Both the Surrealist Manifesto and the Futurist Manifesto revolve around the intention of bringing about an artistic revolution through shattering conventional creative barriers by releasing the creative potential of the unconscious. Each manifesto longs for a revolution—to uproot and destroy contemporary understandings and criticisms of artwork with an explosion of abstract aggression.
The Futurist Manifesto was written in 1909, and opposes established teachings and forms of knowledge. It starts with a very long story of various sequences with a nonsensical plot which has no chronological importance. It reminds me of the type of disjointed puzzle which comprises our every night dream sequences, which I believe to be the purpose. It describes teachers as being “gangrenous” and glorifies the destruction of libraries and museums, a blatant rebellion against public and popular learning establishments. F.T. Marinetti exclaims that war is the only cure for the world, and the essence of art is violence and injustice.
Does Marinetti think that violent artwork can be the only true way to properly express yourself, due to the fact that the human mind is violent by design?
The Surrealist Manifesto claims that surrealism exists and it is the foundation of a revolution. The liberation of the mind itself, a difficult concept to understand, is the basis for surrealism. The unlocking of the creative elements of the unconscious mind and “detached” nature is what surrealism revolves around.
Is the revolt described in the Surrealist Manifesto similar to the one described in the Futurist Manifesto? What does it mean in the Surrealist Manifesto when it states, “It is a cry of the mind turning back on itself, and it is determined to break apart its fetters, even if it must be by material hammers!”?
This is, in my opinion, a pithy summary and analysis of these two manifestos. I feel that the Surrealist Manifesto and the Futurist Manifesto share the same basic advocacy of artistic revolution and a turn from the classical regard for and practice of art in favor of fresh avenues of expression, whatever they may be. The primary distinction I can discern is that of tone: the Surrealist Manifesto has an air of almost cocky defiance to it (“Beware of your deviations and faux-pas, we shall not miss a single one”), while the Futurist Manifesto reads as more of an artistic call to arms (“Heap up the fire to the shelves of the library! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of museums!”). The passage you quoted from the Surrealist Manifesto seems to me to be a illustrative reference to the overarching theme of “freeing the mind,” so to speak, that prevails in that text.