Discussion 1 This symposium explores the controversial status of Futurist movements in art history, and some of their ‘avant-garde’ practices. Speakers engage with various forms of Futurist art, performance and film, including the use of manifestos and demonstrations. Italian Futurism will be viewed in relation to other radical art practices across Europe. The Futurists’ disdain for traditional values and their pursuit of an ‘art of modern life’ will be explored in relation to prevailing concepts of modernity and ‘avant-garde’ utopias.

Matthew Gale and Gill Perry, ‘The raging broom of madness’: making an exhibition of Futurism  The presentation covers some of the ideas, issues and decisions that went into making Futurism at Tate Modern. It covers a range from conception to installation, including such concerns as how to present the manifestos and what happened to Balla's dog?

Sophie Howarth, Paul Wood, Matthew Gale, Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 1

Matthew Gale, Carving out a Reputation  Brancusi has a reputation as a skillful peasant camping in the milieu of Montparnasse modernism. Purity and innocence are habitually used to describe both the artist and his work. However, it is clear that this can be traced back to the complex myth that Brancusi constructed for himself. Matthew Gale, curator of Tate Modern's exhibition Brancusi: The Essence of Things, considers some of the questions of validity that accumulated around Brancusi's work, as it generated controversies around the world, and how the sculptor came to embody ideas of authenticity.

Matthew Gale, Ian Christie, Gill Perry and Dawn Ades, Discussion 2  A video recording a discussion from the Tate Modern Surrealism and Film Study Day conference

Matthew Gale, Dalí & Film Exhibition: An Introduction  Matthew Gale gives an introduction to the Dalí & Film exhibition at Tate Modern. He discusses the curatorial issues concerning the show that arise from the juxtaposition of Dalí's paintings, photographs and drawings with his film imagery. Further Reading Paul Hammond, The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on Cinema, London 1978 and San Francisco 2000 Paul Hammond, L'Age d'or, London 1997 Haim Finkelstein ed., The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí, Cambridge 1998