100 Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists (ed Alex Danchev)

Want to change the world? Go back to the futurists

This collection is a must, not because of the quality of the writing (much of it is overblown and woolly), but because the passion that erupted in the early 20th century is in such counterpoint to our own more apathetic era.

Virginia Woolf cited "on or around December 1910" as when "human character changed" and modernism took hold. F T Marinetti, chief of the Futurists, advocated a world in which museums and archaeology were swept aside in favour of the "speeding car".

His scorn for women spurred Valentine de Saint-Point to produce "A Futurist Manifesto of Lust", and Mina Loy spoke in defence of feminism. Anger became a tool for change, rather than the hindrance to art that Woolf had once claimed it to be.