Richard Smith: Seven exhibitions 1961-75 by Barbara Rose

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On one of these drawings Balla noted the presence of a brass hood ornament (ottone) and parking lights (luci). Other drawings include both this design and the Fiat Type 1, a smaller convertible sedan. According to Balla’s daughters, he observed these vehicles from a corner in the Via Veneto, in front of the Palazzo Regina Margherita in Rome, as usual relying on direct observation of a phenomenon as the ground for the elaboration of quasi-abstract, equivalent forms. 76 In 1913, Balla began to execute a series of monochromatic paintings of motorcars that were clearly inspired by Marey’s chronophotographs, which captured the sequential phases of objects in motion through partly overlapping images.

56 Marinetti’s description of the tram emphasizes not only the monstrous vehicle’s velocity and 21 surging power but also its sudden jolts, leaps, and shocks. It proceeds by rapid lurching and trembling vibrations, which first assault the poet’s senses with their “incessant” rhythms and then give rise to the anxiety of being crushed like an insignificant mouse. Moreover, the “fantastic trams” multiply, their rails interlacing low on the horizon. ” 57 The poem emphasizes the shocks produced by early trams and trains on the sensorium of those still unaccustomed to their speed, brilliant lights, rumblings, and jolts.

Such parting instantiates a rupture whose reverberations threaten the artist’s sense of subjective coherence. One of the early drawings for this canvas focuses on a sequence of three couples seen from above, to enact the progressive separation of the figures from upper right to lower left (fig. 9). ” 70 The undulating rhythm these lines establish serves both to bind the figures within an enveloping web and to evoke the overwhelming nature of the external energiesspeed, steam, and noisethat will ultimately pull them apart.