From Eternal Knight to Modern Hero: The Aviator as the New Man of the Avant-Garde at the Outbreak of the Great War
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3 juin 2022
- doi: 10.4000/books.pupo.15645
- isbn: 9782840162452
- eisbn: 9782840164654
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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Hostilities Conflict, Armed (War) Wars Armed conflict (War) Fighting People Man Humanity (Human beings) Human race Mankind Homo sapiens Humankind HumansCiter ce document
Iveta Slavkova, « From Eternal Knight to Modern Hero: The Aviator as the New Man of the Avant-Garde at the Outbreak of the Great War », Presses universitaires de Paris Ouest, ID : 10.4000/books.pupo.15645
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Through Hommage to Blériot by Robert Delaunay and Festa patriotica by Carlo Carrà, both painted in 1914, this paper will seek to clarify the paradox underlying the attitude of the avant-gardes towards the aviator. The pilot and/or the plane constructor were venerated as Gods when the Great War broke out. He was the New Man of the future whose mission was to restore the essence of a greater humanity which many saw lost in years of degeneracy at the turn of the century. Combining spirituality and technical achievement, his crossing of the starry firmament embodied the revival of the humanistic ideal, the rebirth of a humanity reaching for its highest mission in the universe. If the First World War tended to prove that mankind could hardly handle the effects of their own inventions, the aviator, master of the machine and unlimited skies became a central figure to the discourse that used humanistic arguments to mask and justify the massacre.