Page 34 - Studio International - December 1969

Kill John Bull Mr d'Offay's unique and carefully chosen Tonks and in the summer of 1913 six of them
exhibition, 'Abstract Art in England, 1913- at least were working at Fry's Omega work-
with art! 1915',1 is of major importance. It is likely to shops designing furniture and textiles; it is
tempting to think that the 'Great English
be the only occasion we shall have to see a
considerable selection of important work from Vortex' was the product of the unlikely
What went wrong? this period. Surprisingly little beyond what is mating of the influences of Tonks and Fry.
assembled in his gallery is known to survive In any case, by 1913 abstract art was being
from this clamorous and heady period in produced, and abstract art which owed noth-
Ralph Rumney English art. Almost without exception the ing to Futurism and Cubism beyond the most
artists involved underwent a radical change casual stylistic influence. By the following
of style in the period immediately following year the words were ready to explain the
the war, and with the dispersal of the John phenomenon.
Quinn collection for derisory prices in 1927, Bomberg, who always carefully maintained
150 of their paintings and drawings disappear- his independence from the Vorticists and who
ed and few have since come to light. had already painted Ju-Jitsu and In the Hold
What is perhaps as surprising as anything (Tate), wrote in the catalogue of his show at
about this work, is the discovery that these the Chenil Galleries in 1914, ' ... I reject
pre-war artists were as closely linked with the everything in painting that is not pure form.'
international avant garde as English artists T. E. Hulme, the critic, writing on Roberts
have ever been, and that not until the late in 1914: 'The interest of the drawing itself
'fifties did English painting recover the sort of depends on the forms it contains. The fact that
international standing that it enjoyed before such forms were suggested by human figures
the unaccountable defection of these artists. is of no importance.'
With the exception of Bomberg they were all Ezra Pound : 'Every statue, every picture, is a
signatories of the Vorticist Manifesto or con- series of ordered relations as the body is con-
tributors to Blast. They were all (except trolled in a dance by the will to express a
Laurence Atkinson who was 38) under thirty single idea.... Art is an adjunct to existence, a
in 1912, and were beginning their careers reproduction of the actual. For indeed, it is
at a moment when a wind of abstraction was not essential that the subject matter should
stirring all over the world and the first art represent or be like anything in nature; only
that was genuinely of this century was being that it must be alive with a rhythmic vitality
produced. Hartley, Dove, Weber and Morgan of its own.'
Russel were active in the States. Robert Wyndham Lewis in the second number of
Delaunay was painting Simultaneous Disc Blast, July 1915: 'Whatever happens a new
(Tremaine Collection), Mondrian was mak- section has already justified its existence...
ing his first abstract drawings, Malevitch's that is, for want of a better word, the
earliest Suprematist Composition (in the Peggy Abstract. ... There should be a bill passed in
Guggenheim collection) is dated 1913, and Parliament at once FORBIDDING ANY IMAGE
Prampolini, Giacomo Balla, Arp, Kupka and OR RECOGNIZABLE SHAPE TO BE STUCK UP IN
Van Doesberg were all producing abstract ANY PUBLIC PLACE....
paintings which can be dated before 1914. And finally from the catalogue of the only
There is little evidence that much of this work Vorticist show in this country at the Dore
had been shown in England, though Allied Gallery in 1915: 'By Vorticism we mean (a)
Artists (a sort of English Salon des Independants) Activity as opposed to the tasteful passivity
had shown Kandinsky in 1909 and 1910, and of Picasso. (b) Significance as opposed to the
Brancusi in 1913. Marinetti had lectured in dull and anecdotal character to which the
London, but he soon found that Lewis was a Naturalist is condemned. (c) Essential Move-
publicist of his own calibre who was unwilling ment and Activity (such as the energy of a
to resign himself to the subaltern role of mind) as opposed to the imitative cinemato-
running the English branch of the Futurist graphy, the fuss and hysterics of the Futurists.'
movement, and so a minor feud developed But most of the literature and history of the
between Futurists and Vorticists. What there movement is familiar; what are not known
was in London, which was undoubtedly essen- are the works. In fact the Vorticists are
tial to the development of the movement, was usually dismissed as a coterie of minor
a last vestige of Edwardian cafe society. The painters functioning under the aegis of
city had a centre and there were places like Wyndham Lewis, who later was to say
the Cafe Royal at which artists met. The `Vorticism is what I did and said at a certain
Vorticists even had their own night-club, the time'. We must be grateful to Mr d'Offay for
`Golden Calf' run by Strindberg's third wife, providing the first opportunity since the period
with walls frescoed by Lewis and columns by to see what remains of these artists' work in a
Epstein. It was here that the Manifesto of setting which does not subordinate them un-
Rebel Art was read `to the sound of carefully duly to the 'Old Man of Notting Hill'.
chosen trumpets'. But this feed-back of fre- What emerges perhaps more than anything
quent meeting and discussion is not in itself else from this show is the virility and vigour
enough to explain the group. Roberts, of the work of even the most obscure painters
Bomberg, Wadsworth, Lewis, Saunders and who were previously little more than names
Hamilton had all been at the Slade under under smudgy blocks in Blast. There is a