‘Destroy museums!’–Why an Italian waged war against the past

Museums and libraries: Grab your picks, axes and hammers!

The Italian Futurists, led by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), called for the destruction of Italian heritage at the beginning of the 20th century:

Come on then! Set fire to the library shelves!… Divert the canals so they can flood the museums!… Oh, what a pleasure it is to see those revered old canvases, washed out and tattered, drifting away in the water!… Grab your picks and your axes and your hammers and then demolish, pitilessly demolish, all venerated cities! ¹F. T. Marinetti: Critical Writings, trans. Doug Thompson, ed. Günter Berghaus (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 15.

Their radical movement, Futurism, proposed a vision championing technology, speed and the love of danger. Its adherents put progress and youthfulness at the core of their rejection of all things traditional. Marinetti, the founder, detested ancient Rome, Italian tourist cities, archaeological sites and historical conservation. He also called for abolishing tour guides, archaeologists and history professors. Was he serious? Why would anyone want to destroy their own heritage? The answers and the cultural context of the time are explored below.

Iconoclasm as a state-sponsored campaign of modernization

Iconoclasm, originally meant destruction of religious symbols (icons), but its definition has expanded to include all cultural symbols. Iconoclasm happens for religious, political, vengeful or artistic reasons. (Read here on the eight types of iconoclasm.)

One type of iconoclasm, the one that Futurists condoned, is perhaps the least discussed. It is an initiative by government to modernize, through iconoclasm “from above,” unlike other types of destruction led by the masses, “from below.” Therefore, its main distinguishing feature could be described as “anti-traditionalist.” (Note that some iconoclasts were “anti-modernist,” like the Nazis who destroyed “degenerate” modern art.)

Governments leading such campaigns are never democratic, which is why it is not a surprise that Marinetti’s views, after all, could be seen as proto-fascist. In fact, he himself was associated with Mussolini’s Fascist party in its early days.

Intellectuals and politicians in other countries, besides Italy, called for the destruction of their own heritage to “modernize.” Actually, some countries, as shown below, did partially destroy their heritage.

France’s attempt to replace Catholicism

French iconoclasm following the 1789 Revolution could be considered a pioneer of state-sponsored “iconoclasms” though it differs from those of the 20th-century. It was more violent towards clerics than ecclesiastical buildings and objects. Also, “modernization” was not the only motive behind their dechristianization campaign, there were also political motives—a retaliation against the Church’s affiliation with the monarchy.

However, French revolutionaries were actively trying to replace the “superstitions” of Catholicism with “enlightened” ideas. A new atheistic religion, with its own calendar and holidays was the offspring of the philosophies of the Enlightenment thinkers. In 1792, Catholicism was officially banned by the revolutionaries and was replaced by the state-sponsored, atheistic Cult of Reason. Dozens of churches were turned into “temples of Reason.” Icons and statues were destroyed, and some were covered up. The world-famous Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was dedicated to that new materialist religion. Hundreds of priests were forced to abdicate, or were executed.

China versus its imperialist and Buddhist heritage

The founder of communist China, Chairman Mao, led a campaign of modernization during his rule from 1949 to 1976, that left behind millions of victims, and targeted Chinese imperial and Buddhist history. The Gate of China, the centuries-old imperial monument, was demolished in 1954 to make room for the expanded Tiananmen Square. Communist iconoclasm reached its highest point during the Cultural Revolution which lasted for a decade, from 1966 to 1976, and whose slogan was

Smash the Four Olds! (Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits)

In brief, anything old was a target! The young communist Red Guards rose up in response to their leadership, and attacked, humiliated and killed those of their own communities, and sometimes their own families. The White Horse Temple, considered the oldest Buddhist temple, was partially destroyed during that Cultural Revolution. The same calamity befell the Buddhist compound which hosts Famen Temple, the largest pagoda temple in China. Red Guards also attacked the historical tombs of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and destroyed the remains of the Wanli Emperor among other imperial artifacts.

Russia’s campaign to eliminate its Christian Orthodox heritage

One of the fiercest state-sponsored iconoclastic campaigns was launched by the Soviet government following the Revolution of 1917. As mentioned above, Marinetti was not the only writer of his time with a desire to destroy history. In fact, he directly influenced young Russians of that period, who became associated with his movement. Clearly, Marinetti’s vision was global:

The [Futurist] cure is valid for the sick of all nations. ²Ibid., 231.

The revolutionaries, unsurprisingly, were keen on burning the Russian past. Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), a Russian Futurist artist and poet, called museums “the preservers of junk.” Mayakovsky wrote in 1918 a poem where he declared that “It’s too Early to Rejoice,” and that “it’s time for bullets to pepper museums.” Here is how the Russian anarchist, Georgy Chulkov, captured in 1906 the iconoclastic fantasies of the era:

The social revolution that Europe will experience in the near future will be only a small prelude to the beautiful universal fire that will consume the old world.

Sergi Tretyakov (1892-1937), also a Russian Futurist artist, wrote the following poem in 1927:

All for combat!
Force is best.
A bullet in the brain
Of Basil the Blest. [a Russian saint]
Smash all the icons
And the signs they have made.
Explode the Iverskaya
With a hand grenade.

There, the poet wishes to blow up the 17th-century Iberian Chapel of Moscow, which was known for its Madonna and Child icon (the Iverskaya) on its gate. It was visited by beggars and tsars alike for centuries who believed in its miraculous powers. The poet actually got his wish only a few years later, in 1931, when the Soviets demolished the historical chapel. The icon was destroyed too.

In communist Russia, the new Soviet man was to embrace state atheism and materialism, instead of “the opium of the masses.” The Bolsheviks had decided to eliminate the Orthodox Church and its ancient beliefs. Committees, under the authority of the Bolsheviks, plundered and desecrated churches, and stripped them from ancient icons and liturgical supplies. The icons and scared objects, often made from gold, were confiscated in the name of feeding the starving Russians in the famine of 1921–22, which was an outcome of the economic collapse that followed the Revolution. The funds never reached those in need. Five million perished in the famine. The money was used to fund the new Red Army and line the pockets of Soviet officials. During the anti-religious campaign which lasted into the 1940s, thousands of priests, monks and nuns were executed or sent to labor camps. Countless historical icons, which date back centuries, were smuggled across the borders or sold overseas by officials themselves. In fact, a kind of international market, especially in the West, sprung up as a result: Icons sold ended up in the living rooms of private collectors! The icons that were not sold, were either destroyed, burnt or displayed in state museums.

The Soviets also launched an anti-relic campaign. Officials opened sacred tombs and exhumed relics of dozens of saints in monasteries. They displayed the bones to prove that their “incorrupt bodies” is a centuries-old lie propagated by the Church. Even church bells were confiscated in some villages to alleviate the national metal shortage. Scuffles with locales forced officials in some places to walk away since the church bells were their “warning system” in case of local emergencies.

Churches and cathedrals were deconsecrated into libraries, museums, barns, clubs, garages, movie theaters, residential homes, swimming pools and even concentration camps! Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, one of the largest Orthodox churches, was converted into an anti-religion museum in 1931. Kazan Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, was closed after the 1917 revolution and reopened in 1932 as a anti-religion museum and a pavilion to honor Marxists. Moscow’s Church of the Resurrection (Kadashi Church) became an archive building for the KGB, then a gym for workers of a nearby sausage factory. Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachy became an art storage house. As fate would have it, the medieval Andronikov Monastery was converted just after the revolution into the first concentration camp by Soviet secret police. Non-Orthodox churches were not spared either: The Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in St. Petersburg—the oldest Protestant church in Russia—was turned into a storage hall for vegetables in 1936, and in 1962, into an indoor swimming pool. (The diving board was placed where the altar had been!)

The most infamous victim of Soviet iconoclasm was Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It had been the largest church in the Christian Orthodox world, built in 1883. A Soviet government report recommended the demolition of the cathedral in order to seize its 20 tons of gold in its dome “as a contribution to the industrialization of the Soviet union.” Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, declared in 1924 that the cathedral should be demolished and in its place an ultra-modern Palace of the Soviets would rise up. The 415-meter building would be crowned with a gigantic stainless steel statue of Lenin with his arm up in the air. Lenin’s statue was to be almost twice as large as the Statue of Liberty. This building was meant to be “a living testimony to the victories of Socialism that were gained during the battles of the Great October Revolution, a victory that will lead mankind to the shining future of communism.” The public was fascinated with the dazzling designs in newspapers. Thus, on orders of Stalin, the Soviets blew up the cathedral in 1931. Construction started slowly due to lack of funds during the 1930s. Then the Second World War, in 1941, derailed the project and exhausted the state resources. The project continued to be doomed into the 1950s, and under Nikita Khrushchev, the site was transformed into the largest swimming pool in USSR. By the year 2000, the cathedral was rebuilt.

How bad was life in Italy that drove the Futurists to despise their own heritage?

At the turn of the century, the Italy that the Italian Futurists saw was behind Europe on almost all fronts:

1. Politically backwards: Unification of Italy, the concept of nationalism, arrived three entire centuries after the rest of Europe, in 1870. Political instability (more on that in the next point) made, and still makes, Italy a fertile soil for radical ideologies such as fascism (culminating in Mussolini’s rule), communism and anarchism.

2. Weak central government: Italy’s late arrival at nationalism was not a complete success. The Catholic Church opposed it and did not recognize the central government until six decades later in 1929 as part of the Lateran Treaty! That treaty made the papal estate, Vatican City, a sovereign state. However, during those preceding decades, the Church had deprived the government from legitimacy and prohibited its followers from voting. That resulted in disrespect on the international stage.

3. Lack of national identity: The 19th century writer, Massimo d’Azeglio, famously said, “we have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.” That quote was a reference to the loyalty to family and region that fragmented the “new” Italians and was an obstacle in creating a sense of national unity. History and language worked against young Italy as well. The regions which were once city-states, often at war with one another, now have to line up behind one national vision. Eventually, the differences in Italian language between the regions were smoothed out with the advent of mass media.

4. Industrially backwards: Italy lagged behind while scientific breakthroughs were coming out in other Western countries, like automobiles, airplanes, cameras, the telephone, the telegraph, the radio and x-rays. Italians who dreamed of a more advanced nation must have viewed with envy the United States, France, Great Britain or Germany. Although industrialization had started in Great Britain two centuries earlier, in the 1780s, it did not even arrive in Italy until the end of the 1890s. Most of the Italian economy had relied on farming.

5. Widespread poverty: Even when industrialization eventually reached Italy, it was slow, and created new problems that challenge Italy to the present time. Unjust government policies exploited the south, where the economy is agricultural, to fund the industrial centers of the north.

6. Resistance to modernization: For two centuries, Italy had been resisting modernization. Peasants and traditional Catholics rejected modern values that would give women independence and reduce the influence of the Church. The centuries-old Catholic Church was more powerful and influential than the government of Rome.

7. Crime and corruption: Weak governance and lack of trust in the rule of law, particularly in southern Italy, resulted in a major increase in crime and corruption. The latter still plagues Italy more than other European countries to this day. Crime took an organized form which birthed the legendary mafia, who exported their activity to North America. The mafia is another challenge that never completely disappeared, though is certainly less active than they once were.

8. Migration out of Italy: Severe poverty, unemployment and unjust taxes led Italians to flee their home country in what became the largest wave of peacetime migration in history. They mostly landed in USA, Brazil and Argentina. In the period between 1880 and 1915, 13 million Italians immigrated out of Italy. (The population was 33.5 million at the turn of the century.)

The parents of Marinetti himself were among the millions of Italians who fled Italy. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt. It’s a telling sign that his proposal, the Futurist Manifesto, to modernize Italy was not even published in Italy, or in Italian. It was first published, in 1909, on the front-page of Le Figaro in France. Marinetti was not the first Italian to dream of a radical vision. Giovanni Papini (1881-1956), for example, was a Florentine poet, novelist and journalist thought Italy was in a dire need of modernization. He looked towards the British, French and American models of industrialization. For a few years, he was affiliated with the Futurist movement.

Today Italian culture, history and cuisine are celebrated by pop culture but that was not always the case. Back then, Italians, their culture and language, particularly those from the southern region and Sicilians, were viewed negatively, and at times with outright hostility, particularly in the new countries that received them. In 1891, 11 Italian Americans were killed in New Orleans, in one of the largest lynchings in American history. John M. Parker who led the mob, and became two decades later the governor of Louisiana, remarked that Italians were “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous.” Such were the negative stereotypes that the Futurists had to face and hoped to challenge.

Hope reignited with the Risorgimento

Italy, thus, was a country living in the past, with no prospects for the future. What was once the center of the Roman empire, and later, the cradle of the Renaissance, became a hot spot of social chaos, disease and illiteracy. Intellectuals of Italy could see that their home country had long resisted change, since the French Revolution–the historic turning point of another conservative Catholic European nation. But young Italians at the turn of the century found great hope in the final unification of Italy, called Risorgimento (resurgence). They hoped to redefine the Italian identity around 20th-century achievements and progressive ideals, rather than museums and ruins. A new country with a new reality in a new era. A new Italy that could even lead Europe, not lag behind it.

How Marinetti explained Italy’s backwardness?

Many before the Futurists had tried to find the roots of Italy’s aversion to modernity. Some blamed the Church, others blamed the climate! Marinetti, however, pointed the finger of blame at Italy’s culture and heritage:

Italy, much more than any other country… [is] dying of an obsessive love for its own past. ³Ibid.

He saw Italy as a museum, a warehouse of monuments, paralyzed from producing anything worthwhile to join the New World of the 20th century.

[W]e wish to free our country from the fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians.

For far too long has Italy been a marketplace for junk dealers. We want to free our country from the endless number of museums that everywhere cover her like countless graveyards. Museums, graveyards! ⁴Ibid., 14.

A solution that is radical, and “hygienically” violent, as stated in his manifesto, was needed, and that is to physically destroy history. One should bear in mind that cultural heritage and property were not always seen as they are today in the eyes of 21st-century tourists. For most of history, historical ruins were just that, ruins, waiting for a clean-up!

Marinetti’s call to end the “humiliation” of foreign tourism in Italy

Marinetti’s provocative Futurist manifesto called on Italy to embrace new technologies and extreme industrialization, and to destroy its past, its museums, libraries and art academies:

The tiresome memory of the greatness of Ancient Rome must be eradicated by an Italian greatness that is a hundred times more impressive. ⁵Ibid., 74.

He called on the new generation of Italians to venerate automobiles, airplanes and steel. He found the lineups of tourists visiting Italy to see what what it once was, rather than what it is today, simply humiliating.

[T]he Italy of tomorrow must be, and will be, infinitely greater than the archaeological and cultural one the nationalists are hell-bent on cobbling together, restoring, and setting up on pedestals. I mean an Italy that is intensely agrarian, industrialized, and commercialized, powerful and domineering, first among other nations, not because of its past, which is dead and buried, but by virtue of the strength of its creative genius; which means freed from the ridiculous, humiliating, and risky business of foreign tourism. ⁶Ibid., 240.

The emerging industrialization in northern Italy as was happening in Milan was to become a model, in the Futurist founder’s view, for other Italian cities, “stuck” in the past like Rome and Florence. The rivalry between the business hub of Milan versus the “touristy” Rome is still alive today (Note: “Baedeker” mentioned below was one the earliest travel guide books):

[T]he Italy of Milan, Genoa, and Turin, not that of present-day Rome or Florence or Pisa; an Italy illuminated by electric light and not by moonlight; not a ‘Baedeker’ Italy but an Italy of big business, of huge markets, rich and great in herself, not sustained by the carcasses of her ancestors; an Italy which is less sentimental, with fewer mandolins, fewer ruins, fewer gondolas, fewer… Anglo-German maiden ladies between… our feet, but with more locomotives, more factory chimneys and electric turbines; an Italy without professors, without archaeologists, with few lawyers, very few doctors, life in the open air, gymnastics, sports, fewer disputations and more punches. Instinct, muscles, fewer armchairs and no slippers! ⁷Ibid.

“Anglo-German maiden ladies” represent two peoples and cultures which Marinetti viewed with unease. Germanophilia, in particular, was popular among Italians at a time when German hegemony was a real threat. (A popular Italian saying during the WWII era was “If Britain wins, we lose. But if Germany wins, we are lost.” Ironically, Fascist Italians would claim to be of a superior race like their “Aryan” allies. But racist Germans continued to find Italians inferior!)

“Fewer gondolas,” above, is a reference to one Italian place that the Futurist founder detested with a passion, that is Venice.

Venice is the worst, according to Marinetti

Marinetti saw Venice as a representative of the suffocating traditionalism in Italy. In the medieval era, from the 12th to the 16th century, Venice was among the most prosperous cities in the world. It declined into Europe’s decadent “party town” in the 18th century. At the end of the 19th century, the old city had become a cheap “muse” for artists and writers, and a notorious center of prostitution. In a litany of criticisms against “passéist” Venice, published in 1910, he wrote:

We turn our backs on the ancient Venice, worn out and brought to ruin by centuries of pleasure seeking […] We reject the Venice of foreigners, this marketplace of fake antique dealers, this magnet for universal snobbism and imbecility, this bed worn out by endless droves of lovers, this bath adorned with jewels for cosmopolitan whores, immense sewer of traditionalism. ⁸Ibid., 165.

The dirt-covered buildings and artifacts, which middle-class American and British men traveled to see became symbols of backwardness Italian Futurists wanted to bury for good. After all, the common Italian felt disengaged from that ancient civilization and had no use for it. In the same article, Marinetti addresses the people of Venice:

Venetians! Venetians! Why do you still desire to be ever the faithful slaves of the past, the filthy gatekeepers of the biggest brothel in history, nurses in the most wretched hospital in the world, in which souls are languishing, mortally corrupted by the syphilis of sentimentalism. ⁹Ibid., 167.

Note that syphilis was the fatal disease of debauchery at the time, with a similar status to HIV today.

Marinetti’s contempt for the legendary John Ruskin

The Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, stood for much of what Marinetti despised in an intellectual. The British writer, who had been dead for more than decade before Futurism emerged, was a lover of Venice. He wrote an iconic book on its architecture and history titled The Stones of Venice (1851). One can imagine Marinetti glancing at the title and murmuring, “this is what Venice is, nothing but old stones”! For Ruskin, Venice’s historical buildings were an example of human achievement and a pinnacle of civilization, while Marinetti wanted to tear them down and turn Venice into an industrial city. Ruskin’s passionate interests in history, studying it and preserving it ran against the values of Marinetti. In fact, Ruskin was a pioneer in the conservationist movement, with an agenda to restore and protect historical buildings. He was a Romantic who idealized the medieval era, and called for a return to nature, to life in the pre-industrial age. He was also an early environmentalist, and anti-consumerist. Ruskin’s views on almost any topic would never earn the respect of the technophile, forward-thinking Italian visionary who once admonished in a lecture his British audience saying:

You are happy, deliriously so, if you have the chance of bringing back home to cherish some miserable little stone that was trampled over by our forebears.

When, oh when, will you rid yourselves of the sluggish ideology of that deplorable man, Ruskin, who—I should like to convince you, once and for all—is utterly ridiculous. ¹⁰Ibid., 93.

Was Marinetti serious about destroying Italian museums?

Could it be that an Italian poet be serious about destroying their own history? Some writers have shed doubts about the intention of his statements, considering that he made many provocative statements throughout his career. However, there are no signs that his writings regarding destroying museums were insincere or were meant to be amusing. Actually, he made official proposals, as part of his political agenda, to sell in bulk historical artifacts overseas.

The proletariat of talented people will alone have the expertise to undertake the gradual, worldwide sale of our artistic heritage, in accordance with the bill outlined by us nine years ago. […]

Our museums, when sold to the world, will become powerful reminders overseas of our Italian genius.¹¹Ibid., 349.

One also should look at history of other countries where iconoclasts made their vision reality, as in USSR, to realize that such calls are never made in jest. Followers of Marinetti’s movement, some of whom were directly associated with him, encouraged and applauded the Bolshevik iconoclasm that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Even further, the Futurists called for periodically erasing the past, but why?

It should be noted that “destroying history” carried two meanings for the Italian Futurists. The first was the one explained above regarding museums and monuments. The second is a periodical cleansing of culture from history in its widest sense. Here are the general reasons behind the popularity of 20th-century “anti-traditionalist” iconoclasm:

1. History is worthless: The Futurists scorned libraries and academies, besides museums, as dead institutions, of no value for the new generations. The founder of Futurism wrote:

The past is necessarily inferior to the future. And that’s how we want it to be. ¹²Ibid., 44.

2. Heritage often conflicts with modern culture: Some believed that modernization often fails due to its accommodation of tradition. It allows people to live in two opposing spheres, one following Western rational ideals, and another hosting backward-looking customs, superstitions and dogma. Destruction of heritage solves this cultural conflict.

3. Modernity requires wiping the cultural slate clean: A prominent aspect of modernity is discontinuity, that is the rejection of the past with its institutions, traditions and values. Modernity, in many ways, is about clearing the ground from superstition and dogma, and letting in rationality. (This rupture with the past has been critiqued in post-modern literature which resulted in a culture of moral relativism and the bizarre mixture between the old and the new, for example, giving same value to ancient quackery, like homeopathy, next to Western medicine.) Some radical intellectuals believed that symbolically throwing away tradition at the doorstop of modernity is far from enough. They believed that an act of revolutionary violence towards people or objects, as the French did, is needed to drag their home nations into the modern era. Futurism, in that regard is no different from other modern ideologies like Marxism, anarchism and Nazism. It should be noted that Futurism inspired the would-be Italian fascists.

4. The past is a burden, especially for the uneducated masses: The modernist iconoclasts, who were mostly elites, did not believe that the masses are capable of modernizing, or that they would do so voluntarily. If history is a “dead weight” imposed on their forward-looking vision, then it must be bulldozed and demolished before the eyes of the people. Such a great destructive act would signal the new beginnings. Perhaps, not all heritage would need to be destroyed but at least the highly symbolic ones. Bulldozing the past is what the Bolsheviks and Mao’s revolutionaries did. Tragically, millions lost their lives in that process. Marinetti, most likely, would not have cared much for the victims. He understood that his futuristic vision would leave behind casualties:

For those who are dying anyway, for the invalids, for the prisoners—who cares? The admirable past may be a balm to their worries, since for them the future is a closed book… but we, the powerful young Futurists, don’t want to have anything to do with it, the past! ¹³Ibid., 15.

Marinetti: Who needs books anyway?

After demonstrating above the “Futurist” war against the past, one could understand why their leader wished for books to disappear:

The book as a means for conserving and communicating thought is a vehicle that belongs unequivocally to the past. For a long time now it has been destined to disappear, along with cathedrals, towers, crenellated walls, museums, and the ideal of pacifism. The book, static companion of the sedentary, the nostalgic, and the neutralists, can neither amuse nor stimulate the new Futurist generations, who are drunk on revolutionary, warlike dynamism. ¹⁴Ibid., 260.

As a true “proto-fascist,” he added that…

The necessity for propaganda will force us every now and then to publish a book. ¹⁵Ibid.

Marinetti went as far as saying that if a “shower of blood”–a war–is needed to achieve the purpose of expunging history, so be it! And that is the true meaning of their “Futurism,” always looking forward, eternally youthful and self-sacrificial.

The oldest among us are thirty; so we have at least ten years in which to complete our task. When we reach forty, other, younger, and more courageous men will very likely toss us into the trash can, like useless manuscripts. And that’s what we want! ¹⁶Ibid., 16.

As fast as Futurism arrived on the cultural scene, it disappeared. The movement that boasted of its contempt for history, itself became history when its founder died in 1944.

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