Futurism

With the futurists' uncompromising 1909 'Manifesto' ringing in your ears - 'There is no more beauty except in strife, no masterpiece without aggressiveness…' - the expectations are of violent assaults on the senses, as well as much wailing and gnashing of teeth. After all, its author, FT Marinetti, was the one who wanted to 'introduce the fisticuff into the artistic struggle'. Yet the show fails to deliver the manifesto's promised 'punch and slap'; more importantly, it doesn't address such problematic pronouncements as 'We will glorify war, the world's only hygiene', while the futurists are only briefly brought to task for their nasty disdain of womankind.

'Time and space died yesterday' was perhaps the best phrase on this barmy agenda, a feat attempted in the painting of multiple, shifting viewpoints by Umberto Boccioni in 'Simultaneous Visions' or in the dynamism of motion in Giacomo Balla's stabbed and spotted, stop-start portrayal of a 'Girl Running on a Balcony'. This short-lived Italian grouping succeeded in cracking the painted surface, either into shattered panels separated by black lines like stained glass or into trailing lines of activity, echoing fleeing figures and steaming trains. They were aiming for blurry, of course, but the fluidity of paint soon becomes disappointingly muddy. Sometimes they just didn't know when to stop.

But some of these speed freaks managed to get it right, particularly Boccioni in his bracing triptychs or Luigi Russolo in the graphically surging 'Rebellion'. Much here seems too delicate and sentimental to fall into the belligerent futurism camp - blossoming rose shapes, pretty girls and moonlight effects don't fit with the mechanised grunt of the first wave of jolting cab and tram rides.

Hold the stampede, you might say, what's Picasso's quiet, analytical cubism doing here? Well, cubism begat futurism, which begat Orphism (named after Orpheus), tubism (for its cylinders) and eventually our own vorticism ('Long live the vortex!' was the rallying cry of British artist Wyndham Lewis). The last of these sidetracks is the most interesting, with David Bomberg's 'In the Hold' one of the show's best pictures.

As futurism splintered just before World War I, it had become a style rather than the state of mind Marinetti had hoped for. A century ago it might have seemed as though they were spitting on 'the Altar of Art', but the truth is that today's audiences will see very little bile or spittle in these carefully wrought pictures of a world fractured. Even in the final room dedicated to war (remember, 'the world's only hygiene') the mood is one of valedictory flag-waving in Balla's 'Patriotic Demonstration' and 'Long Live Italy'. A bright spark and a speedy fizzle, but it's better to burn out than fade away.