Hurried Vibrations | Has Futurism Found Its Place?

USS Rinia with dazzle camouflage pattern (c1918). Public domain.

Laura Bride Powers ART. Oakland Tribune (Oakland CA). June 23, 1918, p. 24—

FUTURIST ART ON SHIPS  

At last the futurists have found themselves. Rather has the world found them.

Their theories and practice are adopted by the navy department to camouflage the ships that go down to the sea, as witness the good ship that rode in the harbor during the week, a potpourri of colored angles, lines and geometric forms that recall visions of that famous room at the Palace of Fine Arts during the Exposition—the “My God Room.” You remember it? *

Dynamism—movement—is what the perpetrators of the pictures were striving for, movement as opposed to a static state.

And is not that the thing sought for by the navy—a movement of objects that are disassociated with ships to the consternation of the gunners who roam the sea?

Objects in movement multiply themselves, becoming deformed in pursuit of each other, like hurried vibrations. This does thus does the law work out for the protection of the ships of the allies, justifying the theories of Balla, Picasso, Picabia and the rest.

The stories of Courbet, and Manet, and Monet and Degas are fresh in mind—the concept of the people; then their acceptance of the innovators, followed by their standardization, by which the rest of the world of art is measure. Such is the psychology of the art of the mediocre.

Shall the war vindicate the theories of Balla and his confreres? more>>>

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* For more about the "My God Room," see Michael Williams, A Brief Guide to the Palace of Fine Arts: Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco Art Association, 1915.

Room No 67
Here are shown many characteristic examples of the "new notes" in the most modern American art. Here are assembled a breezy company of ultra-radicals; revolutionaries, some of them, mingled with several older men who have definitely won their places. It is said that one of the rooms in the Annex was generally known as the "My God Room!" because the ejaculation—usually a heart-felt cry for help—was drawn from so many visitors by the appalling nature of some of the weird freaks which whirlingly burst upon their stupefied vision. This room, No. 67, cannot of course compete with the room in the Annex, but it certainly has its "My God" spots.