Page 23 - Studio International - April 1967

decorations for the Golden Calf night-club.
Roberts had worked briefly with Roger Fry
in the Omega workshops and then joined
Lewis at the Rebel Art Centre. He repudiated
the Futurist Manifesto 'Vital English Art'.
Wadsworth had met Lewis at the Omega
workshops and left with him to join the Rebel
Art Centre.
However, it is Lewis who dominates Blast
which he saw as:
`. . . an art paper to advertise and popularise a
movement in the visual arts which I had initiated.'
(Letters)
Lewis was unhappy at having outside
contributors. He declared in Rude Assignment:
''I wanted a battering ram that was all of
one metal.' He felt 'compromised' by the
inclusion of Pound's poems and regarded
Gaudier-Brzeska as 'a man of tradition—not
"one of US".' Yet Pound and Gaudier-
Brzeska emerge as the two contributors
most committed to the notion of the Vortex.
Manifestos apart, Blast I consisted of poems
by Pound, Lewis's play Enemy of the Stars, the
first part of Ford Maddox Ford's The Saddest
Story and a story by Rebecca West. Wads-
worth reviewed Kandinsky's Ueber das Geistige
in der Kunst. Lewis, Pound and Gaudier-
Brzeska wrote notes and 'vortices'. Wads-
worth, Lewis, Etchells, Roberts, Epstein,
Gaudier-Brzeska and Hamilton provided In Blast I, he hails 'the great art vortex British aesthete, the Hair dresser, Joe Lyons
illustrations which included one of Lewis's sprung up in the centre of this town.' His and the A.B.C. and a jumbled selection of
Timon of Athens designs. major theme is that friends, acquaintances and enemies. Lewis
Blast II, July 1915, was war-dominated and `Reality is in the Artist, the image only in life, later 'explained' the contradictions :
explored the position of art and the artist in and he should only approach so near as is ''Against the tyranny of the "sense of humour" I in
war time. Contributions included poems by necessary for a good view.' true anglo saxon fashion, humorously rebelled.
Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Ford. Lewis contri- In opposition to the Futurists, he declares: . . . In a word, I still 'blast' humour. (But then
buted War Notes, Art Notes and Vortex. ''With our Vortex the Present is the only active thing. we> come to the 'Blesses' and since there are two
Gaudier-Brzeska's 'Vortex from the Trenches' Life is the Past and the Future. sides to every argument, you find me blessing
was followed by a stark announcement of his The Present is Art.' what I had a moment before blasted. An example
death in action. His 'Head of Ezra Pound' Like Gaudier-Brzeska who proclaims that of English''fairness" !)'
was among the illustrations. Nevinson, `Will and consciousness are our VORTEX', (Blasting & Bombardiering)
Roberts, Dorothy Shakespeare (Mrs Pound), Lewis emphasizes that 'The Vorticist is not Despite the ironical tone Lewis claimed that
Wadsworth and Lewis also contributed to the slave of commotion but its Master.' the 'puce monster' contained 'much sound
these. Lewis designed the arresting black and Hence he is contemptuous of the Futurist's art doctrine'.
white vorticist cover, with its subdued and obsession with the machine. England, the Blast I consumed much of the group's
shrunken title. ''Siberia of the mind' standing for 'anti Art' impetus. Blast His more sombre in tone:
The designs and illustrations of both issues and 'mediocrity', seems ripe for the birth of a ''All Europe was at war and a bigger Blast than
have a weak impact in comparison with the new movement. mine had rather taken the wind out of my sails.'
stridently romantic writing. In Blast I, this Blast is created for this timeless fundamental (Blasting & Bombardiering)
weakness is obvious in greyish photographs artist that exists in everybody.' Already Gaudier-Brzeska had been killed.
on cheap shiny paper, and small designs For Pound Blast warily committed itself in support of
dwarfed by immense white margins. This is ''The vortex is the point of maximum energy . . . England, German nationalism being rejected
compensated for by explosive verbal content. All the past that is vital, all the past that is as
Bewildering assertions and counter-asser- capable of living into the future, is pregnant in ''less realistic . . . more saturated with the
tions are arranged in pseudo-logical order. the vortex. NOW.. . . Futurism is the dis- mechanical obsession of history than the nationalism
The reader is dazed by the stream of self- gorging spray of a vortex with no drive behind it, of England or France.'
consciously virile imagery, colouring prose DISPERSAL.. . . VORTICISM is art before The rebellious image was fading. No further
that is by turns derisive, triumphant, bom- it has spread itself into a state of facidity (sic) issues were produced and the attempt of
bastic and exhortatory. The Vortex is redefi- or elaboration, of secondary application.' Group X to revive it after the war was
ned for the reader in various ways but always In a different vein, in the series of 'Blasts' abortive.
by metaphor and analogy. Violet Hunt recalls and 'Blesses' which constitute the first Mani- It is not easy to estimate the effect of the
how Lewis had said: festo, Lewis 'lets life know its place in a magazine. Lewis wrote that:
`You think at once of a whirlpool. At the heart of Vorticist Universe'. The items to be blasted `Its immense puce cover was the standing joke in
the whirlpool is a great silent place where all the or blessed are arbitrary, haphazardly chosen the fashionable drawing room from Waterloo Place
energy is concentrated. And there, at the point of and often contradictory. They include such to the border line in Belgravia.'
concentration, is the Vorticist.' items as the English Sense of Humour, the (Blasting & Bombardiering)
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