Page 24 - Studio International - April 1967

Contemporary reviews (some of them quoted Blast out of existence. Lewis joined up soon 'Vorticism . . . was what I, personally, did,
in Blast II) varied in opinion. The Times con- after the appearance of the second issue. It is and said at a certain period. This may be ex-
sidered Vorticism a healthier movement than hardly surprising that it was never revived. panded into a certain theory regarding visual art.'
Futurism. The Morning Post found it 'full of The 'secure' society providing target and However arrogant the claim may appear to
irrepressible imbecility'. The Manchester market had ironically turned the tables on be (and Lewis has been attacked by W.
Guardian reserved its praise for the conven- its assailants. Its stability was illusory. The Roberts for the extravagance of his asser-
tional contributions of Rebecca West and magazine's idiom had been of the 'present'. tions) it is Lewis's personal imprint on Blast
Ford ('unusually fine stuff, this last'). Truth The war ensured that it could not be revived. which allows it to survive. Probably Lewis
complained that 'flatulence is a dull and The Vorticists dispersed and Vorticism had gave the most convincing oblique explana-
boring complaint both in sheep and Artists.' never been a sufficiently coherent movement tion of Blast's impact when he wrote of
The Sunday Times drew a parallel between the to survive such disruption. Blast had been the himself:
aims of Blast and the effects of the Yellow Book. mouthpiece of a circle which comprised many ''I might have been at the head of a social revolu-
Yet Lewis records that Asquith regarded the disparate elements. Lewis recognized this tion instead of merely being the prophet of a new
Vortex uneasily as a 'political portent'. when he wrote his preface to the catalogue fashion in art.'
The worsening international situation drove of the 1956 Vorticist Exhibition at the Tate: (Blasting & Bombardiering) q

A Vorticist poetry with new eyes. And exchanges between volved with 'a new sense of form' based on
artists and their public, and between faction visual arrangement in a poem? Had he anti-
with visual and faction, brought with it a ' cipated the direction of Concrete poetry?
cross-fertiliza-tion'.3 Painters and sculptors, poets and
Pound shared T. E. Hulme's interest in the
implications: novelists, cultivated common ground within ''new constructive geometric art' then emerg-
the new aesthetic—an aesthetic of 'primary ing.7 They both admired work like Epstein's
the 'forgotten' form'. flenite carvings and Gaudier-Brzeska's Birds
experiment of In 'experiments in modernity' words as Erect: Pound found a way to describe what
visual objects could be fused into a picture, he saw: ''Mr Brzeska and Mr Epstein are
Ezra Pound
as in the collage by Futurist Carlo Carrà. His using "planes in relation".' Elsewhere: 'And
Patriotic Celebration 4 shows the parole in libertà the "new form". What is it ? ... It is an
technique of Marinetti as well as enthusiasm arrangement of masses in relation.' And
for sound. The image which results is a visual again: 'There comes a time when one is more
siren, spinning off bands of words : patriotic deeply moved by that form of intelligence
B. W. Rozran slogans, newspaper headlines, the din of city which can present "masses in relation"....'
traffic and songs—words in constellations It was the position already stated by Walter
which radiate outward in a verbal-visual Pater and James McNeill Whistler. This
explosion. Yet this picture is more than a heightened sensitivity to pure form—to ''masses
In London before the First World War the record of 'impressions'. Its arrangement in relation' — began to appear in poems by
avant-garde artists were militant. asserts one fixed and ordered image of the Pound around 1912-13.
One might imagine Pound's orative tones as chaos of sounds. One segment of his poem ''The Garret' pre-
he declared his credo at the Rebel Art Centre: Could the process be reversed ? Could sents its 'images' directly and precisely in .
''VORTEX as the point of maximum energy'; visual forms of arrangement appear in the accord with the Imagiste rules:
'VORTEX, from which, and through which, structure of a poem? Ezra Pound profited Dawn enters with little feet
and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.' from his contact with avant-garde artists, for like a gilded Pavlova,
Views were volatile on questions of art.' they 'awakened' his sense of form. In tribute And I am near my desire.8
F. T. Marinetti, the Italian Futurist leader to his artist-friends he wrote :
and poet, harangued his audience with What have they done for me these vorticist artists? And in the terms of T. E. Hulme, it presents
spirited lectures in London, and roused his ...they 'have given me a sense of form' ...have simultaneously to the mind two different
public with impassioned recitation from: made me more conscious of the appearance of the images which fuse in the discovery of a 'new' .
SOLE A RIPETIZIONE 20,000 PROIET- sky where it juts down between houses, of the analogy: a golden morning sunlight ap-
TILI AL MINUTO bright pattern of sunlight...the great 'Fs' of proaches the poet with the delicate grace of
urzzzzzzz aaaaaaaaaaaa light that dart through the chinks over the curtain a famous ballerina, and evokes a sensual
goia goia goia goia ancora ancora vendetta rings, all these are new chords, new keys of response. But the stanza, as an alba, has as well
ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta design.5 another visual property.
One such poem required 'accompaniment'— After 1912 Pound was a committed imagiste. The two images appear on the page in a
to simulate 'la rage balkanique'. When He proclaimed a 'Doctrine of the Image', and structure which keeps them separate; their
Marinetti declaimed it, the English Futurist the sharp precision of visual clarity in a poem physical arrangement sets them into a visual
C. R. W. Nevinson concealed himself and at became all-important to this credo. He in- juxtaposition. Line one stands in optical rela-
a signal from Marinetti belaboured a gigantic sisted on description which did not 'dull the tion to the lines below, while line two exists as
drum.2 For Marinetti, sound was an exciting, image', on a type of presentation like a hard- a separate unit held in a tension by design.
viable media. edge painting. The visual difference may be seen by con-
These avant-garde artists could make a great When Pound announced that 'Imagisme' sidering alternative arrangements :
deal of noise. Could they also advance art had become the 'department of poetry' in Dawn enters on little feet like a gilded Pavlova,
frontiers to discover new formal structures Vorticism, he spoke of its 'inner relation to And I am near my desire.
and perspectives ? Action confronted passi- modern painting and sculpture'.6 By. that or
vity; fresh ideas fought established conven- time he defined the image as 'the poet's Dawn enters on little feet
tions. The thunderous expression of art pigment'. Visual factors in his theory of like a gilded Pavlova,
propaganda announced a way of seeing as if poetry were evident. Was he similarly in- And I am near my desire.