BLAST (journal)
Encyclopedia
Literary magazine
A 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...
of the Vorticist
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
movement in Britain. Two editions were published: the first on 2 July 1914 (dated 20 June 1914, but publication was delayed) and the second a year later on 15 July 1915. Written primarily by Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy 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...
, with bright pink cover art
Cover art
Cover art is the illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book , magazine, comic book, video game , DVD, CD, videotape, or music album. The art has a primarily commercial function, i.e...
referred to by Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
as the "great MAGENTA cover'd opusculus", the magazine is emblematic of the modern art movement in England, and is recognised as a seminal text of 20th-century modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. The magazine originally cost 2/6.
Background
When the Italian futuristFuturism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
visited London in 1910, as part of a series of well-publicised lectures aimed at galvanizing support across Europe for the new Italian avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, his presentation at the Lyceum Club, in which he addressed his audience as "victims of .... traditionalism and its medieval trappings," electrified the assembled avant-garde. Within two years, an exhibition of futurist art at the Sackville Gallery, London, brought futurism squarely into the popular imagination, and the press began to use the term to refer to any forward-looking trends in modern art.
Initially galvanized by Marinetti's verve, Wyndham Lewis—like many other members of the London avant-garde—had become increasingly irritated by the Italian's arrogance. The publication of the English Futurist manifesto Vital English Art, in June 1914 edition of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, co-written by Marinetti and the "last remaining English Futurist" C. R. W. Nevinson
Christopher R. W. Nevinson
Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson was a British figure and landscape painter, etcher and lithographer. He is often referred to by his initials C. R. W...
, Lewis found his name, among others, had been added as a signatory at the end of the article without permission, in an attempt to assimilate the English avant-garde for Marinetti's own ends. On 12 June, during recitations of this manifesto and a performance by Marinetti of his poem The Battle of Adrianople
Zang Tumb Tumb
"Zang Tumb Tumb" is a sound poem and concrete poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist. It appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist's book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople, which he witnessed as a reporter...
, with Nevinson accompanying on drums, Lewis, T. E. Hulme
T. E. Hulme
Thomas Ernest Hulme was an English critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism.-Early life:...
, Jacob Epstein
Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...
, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
, Edward Wadsworth
Edward Wadsworth
Edward Alexander Wadsworth was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism. He painted, often in tempera, coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life...
, and five others roundly interrupted the performance with jeering and shouting. Wyndham Lewis wrote a few days later, "England practically invented this civilisation that Signor Marinetti has come to preach to us about".
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
in April 1914, Pound described the magazine in ambiguous terms: "Lewis is starting a new Futurist, Cubist, Imagiste Quarterly .... I cant tell, it is mostly a painters' magazine with me to do the poems". By July, the magazine had a name, a movement to support, and a typographic style, and it had forged a distinctly English identity, confident enough to praise Kandinsky, question Picasso, and openly mock Marinetti.
Editions
BLAST 1 was edited and largely written by Wyndham Lewis with contributions from Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, Epstein, Spencer GoreSpencer Gore
Spencer William Gore was an English cricketer who played for Surrey County Cricket Club in 1874 and 1875 and a tennis player who won the first Wimbledon Championships in 1877.-Early years:...
, Wadsworth, and Rebecca West
Rebecca West
Cicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
and included an extract from Ford Madox Hueffer's novel The Saddest Story, better known by its later title The Good Soldier (published under his subsequent pseudonym, Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
). The first edition was printed in folio
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...
format, with the oblique title BLAST splashed across its bright pink soft cover. Inside, Lewis used a range of bold typographic innovations and tricks to engage the reader, that are reminiscent of Marinetti's contemporary concrete poetry
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
such as Zang Tumb Tumb
Zang Tumb Tumb
"Zang Tumb Tumb" is a sound poem and concrete poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist. It appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist's book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople, which he witnessed as a reporter...
.
The opening twenty pages of Blast 1 contain the Vorticist manifesto, written by Lewis with assistance from Pound and signed by Lewis, Wadsworth, Pound, William Roberts
William Roberts (painter)
William Roberts was a British painter of groups of figures and portraits, and was a war artist.-Education and early career:Son of an Irish carpenter and his wife, Roberts was born in Hackney, London...
, Helen Saunders
Helen Saunders
Helen Saunders was an English painter.Helen Saunders was born in Bedford Park, Ealing....
, Lawrence Atkinson
Lawrence Atkinson
Lawrence 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...
, Jessica Dismorr
Jessica Dismorr
Jessica 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...
, and Gaudier-Brzeska. Epstein chose not to sign the manifesto, although his work was featured. There is also a (positive) critique of Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual In Art, a faintly patronising exhortation to suffragettes not to destroy works of art, a review of a London exhibition of Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
woodcuts, and a last dig at Marinetti by Wyndham Lewis:
Futurism, as preached by Marinetti, is largely Impressionism up-to-date.
To this is added his Automobilism and Nietzsche stunt,
With a lot of good sense and vitality at his disposal, he hammers away in the
blatant mechanism of his Manifestos, at his idee fixe of Modernity.
The Manifesto
- Beyond Action and Reaction we would establish ourselves.
- We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. Set up violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes.
- We discharge ourselves on both sides.
- We fight first on one side, then on the other, but always for the SAME cause, which is neither side or both sides and ours.
- Mercenaries were always the best troops.
- We are primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World.
- Our Cause is NO-MAN'S.
- We set Humour at Humour's throat. Stir up Civil War among peaceful apes.
- We only want Humour if it has fought like Tragedy.
- We only want Tragedy if it can clench its side-muscles like hands on its belly, and bring to the surface a laugh like a bomb.
[Blast 1] included the now famous pages of subjects either 'Blasted' or 'Blessed' depending on how they were seen by the fledgling Vorticists.' Blast' pages generally had a go at [Roger] FryRoger FryRoger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
, the Bloomsbury setBloomsbury GroupThe Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers 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...
, the average art critic, and PutneyPutneyPutney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
(for some reason). Amongst those being Blessed are hairdressers and mariners. The latter two professions were celebrated because they both battle against elemental nature.
TonksHenry TonksHenry Tonks, FRCS was a British draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist...
, the SladeSladeSlade are an English rock band from Wolverhampton, who rose to prominence during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. With 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number ones, the British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles...
drawing tutor has the unique honour of being both 'Blessed' and 'Blasted'. —Vorticism Online
The first edition also contained many illustrations in the Vorticist style by Jacob Epstein, Lewis and others.
The second edition, published on 20 July 1915, contained a short play by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's poems Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Another article by Gaudier-Brzeska entitled Vortex (written from the Trenches) further described the vorticist aesthetic. It was written whilst Gaudier-Brzeska was fighting in the First World War, a few weeks before he was killed at Verdun
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun was one of the major battles during the First World War on the Western Front. It was fought between the German and French armies, from 21 February – 18 December 1916, on hilly terrain north of the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France...
.
World War One and the end of Vorticism
Thirty-three days after BLAST 1 was published, war was declared on Germany. The First World War would destroy vorticism; both Gaudier-Brzeska and T. E. Hulme were killed at the front, and Bomberg lost his faith in modernity. Lewis was mobilised in 1916, initially fighting in France as an artillery officer, later working as a war artist for the Canadian Government. He would try to re-invigorate the avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
after the war; Lewis wrote to a friend after the war that he intended to publish a third edition of BLAST in November 1919. He organised an exhibition of avant-garde artists called Group X at Heal's Gallery in March–April 1920, and later published a new magazine, The Tyro, of which only two issues appeared. The further issue of BLAST failed to appear, and neither of the other two ventures managed to achieve the momentum of his pre-war efforts. Richard Cook writes:
When Lewis returned from the trenches, he hoped to revivify the Vorticist spirit, planning a third issue of Blast and regaining contact with old allies. But the whole context of pre-war experimentation had been dispersed by the destructive power of mechanized warfare, which persuaded most of the former Vorticists to pursue more representational directions thereafter. By 1920 even Lewis was obliged to admit that the movement was dead.
Public collections
Both editions have been reprinted a number of times and are shortly to be made available again by Thames and Hudson; original copies are in the collections of the Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...
, University of Delaware
University of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...
, Chelsea College
Chelsea College
Chelsea College may refer to :* Chelsea College * Chelsea College of Art and Design* Chelsea College of Science and Technology* Chelsea Independent College * Kensington and Chelsea College...
, and others. The Nasher Museum of Art
Nasher Museum of Art
The Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and opened on October 2, 2005...
at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
held an exhibition entitled The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18 from 30 September 2010, through 2 January 2011.
Facsimile editions of "Blast"
- 1982. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press. ISBN 978-0-87685-521-8.
- 2009. London: Thames & HudsonThames & HudsonThames & Hudson is a publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, and visual culture. With its headquarters in London, England it has a sister company in New York and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong...
. ISBN 9780500287828.
Further reading
- Beckett, Jane (2000). Blast: Vorticism, 1914–1918. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 9781840146479
- Bury, Stephen (2007). Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900–1937. London: British Library. ISBN 9780712309806
- Orchard, Karin ed. (1996). Blast: Vortizismus – die erste Avantgarde in England 1914–1918. Berlin: Ars Nicolai. ISBN 978-3-89169-105-2
External links
- Vorticism Online
- Blast 1 (1914) at the Modernist Journals Project
- Blast 1 pdf
- Blast 2 (1915) at the Modernist Journals Project
- Blast 2 pdf
- 9 August 1914, The New York Times VORTICISM THE LATEST CULT OF REBEL ARTISTS; It Goes a Step Further Than Cubism and Futurism, and Is Sponsored by Brzeska, Epstein and Others. Its Official Mouthpiece Is a Cerise Magazine Called Blast.