About

Why this website exists

This website has been built  as an online resource for those interested in exploring Vorticism. It shall act as a primary online resource for students of Vorticism, and as an information conduit about current Vorticist events.  I also wanted to add a catalogue of books that are available about the movement for those interested in reading further.

I have been interested in Vorticism since being introduced to the art movement when studying in my student days. I was utterly amazed at college when I was shown what had been achieved in 1912 to 1914.  That Britain could have originated such avant garde works at such a far off point in history was a bombshell - I had never expected quaint old Edwardian England to have been quite so modernistic.  That got me asking some basic questions about my own education up to that point: why hadn't I been told that British art at this time had been (arguably) leading the world?  Why instead was I told (usually by teachers swooning about the pictures) about the greatness of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and the about the crowning achievement of Cubism?  Okay, Impressionist art, and the post-impressionists were pretty impressive.  But no, I didn't rate Cubism.  And why was everyone convinced Picasso was such a genius?  And why were we not informed of our own own artistic heritage? 

It's the British way I'm afraid.  We downsell ourselves as mistaken, or misguded, or if something is suddenly actually quite good, then it's not greatness or genius - just some bizarre accident.  The text books that I worked from at this time tended not to mention Vorticism.  It was ignored.  Never happened.  Lewis and Bomberg, whose art is difficult to ignore normally, would be dismissed in a couple of sentences.  Some critics went further and preferred to see Vorticism as some strange but ugly perversion in British art (for example by the critic Herbert Read).  Vorticism had nothing to do (in such critics' opinions) with the more worthy stuff of the 1930s - the Circle Group's Hepworth, Nicholson and Moore.  Here after all was a British movement that evolved towards abstraction by 'proper' means: via clearly defined influences from the continent, and without the need to produce infantile manifestos full of beastliness. 

Needless to say, I disagreed then as now; the Circle Group's art is but a pale, uninteresting dilution of what had bubbled up in the few heady months before the First World War. Vorticism included many abstract works, and it is doubtless that they were heavily influenced by it.  But this was never acknowledged.  

And it was the Circle Group's art that found favour with the authorities in the rebuilding of the cities and the birth of the new towns in the 1950's and '60's. It must be the clear connection between the monolithic concretions that were going up around this time and the Circle Groups' interest in plain surfaces and clean minimalistic lines. I can remember the Henry Moore sculptures dotted around the landscape of Hemel Hempstead like so many featureless pebbles dropped randomly amongst the houses from outer space. They weren't appreciated very widely by the local inhabitants, I can vouch for that.

Another common view about Vorticism was that it was just some massive ego-trip of Lewis, just one of his 'phases' that he went through during his life. This misplaced sentiment is often based on what happened at the 1956 Lewis and the Vorticists exhibition, and the comments Lewis made in the introduction. This caused other Vorticists, principally Roberts, to argue vehemently that this was not the case. Roberts, of course, was right, but Lewis had caused much damage by these thoughtless words, and had weakened the already shaky position that Vorticism had earned in the history books at this time.

So this website is a way 'correcting' a history about Vorticism, a history that has been badly mauled and misshaped by the critics of decades past.  The problem of an incorrect or even nonexistent history of Vorticism has largely been addressed more recently by a new generation of great authors about the subject (see books), but this website remains as a personal attempt to right all those pernicious wrongs that were contained in those history books I was having to use thirty years ago. 

A note about the Autumn 2009 rewrite

Why rewrite? Well, the site just needed bringing up to date.  What started as a sort of joke with comments and opinion has now turned into something more serious!  I wanted it to become a study resource about my favourite art movement, without the annoying sideways comments.  The opinion I've been unable to remove completely, however.

Please note that this website is not a commercial enterprise! If visitors purchase books by clicking through to book vendors, then I will be able to hopefully balance the books. 

Where have all the pictures gone?

I have also wanted to ensure everything on this website was either fully authorised or cleared with copyright holders. This inevitably meant removing all pictures from the site, then introducing them back in where permission has been granted. Some pictures will appear soon, but it takes time to clear copyright - so you will have to wait!

Wikipedia is published on US servers. It shows images of Vorticist works. So why can't I? United States law is more liberal when it comes to 'fair use' of pictures, and if the principal reason for a website is study (as it is here) then 'fair use' can cover the use of copyright material without permission. However, this website is on a UK server, and is subject therefore to English law. Copyright is maintained via the courts here in a more rigorous fashion, and I would not like to test the law in terms of whether a picture shown here, without permission, constitutes 'fair use' in terms of section 30 of the copyright act!

Tyrone Hopes

Last updated 23 November 2009.