Performance-Art for All?

It was the Italian Futurists who first suggested an art for the masses and who devised a means of attracting press coverage in the news columns rather than in the limited space of the arts review pages. A cleverly devised scheme by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti broke such journalistic boundaries, despite the fact that what the Futurists wished to draw attention to was a complex critique of culture in general and the weight of an Italian heritage that saddled young artists with academic art pursuits.