Valentine de Saint-Point, Futurist Manifesto of Lust, 19133

Valentine de Saint-Point, Futurist Manifesto of Lust, Milan, Direction of the Futurist Movement, 11 January 1913 (A. Taveggia - S. Margherita 7 - Milan).

293x233 mm. Pages [4]. Minimal marginal tears and browning, but an excellent and 'exciting' copy! First edition in Italian.

The Futurist Manifesto of Lust: When Desire Becomes Art and Revolution

If you think Futurism is merely an ode to roaring engines, aeroplanes, and unrestrained speed, prepare for a journey into the most scandalous and sensual side of this movement: the Futurist Manifesto of Lust by Valentine de Saint-Point. Written in 1913, this text made the respectable blush, raised goblets among artists, and prompted reflection on what desire truly means. Ready to discover how lust became an art? Settle in, we're taking off!

The Context: Futurism and the “Woman Problem”

It's 1913, in a Paris bubbling with ideas. Futurism, led by the charismatic and somewhat megalomaniac Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, aims to wipe the past clean: museums? Dusty. Romantic poetry? Pathetic. Women? Um... here Marinetti trips up. In his 1909 Futurist Manifesto, in point 9, he declares a “contempt for women,” viewed as symbols of weakness and sentimentality. A monumental own-goal.

But here comes Valentine de Saint-Point, a woman who doesn't simply correct the aim: she fires a cannon shot. French, great-granddaughter of the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, muse of Rodin and (perhaps) lover of Marinetti, Valentine is a force of nature. In 1912 she published the Manifesto of the Futurist Woman, asserting that humanity does not divide into men and women, but into masculine and feminine, universal qualities. And in 1913, with the Futurist Manifesto of Lust, she delivers the final blow: desire is not sin, but a creative energy, as powerful as a Futurist engine.

The Manifesto: Lust as Vital Force

The Futurist Manifesto of Lust is an explosion of ideas, an anthem to sensuality that rejects hypocrisy and moralism. Here are the key points, explained with a sprinkle of irony:

1. Goodbye to cloying romanticism. Valentine has no time for “duets under the moon” or “false hypocritical modesty”. Enough with the sentimentalities: desire must be lived without filters, with the same boldness as an airplane pilot.
2. Lust is an art. “We must make lust a work of art,” she proclaims. It's not about yielding to instincts, but about shaping desire with awareness, like an artist with their canvas.
3. Body and spirit on the same level. For Valentine, lust is “the carnal search for the unknown,” parallel to spiritual exploration. Enough with the dichotomy of bad body/good mind: they are accomplices, not enemies.
4. Lust and war. Here the text becomes prickly: Valentine justifies rape as a “natural” act of the victors in war, to “create life”. An idea that horrifies us today, but reflects the Futurist exaltation of vital force.
5. A people without lust? Dead. Art and war, Valentine writes, arise from sensuality. A people that represses desire is destined for decay, like an engine without petrol.

Why This Futurist Manifesto by Valentine de Saint-Point Is Revolutionary?

Imagine being a bourgeois in 1913, with your tailcoat or corset properly fastened, and reading a woman celebrating lust as a virtue, inviting the experience of desire without shame and comparing it to art. Panic! Valentine not only challenges Catholic and patriarchal morals, but rewrites the role of women: no longer a passive object, but an active subject, creator of her own destiny.

The Manifesto is also a response to Marinetti's masculinity. Valentine does not seek acceptance: she takes centre stage. And she succeeds: she becomes one of the few women admitted to the leadership of the Futurist movement, a very male club. As scholar Cinzia Sartini Blum writes in her book The Other Modernism, Valentine “reinterprets Futurism in a feminist light, challenging the internal contradictions of the movement”.

Valentine de Saint-Point: An Extraordinary Woman

Who was this woman capable of shaking an entire epoch? Born in Lyon in 1875, Valentine is a whirlwind: poet, painter, dancer, choreographer, art critic, and even a nurse during the First World War. She posed (almost naked!) for Rodin and Mucha, divorced twice, lived in an open relationship with Ricciotto Canudo, and invented Metacoria, a dance that unites poetry, music, and geometry. According to art critic Giovanni Lista, author of Futurism: An Italian Identity, Valentine was “an icon of modernity, able to embody Futurist dynamism in life and art”.

When she takes the stage at the Salle Gaveau in Paris to declaim the Manifesto, the Futurist painter Gino Severini describes her as “elegant, magnetic, a woman who lives what she preaches.” Translated: Valentine was not just theory, but practice!

Reactions to the Manifesto: Scandal and Applause

The Futurist Manifesto of Lust divided the public. The newspapers of the time, as reported in the volume Futurism: Manifestos, Declarations, Interventions edited by Luciano De Maria, branded it as “immoral” and “scandalous”. Moralists cried sacrilege, but what about the Futurist artists? They were captivated. Italo Tavolato, in Lacerba, published a “Gloss on the Futurist Manifesto of Lust”, praising Valentine for having “liberated desire from the chains of moralism.” Even Marinetti, albeit with some reservations, acknowledged her genius, describing her (according to some sources) as “a woman of fire with enchanting eyes”.

The Legacy of the Manifesto: Lust Today

The Futurist Manifesto of Lust was a trailblazer. As noted by art historian Paola Salvi in her essay Women in Futurism, Valentine’s ideas influenced the feminist movements of the 1970s, which claimed female pleasure as a right. Today, in an era of body positivity and discussions around consent, Valentine’s message – desire as a creative force – is more relevant than ever. Certainly, the passage on rape is problematic and requires contextualization, but the core of the Manifesto remains powerful.

And in pop culture? Critic Roby Guerra, in an article on Futurism today, compares Valentine to figures like Moana Pozzi, seeing in both a celebration of eros as a universal energy. Who knows, perhaps Valentine would have dominated TikTok with videos on Metacoria!

Conclusion: Is Lust Art?

The Futurist Manifesto of Lust is not only a historical text but an invitation to live without hypocrisy, to see desire as a force that fuels creativity. Valentine de Saint-Point, with her courage and vision, demonstrated that a woman can be a muse, an artist, and a revolutionary all at once.