Vorticism was a short lived
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
art movementAn art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within usually a number of years.-The concept:...
of the early 20th century. It is considered to be the only significant British movement of the early 20th century but lasted fewer than three years.
Origins
The Vorticism group began with the Rebel Art Centre which
Wyndham LewisPercy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
and others established after disagreeing with
Omega WorkshopsThe Omega Workshops was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury group and established in 1913. It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square in London.-Beginnings:...
founder
Roger FryRoger Eliot Fry was an English artist and an art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury group. Despite establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, as he matured as a critic he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name...
, and has roots in the
Bloomsbury GroupThe Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half of the...
,
CubismCubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as "Analytic Cubism", was both radical and influential as...
, and
FuturismFuturism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in Russia, England and elsewhere...
. Lewis himself, saw Vorticism as an independent alternative to Cubism, Futurism and
ExpressionismExpressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as naturalism and impressionism. It sought to express the meaning of "being alive" and emotional experience rather than physical reality...
.
Though the style grew out of
CubismCubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as "Analytic Cubism", was both radical and influential as...
, it is more closely related to
FuturismFuturism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in Russia, England and elsewhere...
in its embrace of dynamism, the machine age and all things modern (cf.
Cubo-FuturismCubo-Futurism was the main school of painting practiced by the Russian Futurists. When Aristarkh Lentulov returned from Paris in 1913 and exhibited his works in Moscow, the Russian Futurist painters adopted the forms of Cubism and combined them with the Italian Futurists' representation of movement...
). 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 viewer's eye into the centre of the canvas.
The name Vorticism was given to the movement by
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
in 1913, although Lewis, usually seen as the central figure in the movement, had been producing paintings in the same style for a year or so previously.
Participants
Other than Lewis, the main figures associated with Vorticism were
Malcolm ArbuthnotMalcolm Arbuthnot was a pictorialist photographer and artist.In 1907 he joined the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, an organisation founded in 1892 by Alfred Maskell and others dissatisfied with the ethos of the Royal Photographic Society exhibitions, with the aim to promote naturalistic and...
,
Lawrence AtkinsonLawrence Atkinson was an English artist, musician and poet. He began by moving to Paris and studying musical composition, but moved back to London and began to paint, apparently painting mainly landscapes in a style influenced by Matisse and the Fauves...
,
David BombergDavid Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.The most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists that studied under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art, Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and...
,
Alvin Langdon CoburnAlvin Langdon Coburn was an early 20th century photographer who became a key figure in the development of American pictorialism. He became the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints and later made some of the first completely abstract...
,
Jacob EpsteinSir Jacob Epstein was an American-born British sculptor who worked chiefly in the UK, where he pioneered modern sculpture, often producing controversial works that challenged taboos concerning what public artworks appropriately depict...
,
Frederick EtchellsFrederick Etchells was an English artist.- Biography :Frederick Etchells early education was through William Lethaby at the London School of Kensington, now known as The Royal College of Art, which brought him into contact with the Bloomsbury GroupHe was a contributor to the Omega Workshops, but...
,
Henri Gaudier-BrzeskaHenri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
,
Cuthbert HamiltonCuthbert Hamilton was a British artist associated with the Vorticist movement and later with Group X. He was one of the pioneers of abstract art in Britain.Cuthbert Hamilton went to the Slade School of Art and was a contemporary of Wyndham Lewis...
, Christopher Nevinson,
William RobertsWilliam Roberts was an English painter and war artist.- Biography :The son of a carpenter, Roberts was born in Hackney, London. In 1909 he took up an apprenticeship with the advertising firm of Sir Joseph Causton Ltd, intending to become a poster designer, and he attended evening classes at St...
, and
Edward WadsworthEdward Alexander Wadsworth was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism and copying Picasso.-Biography:-Early life:...
.
Jessica DismorrJessica Dismorr , was an English painter and illustrator and one of only two women members of the Vorticist movement.-Early life:Dismorr was born at Gravesend, England, and moved with her family to Hampstead in the 1890s...
,
Helen SaundersHelen Saunders was an English painter.Helen Saunders was born in Bedford Park, Ealing....
, and
Dorothy ShakespearDorothy Shakespear was an English artist, the daughter of Olivia Shakespear and the wife of the poet Ezra Pound....
are female artists associated with the movement, though it has been argued that due to the inherent sexism of the art world at the time, they have not received the same critical due as their male counterparts.
BLAST
The Vorticists published two issues of the
literary magazineA literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
BLAST, in June 1914 and July 1915 which Lewis edited. It contained work by
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
and
T. S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot, OM , was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are The Love Song of J...
as well as by the Vorticists themselves. Its
typographicalTypography is the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques...
adventurousness was cited by
El Lissitzky, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...
as one of the major forerunners of the revolution in
graphic designThe term graphic design can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Various methods are used to create and combine symbols, images and/or words to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may...
in the 1920s and 1930s.
Demise and legacy
The Vorticists held only one exhibition, in 1915 at the Doré Gallery, in London. 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!'.
After this, the movement broke up, largely due to the onset of
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
and public apathy towards the work. Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in military service, while leading figures 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.
While Lewis is generally seen as the central figure 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. A 1956 exhibition at the
Tate GalleryThe Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
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) 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."
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