Page 53 - Studio International - July August 1971

Supplement summer 1971 me out of the abstractist cul-de-sac.'3
It dragged him out of his uncompromising
New and recent books position as a leader of Europe's avant-garde,
too, turning him instead into a pathetic victim
of England's congenital leaning towards a
What went wrong ? like The Mud Bath after the war and, like his balance between innovation and tradition.
former compatriots, settled for a compromise Impressive though the occasional thirties
Wyndham Lewis. Paintings and Drawings by
solution that contributed nothing further to the picture may be, its quality has nothing to do
Walter Michel, with an introductory essay by progress of radicalism. with the international vanguard which
Hugh Kenner. 456 pp, 781 illustrations, 16 in So did Lewis, who controverted his Vorticism had helped to develop twenty years
colour. Thames and Hudson. £12.60.
Vorticist ideals so completely that he never before. How could it be otherwise, when Lewis
Wyndham Lewis on Art. Collected writings
again recovered the singleness of purpose which himself freely admitted that 'from 1924
1913-1956 edited and introduced by Walter
had characterized his pre-war experimentation. onwards, writing became so much a major
Michel and C. J. Fox. 48o pp. Thames and
Nothing that Walter Michel has uncovered in interest that I have tended to work at my
Hudson. £3.15.
his exhaustively researched and lavishly painting and drawing in prolonged bursts,
English art is so pitifully short of men who illustrated new survey of Lewis's complete rather than fit them into the intervals of writing
played any meaningful part in the heroic pictorial oeuvre can hide the sad deterioration or planning of books.'4 Such a schizophrenic
formation of modernism that we are tempted, evident in his later work. Michel himself seems approach is hardly calculated to yield
for the sake of national pride, to scrabble to favour the post-Vorticist period most of all, satisfactory results in either sphere, and it could
feverishly around in the subsoil of our past to and devotes a large part of his space to its be claimed that this extraordinary duality split
unearth even one Anglo-Saxon who evinced a celebration. But however diligently his case has Lewis down the middle, preventing him from
genuine awareness of the twentieth-century been mounted, the alarming paucity of Lewis's realizing his massive potential to the fullest
revolution at the time of its inception. The only inspiration in the pictures executed during the extent.
convincing corpse to be resuscitated by such last four decades of his life remains unhappily But the reasons for Lewis's failure cannot be
excavations belongs to Vorticism, which apparent. After the certitude of the Vorticist laid entirely at the door of creative indecision.
recently benefited from a small but superlative crusade, this lapsed revolutionary never again For all his haughtiness he always retained a
retrospective exhibition and emerged with its found himself able to make up his mind and burning desire to be acclaimed as a national
armoured plating shining after years of rusty formulate a consistent programme. genius, and the prolonged dearth of praise only
neglect. Disappointingly literal studies from posed accentuated his manic persecution complex.
Here, miraculously, was a rumbustious models —a mimetic activity which BLAST Just as the vast, ambitious machinery of The
group movement that managed not only to constantly ridiculed—alternate with elaborately Apes of God is devoted to the articulation of a
digest the contemporaneous discoveries constructed portraits like the Edith Sitwell, trivial, malicious, backbiting theme, so a large
initiated by Cubism and Futurism, but also to where half-hearted geometrical stylization portion of his pictorial work was taken up
evolve an independent alternative of its own mingles uneasily with straightforward passages either by the callow swaggering of the Tyros
ordering. The advent of an international conflict of descriptive representation. And even when and their kind, or embarrassing attempts to
fatally disrupted its development at a formative Lewis resolves this clash of idioms in a ingratiate possible patrons with academic
stage, so that the Vorticist achievement remains quasi-Surrealist form of abstraction, the result portrait drawings. Lewis was always in
tantalizingly unfulfilled. But the very brevity is usually vitiated by a lack of conviction, as if desperate need of money, and showed himself
of its existence gives the Great English Vortex the artist himself no longer believed in any of surprisingly willing to indulge in a species of
an access of urgency: the explosive prose in the the styles he successively adopted. Small wonder debased naturalism if the funds were
BLAST manifestos, no less than the frenetic that the occasional drawing which recaptured forthcoming. These depressing excursions into
images which accompanied the text, assume the something of the Vorticists' vitality is invariably a style which he must have known made
reckless proportions of a death-wish. When followed by an unashamedly pot-boiling portrait nonsense of his high ideals left him with little
Lewis advocated the use of 'the most perishable head, a superficial society effigy that remains time for serious painting, and a work like the
colours in painting', explaining that 'we should difficult to square with the image of Lewis as a much-vaunted Surrender of Barcelona suffers
hate other ages, and don't want to fetch misunderstood genius who preferred to starve from a basic lack of resolution about the idiom
£4o,000, like a horse', he highlighted the rather than play to the gallery. to be employed. It hovers in a timid
suicidal impulse built in to the fabric of the And because Michel sees no falling-off in no-man's-land, halfway between description
Vorticist rebellion like a time-bomb.' With his hero's later productions, he makes no serious and abstraction, and represents nothing but a
hindsight, this iconoclasm can be seen to have attempt to answer the one great question posed decline from the tough pictures executed
blown up in the faces of the insurgents by Lewis's artistic career : what went wrong ? during the early period.
themselves; for the Great War was only an Part of the answer must lie in his gradually The same strictures apply to his writings on
outward manifestation of the acute exhaustion awakened bias towards the literary. Although art, which have been collected together by
which their exhibitionism inevitably brought Lewis insisted in BLAST II that 'I am a painter, Michel and C. J. Fox to make a useful
about. and not anything else so much as that', the companion volume. For none of his later
There is a perverse magnificence, then, even composing of his first novel— Tarr—made him criticism equals the brilliant verbal pyrotechnics
in the shortness of the movement's life-span, realize that he was an accomplished writer as of the essays published in BLAST; and the
and its full stature still awaits a sustained well.2 The discovery had a deleterious effect on selection from The Listener reviews, with their
revaluation. Unfortunately, however, it has his art, forcing him both to expend as much quaint commitment to the insular revival of
been regarded with sufficient awe in certain energy on literature as on painting, and also to English Romanticism in the forties, displays
quarters to prompt an excessive respect for its convince himself that Vorticist extremism was little of the insight and aggressive stamina so
leading protagonists. Bomberg, who always incompatible with the conventions of fiction. evident in the Vorticist Manifestos. Lewis
avoided the political implications of the group `It became evident to me at once... that words remains a vital figure in the history of British
but indubitably shared its corporate ideology, and syntax were not susceptible oftransformation art, and these painstakingly assembled books
has recently been elevated to a status which his into abstract terms, to which process the visual are to be warmly welcomed; but his later work is
later work simply does not match. He retreated arts lend themselves quite readily', he significant only because of the singular dearth
from the startling implications of a masterpiece remembered later. Writing—literature—dragged of major talents produced here during this

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