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84-529: Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited BLAST , the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include Tarr (1916–17) and The Human Age trilogy, composed of The Childermass (1928), Monstre Gai (1955) and Malign Fiesta (1955). A fourth volume, titled The Trial of Man ,

168-493: A Londra e New York, 1914–1918") and then to Tate Britain under the title "The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World" between 14 June and 4 September 2011. Several readings by Lewis are collected on The Enemy Speaks , an audiobook CD published in 2007 and featuring extracts from "One Way Song" and The Apes of God , as well as radio talks titled "When John Bull Laughs" (1938), "A Crisis of Thought" (1947) and "The Essential Purposes of Art" (1951). A blue plaque now stands on

252-476: A collection of allegorical short stories about his life in "the capital of a dying empire"; The Writer and the Absolute (1952), a book of essays on writers including George Orwell , Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux ; and the semi-autobiographical novel Self Condemned (1954). The BBC commissioned Lewis to complete his 1928 work The Childermass , which was published as The Human Age and dramatized for

336-555: A critical edition of the 1928 text of Tarr , edited by Scott W. Klein of Wake Forest University . The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University held an exhibition entitled " The Vorticists : Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18" from 30 September 2010 through 2 January 2011. The exhibition then travelled to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (29 January – 15 May 2011: "I Vorticisti: Artisti ribellia

420-468: A defence of Lewis's satirical practice in The Apes of God and puts forward a theory of "non-moral", or metaphysical, satire. The book is probably best remembered for one of the first commentaries on Faulkner and a famous essay on Hemingway . After becoming better known for his writing than his painting in the 1920s and early 1930s, he returned to more concentrated work on visual art, and paintings from

504-511: A drop curtain, and more designs for The Cave of the Golden Calf , an avant-garde cabaret and nightclub on Heddon Street . From 1913 to 1915, Lewis developed the style of geometric abstraction for which he is best known today, which his friend Ezra Pound dubbed " Vorticism ". Lewis sought to combine the strong structure of Cubism , which he found was not "alive", with the liveliness of Futurist art, which lacked structure. The combination

588-536: A familiar – and provocative – presence in London since 1910, and Lewis had seen him create an art movement on the basis of his 'Futurist' manifesto. It seemed as if everything novel or shocking in London was now being described as 'Futurist' – including the work of the English Cubists. When Marinetti and the English Futurist C. R. W. Nevinson published a manifesto of 'Vital English Art', giving

672-530: A key location in the First Battle of Ypres and now a well-studied historical reserve at which artefacts were found. Using Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS), remote sensing and aerial photographs, more recent research and archaeological work have provided insight into the landscape, battle zones and tactics employed in the Ypres Salient. Analysis of craters at

756-613: A quarrel with Fry over a commission to provide wall decorations for the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition , which Lewis believed Fry had misappropriated. He and several other Omega artists started a competing workshop called the Rebel Art Centre . The Centre operated for only four months, but it gave birth to the Vorticist group and its publication, BLAST . In BLAST, Lewis formally expounded

840-538: A rival organisation. Financed by Lewis's painter friend Kate Lechmere , the Rebel Art Centre was established in March 1914 at 38 Great Ormond Street. It was to be a platform for the art and ideas of Lewis's circle, and a lecture series included talks by Lewis's friend the poet Ezra Pound , the novelist Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford Madox Ford ) and the Italian 'Futurist', Filippo Tommaso Marinetti . Marinetti had been

924-565: A second visit to Germany in 1937, Lewis changed his views and began to retract his previous political comments. He recognized the reality of Nazi treatment of Jews after a visit to Berlin in 1937. In 1939, he published an attack on anti-semitism titled The Jews, Are They Human? , which was favourably reviewed in The Jewish Chronicle . He also published The Hitler Cult (1939), which firmly revoked his earlier support for Hitler. Politically, Lewis remained an isolated figure through

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1008-417: A sort of literary vitamin, which exists even in a book like [1921 melodrama] If Winter Comes , is absent from them." In 1932, Walter Sickert sent Lewis a telegram in which he said that Lewis's pencil portrait of Rebecca West proved him to be "the greatest portraitist of this or any other time." For many years, Lewis's novels have been criticised for their satirical and hostile portrayals of Jews. Tarr

1092-598: A successful New York lawyer and art collector, John Quinn . Relying on Pound's recommendations, a New York Vorticist exhibition was built around forty-six works by Lewis – some already in Quinn's collection – with additional work by Etchells, Roberts, Dismorr, Saunders and Wadsworth. The exhibition was to be at an artist-run establishment, the Penguin Club in New York. Pound arranged for the transportation of works across

1176-633: A ‘Vorticist Exhibition’ went ahead at the Doré Galleries in New Bond Street the following year. The forty-nine ‘Vorticist’ works by Dismorr, Etchells, Gaudier-Brzeska, Lewis, Roberts, Saunders and Wadsworth showed a commitment to hard-edged, highly coloured, near-abstract work. Perhaps by way of contrast (or comparison), Lewis also invited other artists including Bomberg and Nevinson to participate. A catalogue foreword by Lewis clarified that ‘by Vorticism we mean (a) ACTIVITY as opposed to

1260-408: Is formed by our vortex in the existing chaos.' Lewis saw the potential of 'Vorticism' as an exciting rallying call that was also sufficiently vague, he hoped, to embrace the individualism of the rebel artists. Lewis's Vorticist manifesto was to be published in a new literary and art journal, BLAST – ironically, the journal's title had been suggested by Nevinson, who was now persona non grata since

1344-578: Is particularly noticeable at Wytschaete, which runs 2 mi (3.2 km) south-east to Messines ( Mesen ), with a gentle slope to the east and a 1:10 decline to the west. Further south is the muddy valley of the Douve river, Ploegsteert Wood ("Plugstreet" to the British) and Hill 63. West of Messines Ridge is the parallel Wulverghem ( Spanbroekmolen ) Spur; the Oosttaverne Spur, also parallel,

1428-430: Is said to have shown little affection for them. In 1930, Lewis married Gladys Anne Hoskins (1900–1979), who was affectionately known as Froanna. They lived together for 10 years before marrying and never had children. Lewis kept Froanna in the background, and many of his friends were unaware of her existence. It seems that Lewis was extraordinarily jealous and protective of his wife, owing to her youth and beauty. Froanna

1512-409: Is that Lewis is held to have kept his conspiracy theories hidden and marginalized. Since the publication of Anthony Julius 's T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form (1995), where Lewis's anti-semitism is described as "essentially trivial", this view is no longer taken seriously. Vorticist Vorticist paintings emphasised 'modern life' as an array of bold lines and harsh colours drawing

1596-457: Is to the east. The general aspect south of Ypres is of low ridges and dips, gradually flattening to the north into a featureless plain. In 1914, Ypres had 2,354 houses and 16,700 inhabitants inside medieval earth ramparts faced with brick and a ditch on the east and south sides. Possession of the higher ground to the south and east of the city gives ample scope for ground observation, enfilade fire and converging artillery fire. An occupier of

1680-513: Is widely regarded as one of the key texts in literary modernism . Lewis later documented his experiences and opinions of this period of his life in the autobiographical Blasting and Bombardiering (1937), which covered the time up to 1926. After the war, Lewis resumed his career as a painter with a major exhibition, Tyros and Portraits , at the Leicester Galleries in 1921. "Tyros" were satirical caricatures intended to comment on

1764-468: The Allied units were forced to draw back from Zonnebeke and St Julien to a line of trenches closer to Ypres as German troops held the village of Hooge on Bellewaerde Ridge. This line defined the Ypres Salient for over two years, during which Hooge lay in one of the easternmost sectors of the salient and was much contested. This situation changed little, despite extensive British tunnelling prior to

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1848-584: The BBC Third Programme in 1955. In 1956, the Tate Gallery held a major exhibition of his work, "Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism", in the catalogue to which he declared that "Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did and said at a certain period"—a statement which brought forth a series of "Vortex Pamphlets" from his fellow BLAST signatory William Roberts . From 1918 to 1921, Lewis lived with Iris Barry , with whom he had two children. He

1932-746: The Battle of Messines in June 1917 and the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) from July to November. During these battles, tactics shifted from offensive tunnelling to maintaining shelters and constructing dugouts. After the Third Battle of Ypres , the Ypres Salient was left relatively quiet until the Fourth Battle of Ypres ( Battle of the Lys ), when the German spring offensive threatened to overwhelm

2016-671: The Spanish Civil War and regarded by many as his best novel. It is strongly critical of communist activity in Spain and presents English intellectual fellow travellers as deluded. Despite serious illness necessitating several operations, he was very productive as a critic and painter. He produced a book of poems, One-Way Song , in 1933, and a revised version of Enemy of the Stars . An important book of critical essays also belongs to this period: Men without Art (1934). It grew out of

2100-674: The 'Vital English Art' manifesto. The French sculptor, painter and anarchist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska had met Ezra Pound in July 1913, and their ideas on 'The New Sculpture' developed into a theory of Vorticist sculpture. Two artists, Helen Saunders and Jessica Dismorr , who had turned to 'cubist works' in 1913, joined the rebels – and, although they were not regarded highly by the men, Brigid Peppin argues that Saunders's 'juxtapositions of strong and unexpected colour' may have influenced Lewis's later use of forceful colour. Another up-and-coming 'English Cubist' using bold, discordant colour combinations

2184-461: The 'Vorticist' group – Dismorr, Etchells, Hamilton, Lewis, Roberts and Wadsworth – and they were joined by the sculptor Frank Dobson (sculptor) , the painter Charles Ginner , the American graphic designer Edward McKnight Kauffer , and the painter John Turnbull. The exhibition was mainly seen as a failure to 'rekindle a flame of adventure'. The disruption of war and the subsequent mobilisation of

2268-435: The 158 pages of the first issue and with simple black-and-white ‘line block’ illustrations. However, compared with BLAST No. 1, that did have the advantage of providing ‘a cohesive Vorticist aesthetic’. Jessica Dismorr and Dorothy Shakespear (Ezra Pound's wife) joined a slightly broader range of artists that also included Jacob Kramer and Nevinson. Lewis's rhetoric was more cautious this time – trying to avoid being seen by

2352-529: The 1930s and 1940s constitute some of his best-known work. The Surrender of Barcelona (1936–37) makes a significant statement about the Spanish Civil War . It was included in an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1937 that Lewis hoped would re-establish his reputation as a painter. After the publication in The Times of a letter of support for the exhibition, asking that something from

2436-818: The 1930s. In Letter to Lord Byron , W. H. Auden called Lewis "that lonely old volcano of the Right." Lewis thought there was what he called a "left-wing orthodoxy" in Britain in the 1930s. He believed it was against Britain's self-interest to ally with the Soviet Union , "which the newspapers most of us read tell us has slaughtered out-of-hand, only a few years ago, millions of its better fed citizens, as well as its whole imperial family." In Anglosaxony: A League that Works (1941), Lewis reflected on his earlier support for fascism: Fascism – once I understood it – left me colder than communism. The latter at least pretended, at

2520-533: The 50th anniversary of his death. The National Portrait Gallery in London held a major retrospective of his portraits in 2008. Two years later, held at the Fundación Juan March (Madrid, Spain), a large exhibition ( Wyndham Lewis 1882–1957 ) featured a comprehensive collection of Lewis's paintings and drawings. As Tom Lubbock pointed out, it was "the retrospective that Britain has never managed to get together.". In 2010, Oxford World Classics published

2604-524: The Allied Artists' Salon the previous year with a huge virtually abstract work, Kermesse (now lost), and in the same year he had worked with the American sculptor Jacob Epstein on the decoration of Madame Strindberg 's notorious cabaret theatre club The Cave of the Golden Calf . Lewis and his Omega Workshop colleagues Etchells, Hamilton and Wadsworth exhibited together later in the year at Brighton with Epstein and David Bomberg . Lewis curated

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2688-468: The Atlantic, and Quinn took on the entire exhibition costs. Quinn had already selected works that he was interested in buying, but after the exhibition, as no works had sold, he eventually purchased most of the larger items. There was almost no opportunity for the rebel artists to work creatively while on active service. However, Wadsworth, unexpectedly, was able to pursue his artistic interests through

2772-507: The British and French defending Ypres and the corner of Belgium around Veurne from German occupation but escalating trench warfare in the salient. Both sides vied for control of tactically important areas along the line. Obtaining control of the few hills and ridges became the objective of this battle in which poisonous gas as a weapon was first deployed and the widespread destruction and evacuation of Ypres came about. During this battle,

2856-522: The Canadian war experience for a projected memorial hall in Ottawa. The artists were warned that only 'representative' work would be acceptable, and indeed Bomberg's first version of his Sappers at Work was rejected as being 'too cubist'. Despite these restrictions, the extraordinary canvases feel uncompromisingly modernist, and certainly drew from pre-war avant-garde practices. In the post-war years it

2940-515: The Future!: Vorticism in Britain 1910–1920' explored the links between Vorticism and Futurism, and a major exhibition 'The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World' in 2010–11 brought Vorticist work to Italy for the first time and to America for the first time since 1917, as well as appearing in London. The curators, Mark Antliff and Vivien Greene, had also traced some previously lost works (such as three paintings by Helen Saunders) that were included in

3024-672: The Hayward Gallery, London, went further in painstakingly bringing together paintings, drawings, sculpture (including a reconstruction of Epstein's Rock Drill 1913–15), Omega Workshop artefacts, photographs, journals, catalogues, letters and cartoons. Cork also included twenty-five 'Vortographs' from 1917 by the photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn that had been first displayed at the Camera Club in London in 1918. More recently, in 2004 in London and Manchester, 'Blasting

3108-556: The Rebel Art Centre as an address, it seemed like an attempted takeover. A few weeks later, Lewis took out an advertisement in The Spectator to announce the publication of 'The Manifesto of the Vorticists' – an English abstract art movement that was a 'parallel movement to Cubism and Expressionism ' and would, the advertisement promised, be a 'Death Blow to Impressionism and Futurism '. Ezra Pound had introduced

3192-520: The United States and Canada. In 1941, in Toronto, he produced a series of watercolour fantasies centred on themes of creation, crucifixion and bathing. He grew to appreciate the cosmopolitan and "rootless" nature of the American melting pot, declaring that the greatest advantage of being American was to have "turned one's back on race, caste, and all that pertains to the rooted state." He praised

3276-429: The Vorticist aesthetic in a manifesto, distinguishing it from other avant-garde practices. He also wrote and published a play, Enemy of the Stars . It is a proto-absurdist, Expressionist drama. Lewis scholar Melania Terrazas identifies it as a precursor to the plays of Samuel Beckett . In 1915, the Vorticists held their only U.K. exhibition before the movement broke up, largely as a result of World War I. Lewis himself

3360-497: The Vorticist group broke up after the war, Lewis's patron, John Quinn , organized a Vorticist exhibition at the Penguin Club in New York in 1917. Between the years 1907–11 Lewis had written what would be his first published novel, Tarr , which was revised and expanded in 1914–15 and serialized in the London literary magazine The Egoist from April 1916 until November 1917. It was first published in book form in 1918 by Alfred A. Knopf in New York and by The Egoist in London. It

3444-532: The West, and therefore became a vehicle for these pernicious ideologies. His major theoretical and cultural statement from this period is The Art of Being Ruled (1926). Time and Western Man (1927) is a cultural and philosophical discussion that includes penetrating critiques of James Joyce , Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound that are still read. Lewis also attacked the process philosophy of Bergson, Samuel Alexander , Alfred North Whitehead , and others. By 1931 he

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3528-471: The Ypres–Menin road at Hooge, the elevation is about 100 ft (30 m) and 70 ft (21 m) at Passchendaele. The rises are slight, apart from the vicinity of Zonnebeke , which has a 1:33 gradient. From Hooge and to the east, the slope is 1:60 and near Hollebeke, it is 1:75; the heights are subtle but have the character of a saucer lip around Ypres. The main ridge has spurs sloping east and one

3612-780: The area. This offensive was stopped at the point the Allies were closest to being forced to abandon the salient. By August 1918, the Fifth Battle of Ypres (part of the Hundred Days Offensive ) pushed the German forces out of the salient entirely and they did not return. In the aftermath of trench warfare, mine explosions, extensive tunnelling, craters and archaeological landmarks remain. Although many craters have been covered, built over, destroyed, or remodelled, some are still visible and can be preserved, such as The Bluff,

3696-579: The artists contributed to a situation whereby many of the larger Vorticist paintings were lost. An anecdote recorded by Brigid Peppin relates how Helen Saunders's sister used a Vorticist oil to cover her larder floor and '[it was] worn to destruction' – an extreme example of how the paintings were not appreciated. When John Quinn died, in 1927, his collection of Vorticist works was auctioned and dissipated to now untraceable purchasers, presumably in America. Writing in 1974, Richard Cork noted that 'thirty-eight of

3780-414: The concept of 'the vortex' in relation to modernist poetry and art early on in 1914. At its most obvious, for example, London could be seen to be a 'vortex' of intellectual and artistic activity. However, for Pound there was a more specific – if obscure – meaning: '[The vortex was] that point in the cyclone where energy cuts into space and imparts form to it ... the pattern of angles and geometric lines which

3864-739: The contributions of African-Americans to American culture, and regarded Diego Rivera , David Alfaro Siqueiros , and José Clemente Orozco as the "best North American artists," predicting that when "the Indian culture of Mexico melts into the great American mass to the North, the Indian will probably give it its art." He returned to England in 1945. By 1951, he was completely blinded by a pituitary tumor that placed pressure on his optic nerve. It ended his artistic career, but he continued writing until his death. He published several autobiographical and critical works: Rude Assignment (1950), Rotting Hill (1951),

3948-524: The culture of the "new epoch" that succeeded the First World War. A Reading of Ovid and Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro are the only surviving oil paintings from this series. Lewis also launched his second magazine, The Tyro , of which there were only two issues. The second (1922) contained an important statement of Lewis's visual aesthetic: "Essay on the Objective of Plastic Art in our Time". It

4032-405: The east of Verbrandenmolen, Hooge , Polygon Wood and Passchendaele ( Passendale ). The high point of the ridge is at Wytschaete, 7,000 yd (4.0 mi; 6.4 km) from Ypres, while at Hollebeke the ridge is 4,000 yd (2.3 mi; 3.7 km) distant and recedes to 7,000 yd (4.0 mi; 6.4 km) at Polygon Wood. Wytschaete is about 150 ft (46 m) above the plain; on

4116-489: The exhibition's 'Cubist Room' and provided a written introduction in which he attempted to cohere the various strands of abstraction on display: 'These painters are not accidently [ sic ? ] associated here, but form a vertiginous, but not exotic, island in the placid and respectable archipelago of English Art.' A quarrel with Roger Fry provided Lewis with a pretext to leave the Omega Workshops and set up

4200-665: The exhibition. Ypres Salient The Ypres Salient , around Ypres , in Belgium , was the scene of several battles and a major part of the Western Front during World War I . Ypres lies at the junction of the Ypres–Comines Canal and the Ieperlee . The city is overlooked by Kemmel Hill in the south-west and from the east by low hills running south-west to north-east with Wytschaete ( Wijtschate ), Hill 60 to

4284-742: The first issue of BLAST: The Review of the Great English Vortex , published in July 1914. BLAST was launched at a 'riotous celebratory dinner' at the Dieudonné Hotel in the St James's area of London on 15 July 1914. The magazine was mainly the work of Lewis, but also included extensive written pieces by Ford Madox Hueffer and Rebecca West , as well as poetry by Pound, articles by Gaudier-Brzeska and Wadsworth, and reproductions of paintings by Lewis, Wadsworth, Etchells, Roberts, Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska and Hamilton. The manifesto

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4368-477: The five 'Vorticist Pamphlets' that he published between 1956 and 1958 was hampered by the absence of key works, but led to other self-published books by Roberts which included early studies of his abstract work. A broader survey was provided by the d'Offay Couper Gallery's 'Abstract Art in England 1913–1914' exhibition in 1969. Five years later, the exhibition 'Vorticism and Its Allies' curated by Richard Cork at

4452-443: The forty-nine works displayed by the full members of the movement at the 1915 Vorticist Exhibition are now missing.' Despite a resurgence of abstract art in Britain in the middle years of the twentieth century, the contribution of Vorticism was largely forgotten until a spat between John Rothenstein of the Tate Gallery and William Roberts blew up in the press. Rothenstein's 1956 Tate Gallery exhibition 'Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism'

4536-800: The front lines, relay messages, and launch offensive attacks on their enemies. By 29 December 1914, German troops dug in on higher ground to the east of Ypres and consequently, the Ypres Salient was formed by British , French , Canadian and Belgian defensive efforts against German incursion during the 1914 Race to the Sea . This culminated in the Battle of the Yser and the First Battle of Ypres , which lasted until 22 November. German and British units conducted operations, made advancements, captured territory and attacked using mines and underground warfare at locations like Broodseinde and Sint Elooi . The Second Battle of Ypres occurred from 22 April to 25 May 1915,

4620-497: The house in Kensington , London, where Lewis lived, No. 61 Palace Gardens Terrace. In his essay " Good Bad Books ", George Orwell presents Lewis as the exemplary writer who is cerebral without being artistic. Orwell wrote, "Enough talent to set up dozens of ordinary writers has been poured into Wyndham Lewis's so-called novels… Yet it would be a very heavy labour to read one of these books right through. Some indefinable quality,

4704-628: The left and right. In America and Cosmic Man (1949), Lewis argued that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had successfully managed to reconcile individual rights with the demands of the state. In recent years, there has been renewed critical and biographical interest in Lewis and his work, and he is now regarded as a major British artist and writer of the twentieth century. Rugby School hosted an exhibition of his works in November 2007 to commemorate

4788-482: The main ones from Ypres, with occasional villages and houses. The lowlands west of the ridge were a mixture of meadow and fields with high hedgerows dotted with trees, cut by streams and ditches emptying into the canals. The Ypres–Comines Canal is about 18 ft (5.5 m) wide and the Yperlee about 36 ft (11 m); the main road to Ypres between Poperinge and Vlamertinge is in a defile, easily observed from

4872-506: The readership as unpatriotic. Understandably, he tried to strike an optimist tone with regard to the future of Vorticism and BLAST ; however, within a year most of the artists had enlisted or volunteered in the armed forces: Lewis – Royal Garrison Artillery; Roberts – Royal Field Artillery; Wadsworth – British Naval Intelligence; Bomberg – Royal Engineers; Dismorr – Voluntary Air Detachment; and Saunders – government office work. Ezra Pound had been championing Wyndham Lewis's work from 1915 with

4956-444: The ridge. A salient in military terms is a battlefield feature that projects into an opponent's territory and is surrounded on three sides, making the occupying troops vulnerable. Throughout World War I along the Western Front , troops engaged in mine warfare, using tunnelling and trench strategies without coordinating their attacks with one another. Soldiers used tunnels and dugouts to shelter themselves, make their way safely to

5040-508: The ridges also has the advantage that artillery positions and the movement of reinforcements and supplies can be screened from view. The ridge had woods from Wytschaete to Zonnebeke, giving good cover, some of notable size such as Polygon Wood and those later named Battle Wood, Shrewsbury Forest and Sanctuary Wood . The woods usually had undergrowth but fields in gaps between the woods were 800–1,000 yd (730–910 m) wide and devoid of cover. Roads in this area were usually unpaved, except for

5124-434: The show be purchased for the national collection (signed by, among others, Stephen Spender , W. H. Auden , Geoffrey Grigson , Rebecca West , Naomi Mitchison , Henry Moore and Eric Gill ) the Tate Gallery bought the painting, Red Scene . Like others from the exhibition, it shows an influence from Surrealism and de Chirico 's Metaphysical Painting . Lewis was highly critical of the ideology of Surrealism, but admired

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5208-503: The start, to have something to do with helping the helpless and making the world a more decent and sensible place. It does start from the human being and his suffering. Whereas fascism glorifies bloodshed and preaches that man should model himself upon the wolf. His sense that America and Canada lacked a British-type class structure had increased his opinion of liberal democracy, and in the same pamphlet, Lewis defends liberal democracy's respect for individual freedom against its critics on both

5292-501: The supervision of the dazzle camouflage being applied to over two thousand ships, largely at Bristol and Liverpool. Towards the end of the war the journalist Paul Konody , now art adviser to the Canadian War Memorials Fund (and someone who had been blatantly anti-Vorticism), commissioned Lewis, Wadsworth, Nevinson, Bomberg, Roberts, Paul Nash and Bomberg to produce monumental canvases on subjects relating to

5376-586: The tasteful PASSIVITY of Picasso (b) SIGNIFICANCE as opposed to the dull anecdotal character to which the Naturalist is condemned (c) ESSENTIAL MOVEMENT and ACTIVITY (such as the energy of the mind) as opposed to the imitative cinematography, the fuss and hysterics of the Futurists.’ The exhibition was largely ignored by the press, and the reviews that did appear were damning. Just before the exhibition opening, news reached London of Gaudier-Brzeska's death in

5460-555: The trenches in France. A ‘Notice to Public’ in the second number of BLAST explained that the publication had been delayed ‘due to the War chiefly’ and to ‘the illness of the Editor at the time it should have appeared and before’, and the delay allowed the last-minute inclusion of a tribute to the artist. Compared with BLAST No. 1 this was a scaled-back production – 102 pages, rather than

5544-635: The viewer's eye into the centre of the canvas and vorticist sculpture created energy and intensity through 'direct carving'. In the summer of 1913 Roger Fry, with Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell , set up the Omega Workshops in Fitzrovia – in the heart of bohemian London. Fry was an advocate of an increasingly abstract art and design practice, and the studio/gallery/retail outlet allowed him to employ and support artists in sympathy with this approach, such as Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells , Cuthbert Hamilton and Edward Wadsworth . Lewis had made an impact at

5628-506: The visual qualities of some Surrealist art. During this period, Lewis also produced many of his most well-known portraits, including pictures of Edith Sitwell ( 1923–1936 ), T. S. Eliot ( 1938 and 1949), and Ezra Pound ( 1939 ). His 1938 portrait of Eliot was rejected by the selection committee of the Royal Academy for their annual exhibition and caused a furore. Augustus John resigned in protest. Lewis spent World War II in

5712-399: Was William Roberts . Writing much later, he recalled Lewis borrowing two paintings – Religion and Dancers – to hang at the Rebel Art Centre. Although the Rebel Art Centre was short-lived, 'Vorticism' was given assured longevity through the dazzling typography and the audacious (and humorous) 'blasting' and 'blessing' of myriad sacred cows of English and American culture that appeared in

5796-543: Was a founding member of the Camden Town Group , which brought him into close contact with the Bloomsbury Group , particularly Roger Fry and Clive Bell , with whom he soon fell out. In 1912, Lewis exhibited his work at the second Postimpressionist exhibition: Cubo-Futurist illustrations to Timon of Athens and three major oil paintings. In 1912, he was commissioned to produce a decorative mural,

5880-427: Was a strikingly dramatic critique of modernity. In his early visual works, Lewis may have been influenced by Bergson's process philosophy . Though he was later savagely critical of Bergson, he admitted in a letter to Theodore Weiss (19 April 1949) that he "began by embracing his evolutionary system." Nietzsche was an equally important influence. Lewis had a brief tenure at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops , but left after

5964-439: Was actually a Lewis retrospective with very few Vorticist works. And the inclusion of work by Bomberg, Roberts, Wadsworth, Nevinson, Dobson, Kramer under the heading 'Other Vorticists' – together with Lewis's assertion that 'Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did, and said, at a certain period' – incensed Roberts as it seemed that he and the others were being set up to be mere disciples of Lewis. The case made by Roberts in

6048-472: Was advocating the art of ancient Egypt as impossible to surpass. In 1930 Lewis published The Apes of God , a biting satirical attack on the London literary scene, including a long chapter caricaturing the Sitwell family. Richard Aldington , however, found it "the greatest piece of writing since Ulysses ", by James Joyce . In 1937 Lewis published The Revenge for Love , set in the period leading up to

6132-401: Was apparently 'signed' by eleven signatories. Lewis, Pound and Gaudier-Brzeska were at the intellectual heart of the project, but Roberts's later comments suggest that most of the group were not made aware of the manifesto's contents before publication. Jacob Epstein was presumably too established to be co-opted as a signatory, and David Bomberg had threatened Lewis with legal action if his work

6216-476: Was appointed an official war artist for both the Canadian and British governments. For the Canadians, he painted A Canadian Gun-pit (1918) from sketches made on Vimy Ridge . For the British, he painted one of his best-known works, A Battery Shelled (1919), drawing on his own experience at Ypres. Lewis exhibited his war drawings and some other paintings of the war in an exhibition, "Guns", in 1918. Although

6300-414: Was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium . By the time of his death, Lewis had written 40 books in all. In 1931, after a visit to Berlin, Lewis published Hitler (1931), a book presenting Adolf Hitler as a "man of peace", with members of his party being threatened by communist street violence. His unpopularity among liberals and anti-fascists grew, especially after Hitler came to power in 1933. Following

6384-486: Was difficult for artists to receive patronage and to secure sales. Nevertheless, Lewis, Wadsworth, Roberts and Atkinson all had one-man shows by the early 1920s – each artist navigating his own path between modernism and potentially more saleable recognisable subjects. Lewis organised one more group show, in 1920 at the Mansard Gallery, bringing together ten artists under the banner ' Group X '. Now, however, there

6468-576: Was during the early 1920s that he perfected his incisive draughtsmanship. By the late 1920s, he concentrated on writing. He launched yet another magazine, The Enemy (1927–1929), largely written by himself and declaring its belligerent critical stance in its title. The magazine and other theoretical and critical works he published from 1926 to 1929 mark a deliberate separation from the avant-garde and his previous associates. He believed that their work failed to show sufficient critical awareness of those ideologies that worked against truly revolutionary change in

6552-763: Was educated in England at Rugby School and then, from 16, the Slade School of Fine Art , University College London , but left for Paris without finishing his course. He spent most of the 1900s travelling around Europe and studying art in Paris. While in Paris, he attended lectures by Henri Bergson on process philosophy . In 1908, Lewis moved to London, where he would reside for much of his life. In 1909, he published his first work, accounts of his travels in Brittany, in Ford Madox Ford 's The English Review . He

6636-466: Was little attempt to unify the artists's contributions beyond Lewis's belief that 'the experiments [by artists] undertaken all over Europe during the last ten years should .... not be lightly abandoned.' The diversity of styles on display, for example, included four self-portraits by Lewis, while Roberts exhibited four quite radical works in his evolving 'Cubist' style. Six of the Group X artists had been in

6720-539: Was patient and caring toward her husband through financial troubles and his frequent illnesses. She was the model for some of Lewis's more tender and intimate portraits as well as a number of characters in his fiction. In contrast to his earlier, impersonal portraits, which are purely concerned with external appearance, the portraits of Froanna show a preoccupation with her inner life. Always interested in Roman Catholicism, he never converted. He died in 1957 and

6804-618: Was posted to the western front and served as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. Much of his time was spent in Forward Observation Posts looking down at apparently deserted German lines, registering targets and calling down fire from batteries massed around the rim of the Ypres Salient . He made vivid accounts of narrow misses and deadly artillery duels. After the Third Battle of Ypres , Lewis

6888-624: Was reproduced in BLAST and made his independence very clear through a one-man show at the Chenil Galleries , also in July, where his large abstract painting Mud Bath was prominently displayed outside above the entrance. The publication of BLAST could not have come at a worse time, as in August 1914 Britain declared war on Germany. There would be little appetite for avant-garde art at this time of national and international crisis; however,

6972-545: Was revised and republished in 1928, giving a new Jewish character a key role in making sure a duel is fought. This has been interpreted as an allegorical representation of a supposed Zionist conspiracy against the West . His literary satire The Apes of God has been interpreted similarly, because many of the characters are Jewish, including the modernist author and editor Julius Ratner, a portrait which blends anti-semitic stereotype with historical literary figures John Rodker and James Joyce. A key feature of these interpretations

7056-473: Was unfinished at the time of his death. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes: Blasting and Bombardiering (1937) and Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date (1950). Lewis was born on 18 November 1882, reputedly on his father's yacht off the Canadian province of Nova Scotia . His English mother, Anne Stuart Lewis (née Prickett), and American father, Charles Edward Lewis, separated about 1893. His mother subsequently returned to England. Lewis

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