ABSTRACT
Futurism’s important contribution to modernism was due to its multi-disciplinary approach to art and politics. For instance, this movement explored a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, cinema, and sound, eventually entering the culinary field. Although these experiments have often been dismissed, Marinetti’s cucina futurista not only advanced the group’s totalizing goals, but also resonated with those of Fascism. Futurism chose to align itself with Fascism after World War I, and often modified sources from abroad, whether from art or popular culture. Whereas Baker and jazz originally came from the United States, they arrived in Italy through the mediation of French modernist primitivism, a fashion for all things “savage,” such as non-Western art and jazz. Marinetti’s account of the banquet linked jazz and colonialism, erasing any traces of Neapolitan modernity and its construction through immigration to the United States.
