Network Diagrams in Futurist and other Avant-Garde Magazines: Creating and Self-Positioning an Imaginary Community

Dobó, Gábor and Szeredi, Merse Pál (2020) Network Diagrams in Futurist and other Avant-Garde Magazines: Creating and Self-Positioning an Imaginary Community. In: International Yearbook of Futurism Studie. De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 68-94. ISBN 9783110702088

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Abstract

This essay explores a common feature of avant-garde periodicals after the First World War, namely magazine advertisements which functioned as ‘network diagrams’. Through their morphological and visual similarities, these diagrams constructed a virtual avant-garde community and sought to provide each magazine with a unique rôle. We examine magazines which look similar at first sight but diverge substantially in their operation and intention. Our investigation focusses on the question of whether they were in fact all imaginingthe same community. This diachronic examination of network diagrams shows that their nodes changed quite rapidly. Despite having exerted an enormous influence throughout Europe, Futurism was gradually replaced in the second half of the 1920s by International Constructivism. Our analysis begins in 1924, when Marinetti issued his manifesto Le Futurisme mondial, an ambitious attempt to reconquer Futurism's place within the international avant-garde. Our focus is not so much on the manifesto’s reception history, but rather on analysing howthe artists and groups mentioned in Marinetti’s manifesto defined their own position in the avant-garde scene, whether in support of or in opposition to Futurism.

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