J.B. M[anson], ‘The Italian Futurists and the X-Rays in Art’

As an evidence of the vitality of the Southern spirit, the outbreak of Italian ‘Futurist’ painting is interesting but not dangerous. There will be no need to inoculate the students in our various schools of art against infection, for the movement stands self-condemned by the ineptitude and incoherence of its results. It is not plausible for a moment. Nor is it likely to arouse anything but merriment in England, for, in spite of recent outbreaks of window-smashing on the part of certain infatuated people, the British nation is fairly hard-headed and certainly too prosaic to start chasing any fantastic will-o’-the-wisp of the Latin temperament. Nor is the nation to be supposed to be entirely imbecile, although it sits unmoved and goes on with its knitting while the trade of the country is ruined by dangerous strikes which a futile Government discusses as though they were a subject of merely academic interest. To an Italian Futurist we may well appear therefore to be fair game.