Vorticist faq

What is Vorticism?

Vorticism is the name of an art movement founded by Percy Wyndham Lewis. The group was formed in June 1914. The label was created by Ezra Pound, a collaborator. The terms 'Vorticism' and 'Vorticist' do not appear in Blast 1 because this was printed before such terms were formulated. However, the word 'Vortex' does appear.

Vorticism grew as a British reaction to rival continental art movements. In France, Cubism had held sway for some years. The Italians had answered this with their mult-medial project, Futurism. There is little doubt that Vorticism borrowed heavily from the Futurists in the way they printed manifestos, prints and definitions.

The British Vorticist art movement can be contrasted with these foreign movements, and the differences reveal the areas which make the Vorticist quite distinct. The Futurist was concerned with movement and new machinery - the romance of new technology. The Vorticist was concerned with stasis, and disregarded technology, old and new. The Cubist was concerned with apples, guitars and life in the cafe. The Vorticist was not afraid of looking outside the cafe and observing the architecture which surrounded the cafe.

Also, there was a hint of aggression, or conflict in most Vorticist works that is entirely missing in French work. Vorticist works are characterised by the unease created by a disrupted perspective. it is as though there is such thing as life seen through a 'vorticist lens'. This lens distorts the neat lines, and sends them in different directions, none in parallel. Latent power, sinister, potentially explosive forces seem to reverberate through Vorticist works. Meanwhile the Futurists were excited by the actual explosion.

Who were the original Vorticists?

The following personnel (in no particular order) were Vorticist:

Pictorial Artists

Writers/Poets

Sculptors

Those marked with an asterisk (*) were later to leave the Vorticist ranks, or claim that they never were Vorticist in the first place.

How long did it all last?

Vorticism had started around May/June 1914. The Vorticist label was coined halfway through the production process of Blast 1. This explains why the term is used so rarely in the groups' main manifesto.

The first world war started in August 1914. Therefore it existed for only three months of peacetime. There were two main exhibitions (in the Puffin Gallery, New York) and Lewis published a further issue of BLAST ('The War Number') in 1915.

War killed the Vorticists, not rival art gangs. It's key sculptor Gaudier-Brzeska was killed at Verdun in 1915; others had joined up: painting was not an accepted wartime priority. Edward Wadsworth was designing dazzle-paint camouflage for battleships; Hulme was killed on the front in 1917. Nevinson became a Futurist. Lewis was first a Bombardier then an official War Artist for the Canadian Nation (due to his birthplace in a boat at Newfoundland).

 

what did they DO?


These artists developed a distinctive British strain of the new pan-European modernist art movement. They were organised by Lewis. Some didn't like being manipulated in such a way, and later repudiated Vorticism and Lewis, including Bomberg and William Roberts. Together, the Vorticists were the FIRST British painters to venture into abstraction. Other affiliated artists like TS Eliot and TE Hulme wrote rather than painted. But they are no less Vorticist for it.

The miracle is that this random crowd made any impact on art at all. They were only together as a fighting force for three months, then Europe was in the midst of that other famous 20th century development, World War.

what

was their style?


Their style was architectronic, and mostly non-figurative. Some detractors have unkindly written VORTICISM off as a kind of Crypto-Cubism executed by artists who didn't understand the basic tenets of multi-faceting. However, if they'd painted like Picasso, they would have been seen as mere copyists. (Herbert Read's writing is typical of this 'sneering' history of art. Of course, that's the British Critical Response to anything that dares to break the mould, I'm afraid. Don't get me started on the British Critical Mafia. Most are Bloomsburyites. The Vorticists hated the Bloomsbury Set for their orthodox, sometimes conservative views, and for good reason. Bloomsbury Art REEKED of middle class values, and hidden agendas). Vorticist style was a DRAMATIC BREAK TO WHAT HAD BEEN DONE BEFORE. After Vorticism had appeared, there was no going back.

weren't they all just

misfits?


The Bloomsbury circle tended to look down on the rebel Vorticist group. It was a class thing. Some Vorticists were extremely poor. Bomberg was living in Whitechapel, an unhealthy suburb of London (famous for its 'Jack the Ripper' murders of a few years previous);
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska sculpted in a railway arch in Putney (under the District Underground line north of Lower Richmond Road on the South side of the Thames, number 27). He was genuinely poor, but one of the most enthusiastic and vociferous of the gang; so poor, his archway was not only his studio but his home; Jacob Epstein, another bohemian artist who struggled hard to make a living; these artists were all trying to make a name for themselves in the first art movement that tried what we would call 'modern methods' to get their message across, including publishing their manifesto, self-publicity, and stirring up public debate.

Did Lewis use the media?

Wyndham Lewis would today be seen as a sort of spin doctor or media spokesman. He was shrewd in amassing enormous amounts of publicity. The new developments in art gripped the publics' attention, and it was often being debated. He borrowed some money and printed BLAST which was a large puce magazine as thick as a telephone directory. It was a manifesto and a call to arms for the artists of Britain to shake off its Victorian attitudes. He was continually recruiting both artists and wealthy patrons (usually women) who would supply the budget for his next venture. They met in Great Ormond Street (where the entrance to the Children's Hospital now is) and ran lectures, art classes and presentations.

why did they call themselves Vorticists?

The term Vorticism was invented by Ezra Pound, the American poet. Lewis had befriended him whilst in London. The term represented the contradiction of a swirling, headyprogress and a still reflective centre which was a characterisation of the group's collective psyche.