trains, automobiles, and later airplanes. The Futurists lost faith in matter; the movement is what exists in reality, as Nietzsche says:

He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: “Will to existence”: that will-doth not exist For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence-how could it still strive for existence! Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but-so I teach I thee-Will to Power!6

Material no longer has any artistic value; it is movement and movement only. Reality is movement and duration (La Durée) as described by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and movement is an expression of will, the Nietzschean will to power, a derivative of Schopenhauerian will. The Futurists despised equality and democracy, praising heroism and Nietzschean paganism, where one makes his own values. And Marinetti’s manifesto will not be the last Futurist manifesto, for Boccioni too will publish the Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, expressing in it his rejection of the traditional principles of sculpture; Boccioni proclaims in the Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture:

Proclamare che la scultura si prefigge la terminano le forme, non il loro valore figurativo.7

Distruggere la nobiltà tutta letteraria e tradizionale del marmo e del bronzo. Negare l’esclusività di una materia per la intera costruzione d’un insieme scultorio.8

Bisogna distruggere il nudo sistematico; il concetto tradizionale della statua e del monumento?9

Boccioni will abandon sculptures made of a single material, those that fashion naked bodies with no soul. He wished to express movement in his statues, to make them more than mere bodies in ready-made molds, In fact, he did not conceal his anger toward the Impressionist art that concerned fixed and natural scenes, and he would regard the break with this artistic mode as fundamental to his Futurist vision.

and he would undertake experiments that would ultimately lead him to his famous statue. The statue does not present a clearly defined body; truth has lost its importance. It is not important what the original shape of the body was; the priority has become the will. What is the body but its struggles and the wounds etched upon it. The feet are positioned as if the Boccioni hero is walking forward, Emphasizing his muscles to their utmost form, toward the future. His hands disappear, and the presence of the hands in movement would be to guarantee balance, whereas the Boccioni hero would not need balance -The original version of the statue, cast by Boccioni, was made in plaster initially but he did not live long enough to see the bronze casts, The bronze copies and the plaster version are anchored to the earth with their bodies, so fixed that he is the earth, that earth which Nietzsche extols. The hero sprouts from the earth like any force of nature; he is a deity in itself. And the influence of the will on the body does not appear unidirectional, as if the hero were in a wind tunnel; rather there are multiple directions, the source of the will is the hero itself, not an external. He makes the hero’s values by himself; he is the Nietzschean Übermensch, as most critics agree in describing him. On the head of the hero there appears a cross that expresses Christ; it is Christ Himself, a complete Christ, not a person to be believed in. Nietzsche says:

Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow! But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.10

The wings do not appear clearly in Boccioni’s Übermensch; they seem only as buds on the hero’s back, yet they are actually present on his feet, closer to the earth. The wings on the upper part of the body enable him to fly, while the wings on the lower part will not aid in flight; they are for anchoring into the earth. Therefore his body is not heavy, but bound to the earth. This diminished wing of the Übermensch, as Nietzsche describes it, is exalted on the earth rather than in the sky.

The hero takes a single step, yet it is not numerical, for its state is infinite, like the eternal return. But the infinity that characterizes its movement renders it fixed, because its motion has neither beginning nor end. Therefore it is not possible to perceive it in this finite reality. The statue moves in a doubling motion; its feet move, and its reality and the space in which it resides move. The idea of the eternal return arose for Nietzsche as he walked, in the Alps at the summit of Sils Maria. Nietzsche says in ‘Ecce Homo’:

Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion-nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit.11

The statue of Boccioni was a focal point in the history of European modern art. Although Futurism would end after World War II, yet many artistic and literary works would borrow from this statue, underscoring its distinctiveness and its artistic and historical value.

1-Marnetti, Filippo Tommaso, 20 Februery 1909, ‘’The Futurist Manifesto’’, Le Figaro, 1.

2-Ibid, 1.

3-Ibid, 1.

4-Ibid, 1.

5-Ibid, 1.

6- Nietzsche, F. W. (1909). Thus spake Zarathustra: A book for all and none (T. Common, Trans.). T. N. Foulis. (Original work published 1883–1885), 125.

7-Boccioni, Umberto, 11 April 1912, ‘’Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture’’, Governing Group of the Futurist Movement, 4.

8-Ibid, 4.

9-Ibid, 4.

10- Nietzsche, F. W. (1909). Thus spake Zarathustra: A book for all and none (T. Common, Trans.). T. N. Foulis. (Original work published 1883–1885), 77.

11- Nietzsche, F. (1911). Ecce Homo: Nietzsche’s autobiography (A. M. Ludovici, Trans.). Macmillan. (Original work published 1908), 32.