Through his attempts to shock the public, his acts of self-dramatization, his unprecedented ideas of how to market art, his unrelenting celebration of the new, and his rejection of tradition, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated types of artistic behavior--then unprecedented in the prevailing Italian cultural climate--that are now standard in the contemporary art scene. In giving voice to the crises of his times, he helped usher in the age of modernism in Italian literature. Interpreting the zeitgeist in a reluctant and traditional Italy faced with a new, modern culture, he founded a movement of innovation that imposed itself on public opinion through artistic, social, and provocative actions. A believer in cultural militancy and immediate action, Marinetti sparked an aesthetic reform of both moral and intellectual significance through a movement called Futurism, for which he drafted a manifesto in 1909.

Through this stimulating, aggressive text, Marinetti launched his radically new vision...