Vorticism

2 Participants

David Bomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914, Tate

Vorticism was a short-lived modernist movement in

British art and poetry of the early 20th century,[1] partly
inspired by Cubism. The movement was announced in
1914 in the rst issue of BLAST, which contained its Kate Lechmere, Cuthbert Hamilton (seated), Edward Wadsworth
manifesto and the movements rejection of landscape and and Wyndham Lewis at the Rebel Art Centre, March 1914.
nudes in favour of a geometric style tending towards
abstraction. Ultimately, it was their witnessing of unfold- The eleven signatories of the Vorticist manifesto were:
ing human disaster in World War I that drained these
artists of their Vorticist zeal.[2] Vorticism was based in
Richard Aldington
London but was international in make-up and ambition.
Malcolm Arbuthnot

Lawrence Atkinson

Origins

Jessica Dismorr

The Vorticism group began with the Rebel Art Centre which Wyndham Lewis and others established after disagreeing with Omega Workshops founder Roger
Fry, and has roots in the Bloomsbury Group, Cubism
and Futurism.
Lewis himself saw Vorticism as
an independent alternative to Cubism, Futurism and
Expressionism.[3]

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Cuthbert Hamilton
Wyndham Lewis
Ezra Pound

Though the style grew out of Cubism, it is more closely

related to Futurism in its embrace of dynamism, the machine age and all things modern (cf. Cubo-Futurism).
However, Vorticism diverged from Futurism in the way
it tried to capture movement in an image. In a Vorticist
painting modern life is shown as an array of bold lines and
harsh colours drawing the viewers eye into the centre of
the canvas.

William Roberts
Helen Saunders
Edward Wadsworth

The name Vorticism was given to the movement by Ezra

Pound in 1913,[1] although Lewis, usually seen as the central gure in the movement, had been producing paintings
in the same style for a year or so previously.[4]

Other contributors to the development of the movement were David Bomberg, Alvin Langdon Coburn,
Jacob Epstein (notably Rock Drill), Frederick Etchells,
Christopher Nevinson and Dorothy Shakespear.
1

7 NOTES
work. Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in military service,
while leading gures such as Epstein distanced themselves stylistically from Lewis. A brief attempt by Lewis
to revive the movement in 1920 under the name Group X
proved unsuccessful.[7] Pound, however, through his correspondence with Lewis, was understood to hold a commitment to the goals of the movement as much as forty
years after its demise.[8]
While Lewis is generally seen as the central gure in the
movement, it has been suggested that this was more due
to his contacts and ability as a self-publicist and polemicist than the quality of his works.[8] A 1956 exhibition at
the Tate Gallery was called Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, highlighting his prominent place in the movement.
This angered other members of the group. Bomberg and
Roberts (who published a series of Vortex Pamphlets
on the matter)[9] both protested strongly the assertion of
Lewis, which was printed in the exhibition catalogue:
Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did, and said,
at a certain period.

The cover of the 1915 BLAST

BLAST

[5]

The Vorticists published two issues of the literary magazine BLAST, edited by Lewis, in June 1914 and July
1915.[6] It contained work by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
as well as by the Vorticists themselves. Its typographical
adventurousness was cited by El Lissitzky as one of the
major forerunners of the revolution in graphic design in
the 1920s and 1930s.

5 Recent exhibitions
The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New
York, 191418, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke
University, 30 September 2010 2 January
2011[10][11]
The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York
191418, Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice),
29 January 15 May 2011
Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, Tate
Britain, 14 June 4 September 2011

6 See also
4

Demise and legacy

Experimental paintings and sculpture using angular simplication and abstraction, by Lewis, Wadsworth, Shakespear and others, were shown at the Rebel Art Centre
in 1914, before the formation of the Vorticist Group.
This work was contemporary with and comparable to
abstraction by European artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Frantiek Kupka and the Russian Rayist Group. The
Vorticists held only one exhibition, in 1915, at the Dor
Gallery in London.[6] The main section of the exhibition
included work by Jessica Dismorr, Frederick Etchells,
Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, William Roberts, Helen Saunders and Edward Wadsworth. There was a smaller section
area titled Those Invited To Show that included several
other artists. Jacob Epstein was notably not represented,
although did have his drawings reproduced in BLAST.[3]
After this, the movement broke up, largely due to the
onset of World War I and public apathy towards the

Monad

7 Notes
[1] West, Shearer (general editor), The Bullnch Guide to Art
History, page 883, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, United
Kingdom, 1996. ISBN 0-8212-2137-X
[2] Sophie Matthiesson, Blasted Visions in Gott et al (2007)
p.67
[3] Vorticism, MoMA The Collection Retrieved 17 October 2009
[4] Program and menu from The Cave of the Golden Calf,
Cabaret and Theatre Club, Heddon Street
[5] White, Eric B (2013). Transatlantic avant-gardes : little
magazines and localist modernism. Edinburgh Edinburgh
University Press

[6] Vorticism, Msn Encarta Retrieved 17 October 2009

Archived May 22, 2007 at the Wayback Machine
[7] Group X, Tate Retrieved 17 October 2009
[8] From Vortex to Vorticism: Ezra Pounds art and science.
| Goliath Business News. Goliath.ecnext.com. Retrieved
2010-11-16.
[9] See John David Roberts, 'A Brief Discussion of the Vortex
Pamphlets
[10] Nasher Museum Retrieved 17 September 2010
[11] Nasher Museum, Alvin Langdon Coburn photographer
Retrieved 6 November 2010

References
Antclie, Mark, and Green, Vivien (eds.). The Vorticists. Tate Publishing, 2010.
Cork, Richard. Vorticism and Abstract Art in the
First Machine Age (two volumes). University of California Press, 1976. ISBN 0-520-03154-7 & ISBN
0-520-03269-1.
Gott, Ted, Laurie Benson, Sophie Matthiesson et
al, Modern Britain 1900 - 1960: Masterworks from
Australian and New Zealand Collections, Exhibition
Catalogue, 2007 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. ISBN 9780724102921
Haycock, David Boyd. A Crisis of Brilliance: Five
Young British Artists and the Great War. Old Street
Publishing, 2009.
Pound, Ezra. Vorticism in Fortnightly Review 96,
no. 573:461471, 1914.

External links
Workshop, a Vorticist painting circa 191415 by
Wyndham Lewis
www.vorticism.co.uk, information about Vorticism
Ezra Pounds 1914 Vorticism essay in The
Fortnightly Review
Ezra Pound: Vorticism
www.npg.org.uk/wyndhamlewis, Wyndham Lewis
exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London,
3 July 19 October 2008
TATE glossary
A review of the 2011 Vorticism exhibit at the Tate
Britain by Prof. Andrew Thacker.

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TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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American Poetry: from Blast (1914-1915) Original artist: Wyndham Lewis
File:Bomberg,_The_Mud_Bath.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Bomberg%2C_The_Mud_Bath.jpg License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Kate_Lechmere,_Cuthbert_Hamilton_(seated),_Edward_Wadsworth_and_Wyndham_Lewis_1914.jpg
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