"Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes. But at present even the handling of a hammer is taught with the help of a mirror, a sensitive film that records all the movements. Photography and motion-picture photography, owing to their passive accuracy of depiction, are becoming important educational instruments in the field of labor. If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the 'mirror' of [literature]? Of course no one speaks about an exact mirror. No one even thinks of asking the new literature to have mirror-like impassivity. The deeper literature is, and the more it is imbued with the desire to shape life, the more significantly and dynamically it will be able to 'picture' life."
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Quote of Leon Trotsky, in Literature and Revolution (1924), edited by William Keach (2005), Ch. 4 : Futurism, p. 120
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Futurism
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Futurism
Futurism was the modern art movement which started in Italy circa 1908 - 1912; The Futurist artists wanted to express dynamic and hectic by all movements of modern city life. Color-divisionism was their favorite painting technique.
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