Blast mask

A useful Pause-the-Shielding present from my son. (*Adverts alert* – Design your own mask at Contrado. Background neo-romantic woodcut wallpaper by Mark Hearld.)

It’s remarkable how, 106 years on, BLAST is still such a useful template, almost irrespective of its Vorticist context, from which it has floated free. Though it’s not as easy as you’d think to get the register and the typography quite accurate. And, human nature being what it is, the Blasts tend to flow a lot more readily than the Blesses. Anyway, here goes …..

And so on and so on. Ooh, aah, I feel so much better after that … The mask will definitely be worn.

Kettle’s Yard: Vortex Gaudier-Brzeska

How have I contrived not to visit Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge until now? But we’ll certainly be going back. More Gaudier-Brzeskas than you can manage, almost to the point of fainting, plus some extraordinary David Jones and Christopher Wood, and a whole lot more besides. In 1926 H S (“Jim”) Ede bought up a couple of thousand drawings and other pieces from the Gaudier estate, following the sad death of Sophie Brzeska, and many of them are still in his preserved home, which forms the core of the expanded “New” Kettle’s Yard, just reopened.

To be honest, the house and its contents are still the important bit. The new bolted-on gallery spaces are a fine asset, but I found the curation of the current show a bit nebulous, and the quality of the contemporary work a little up and down. You can’t grumble though; it’s an amazing place.

Ede’s core mission was to reclaim and to make permanent Gaudier’s standing in the aftermath of his posthumous fall from fashion. And indeed, the more you stare at his work, the more important it appears. Once stuffed away in a box on the margins marked “Interesting cul-de-sacs”, Gaudier’s sculpture has since assumed its proper place at the core of things, articulating a language of form that, in its full and happy integration of the mechanical and the natural, seems more appropriate today than ever. “Plastic soul is intensity of life bursting the plane”.

Here are snaps of some favourite pieces in the house; I haven’t identified them individually as the entire collection can be called up bit by bit in the “collection database” on the Kettle’s Yard website, which also has 360 degree doodads of the interior of the house and a great deal more worth browsing. Photos just can’t do justice to David Jones; his drawing is properly visible only face to face, in its actual scale. But I’ve put some in anyway. Click everything to enlarge as slides.

Christopher Wood

David Jones

 

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

 

Three whacks at Carlyle

Speaking of militant suffragettism, the centenary of the Vote brings an interesting little display at the National Portrait Gallery, itself on the receiving end at the time. In July 1914 suffragette Anne Hunt took out a butcher’s cleaver and proceeded to remove three slices from Sir John Everett Millais’ portrait of the suitably miserable looking Sir Thomas Carlyle, philosopher, misogynist, apologist for slavery and proto-fascist. Sir John’s pre-Raphaelite vision had long since bitten the dust, and one can only regret that Hunt wasn’t also able to take a chunk out of Millais’ “Bubbles”.

 

A photo, in the NPG’s display, of the canvas “as damaged by Suffragette”, taken in the aftermath, shows clearly three substantial cuts across Carlyle’s pate; Hunt certainly had good aim. The painting itself, a piece of dark brown pomposity that my Grandma would have loved, is, unfortunately, still in the Victorian Gallery, annoyingly restored.

Among other fascinating pieces in the display is a Scotland Yard circular to art galleries with details and surveillance photos of two other women with a record in iconoclasm, one being Mary Richardson, who had taken a “chopper” to the backside of Velazquez’s “Rokeby Venus” at the National.  There’s a particularly good page on all this at the NPG website, by their archivist Bryony Millan. Recommended.

 

Such incidents prompted one of the less likeable broadsides in the Vorticists’ first (1914) edition of Blast, applauding the energy of the attackers but asking suffragettes to “stick to what you understand”. Like knitting and fluffy kittens, perhaps? “Soyez bonnes filles” (Be good little girls), advised Wyndham Lewis or Ezra Pound, whichever was responsible for this unsigned and unfortunate piece of condescension dressed up as affectionate irony. The boys just couldn’t quite stop themselves from sniggering, could they? “Yes, but we don’t really mean it.” Ah, but I think they do. (“You might some day destroy a good picture by accident” is not a bad joke, though.)

Mary Richardson, along with a number of other ex-suffragettes, later joined the British Union of Fascists, with whom Lewis briefly flirted at one point. And we all know about Pound and Mussolini. Carlyle, exponent of the “Great Man” theory of political history, seems to have had the last laugh in all this. Well, you can’t have everything.

John Armstrong Turnbull flies again

It’s more than five years (gulp) since I did a quick post on the nearly vanished “English Aeropittura” of John Armstrong Turnbull, the Biggles of “Group X”, the post-Vorticist show organised in 1920 by Wyndham Lewis. My thanks to Stephen Delaney, who points out that there are two paintings by Turnbull at the Canadian War Museum in addition to the one I posted. How did I miss these at the time? Or maybe they weren’t online then. But here are all three now, and rather a revelation they are too. William Roberts may have sniffed, but Lewis knew a good thing when he saw one. Click to enlarge the images.

Air-fight, 1917-19

The Red Air-fighter, 1918-19

Dogfight, 1918-19

 

These have a fine Vorticist sensibility, the two “new” works particularly. The inevitable comparison with the aeropittura of the second wave Futurism of twenty years later (Dottori or Crali) is a fair one, but there is no chunky fascist-Deco confidence here; we are in a vertiginously fragile world where verticals and horizontals have lost their bearings, and the Vortex is a tail-spin. The Red Air-fighter, in particular, is such a spiralling abstraction that it is impossible to decide whether in fact it has been displayed here sideways.

But beyond these, where on earth is the rest of Turnbull’s work? For starters, does anyone out there have an image of his pages in the “Group X” catalogue? It’s a shame that the Imperial War Museum does not have a painting by him. Very topically, this reminds me that I still have to see the applauded Wyndham Lewis exhibition at IWM North, on till next January. Does it include a Turnbull? I don’t think so. But meanwhile, here’s a helpful review by Nathan Waddell.

The fabric of war

And so to the excellent Imperial War Museum North at Salford Quays, and in particular to their “Fashion on the Ration” show, a fine selection of British WW2 utility and creativity in stitching, running till May next year, and very much worth a look in. I was taken aback by the outrageous up-market “propaganda” scarves and fabrics – clearly anticipating the rise of Lettrism in their sloganising. (Click for enlarged slides.)

Jacqmar ‘Happy Landings’ fabric: ‘Never was so much owed by so many …’

1946 housecoat in Horrockses Fashions fabric: ‘This demi-paradise …’

Allied flags fabric and a Jacqmar ‘Victory’ scarf

Anglo-Soviet chic: a 1941 Jacqmar ‘Red Star’ scarf

In the book/gift shop on the way out I noticed that the entire IWM “Dazzle” range of WW1 merchandising is now being flogged off at half price. Actually, I’m not too surprised, given that the IWM’s collaborators on this range, the bright young people at Patternity (“the world’s leading cult pattern specialists”) don’t actually seem to get the idea of dazzle ship camouflage, and have “re-imagined” this Vorticist application as a sort of simplistic GCSE op art of counterchanged black and white stripes, which it ain’t at all. The contents of my half price Dazzle post card pack will give the idea – half a dozen good cards of the real thing and four lacklustre “re-imaginings”.

Half price Dazzle

The IWM Dazzle cards …

… and Patternity’s ‘re-imaginings’

A couple of Vorticist angles

Following my previous post and new page on Cuthbert Hamilton, a couple more scraps relating to the Great English Vortex …

Helen Saunders, ‘Study for The Island of Laputa’ © Estate of Helen Saunders

In 1969 the d’Offay Couper Gallery put on Abstract Art in England 1913-1915, which claimed to be the first attempt since 1915 to display a comprehensive collection of Vorticist work. I’ve just acquired a copy of the catalogue, which reveals that the show was surprisingly rich, if a bit Bomberg-heavy. It also allows me to make a couple of small amendments to my “galleries” for Helen Saunders and Lawrence Atkinson (tabs above) by adding images of Saunders’s study for The Island of Laputa, and of the original version of Atkinson’s very beautiful Vital.

Lawrence Atkinson, ‘Vital’

In 1969 Dorothy Shakespear and Kate Lechmere (among others associated with the movement) were still alive. Blimey. But then, 1969 was only four years after the mid point between 1915 and now. And, as it says in BLAST 1, the Future is distant, like the Past, and therefore sentimental.

Meanwhile, it’s been two years since we looked in on the prolific craftsmanship of eBay seller Raymond of Mortlake, aka “mortlakeunion2009”, who is still feverishly banging out pastiches of Vorticist works, as well tackling the cubisms of Leger, Marcoussis, Popova, Gleizes and a dozen more, and who shows no signs of fatigue. (See previous posts here and here.) In his six years on eBay, Raymond has racked up nearly 1500 sales of paintings and drawings, often in batches to repeat buyers Europe-wide. Feedback shows that 99% are happy with what they know full well to be fakes, though in a few cases the penny seems to have dropped after the event:

“Too new for Saunders, but a nice composition in her style”

“art works are fake, reported to ebay”

“The watercolour was sticked on a carton with a sticked frame. Good for trash”

“faux authentique. Attention !”

“Foot[sic] tooth and nail to avoid giving a refund for substandard workds[sic]. Avoid”

“bad imitation, fake and FALSE PAINTING on cardboard modern replica”

(To this last, Mortlake has responded in bristling self-defence: “PAINTED ON OLD PAPER AND ATTACHED TO MODERN CARDBOARD”.)

Among the many hundreds of positives, one buyer has commented, apparently without a trace of irony, “love this sellers detailed provenance”.

I imagine Raymond perhaps as an embittered shop steward of the Communication Workers’ Union or TGWU (both have offices in Mortlake), burning away the midnight hours cranking out his decorative fakes as an act of social revenge. Or perhaps not. But anyway, here are a few more of his old Vorts, and some newer ones, just for the record or just for fun … (Click for slide show.)

David Bomberg

William Roberts

Wyndham Lewis

 

Cuthbert Hamilton: a poor little gallery

Hamilton as remembered by William Roberts

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, delayed only by awareness of certain inadequacy where Cuthbert J Hamilton is concerned. Cuthbert who? You know, the invisible Vorticist, the one in a hat at the left of William Roberts’s Tour Eiffel group, the could-almost-be-anyone gent sitting (wearing spats?) in one of the Rebel Art Centre photos of 1914.

‘Self Portrait’ 1920

Our biographical knowledge of Hamilton is not much further on than forty years ago: within Wyndham Lewis’s network working on decorations for the Golden Calf, at the Omega Workshops and Rebel Art Centre, signing the BLAST manifesto. Special constable during the war, founded and produced ceramics at the Yeoman Pottery in Kensington, participant in the Group X show of 1920. Skip forty years to his death in Cookham in April 1959. One painting in the Tate, one pot at the V&A.

So on a new page (click here, or find the tab up top) are all the works by Hamilton I can find, put critically into some sort of chronological order. It’s not much, but some of it is excellent stuff …

‘I drag my body over yellow stones’: the Vorticist period writings of Jessie Dismorr

Following on from my page of images by Jessie (later Jessica) Dismorr, Vorticist painter, poet and flâneuse, a new bunch of drop-down pages is available among the tabs up above (or go here and find the links) on her writings from 1915 to 1922. Here are collected all her pieces from Blast 2 of 1915, from The Little Review of 1918-19, and from the manuscript poetry collection of 1918 given to John Storrs, with her piece on Russian art for The Tyro 2 of 1922, preceded by a general introduction. Maybe someone else has done this far better, or is about to, but I’m not aware of it, so here’s my best shot.

From the psychogeography of “June Night” to the dense and breathless metaphysics of the later poems, from aphorisms on aesthetics to feminist satires on the Pre-Raphaelite woman, there is much of interest here, not forgetting the savage attacks on Dismorr in The Little Review by Margaret Anderson and Yvor Winters that knocked the stuffing out of her literary self-confidence.

“To Strangers – all my curiosity and artlessness.
To my Lovers – an eternal regret.
To my Friends – more insistent demands, the last enigma of conduct, a few gifts.”

A little gallery for Jessie Dismorr

As we move into the centenary year of Blast, it seems like a good time to present a page of work by the uncommonly interesting Vorticist (and much else) Jessie, or Jessica, Dismorr. (To view the page, find the tab above or go here.)

So far I’ve managed to scrounge up 66 images of paintings and drawings from all periods, including what appears to be an image of James Joyce, and two likely Vorticist designs, among the papers of American sculptor John Storrs, that for all I know may previously have been overlooked.

As and when other images turn up, they will be added without announcement.

Dismorr was also a poet, and the (uncollected) texts of her Vorticist period are well worth reading – the stuff of a future page, no doubt.

More crap Vorticist forgeries

My post of July 14 drew attention to the renewed appearance on eBay of decorative fakes of Vorticist artworks, mostly  by a single seller. He or she has since gone into overdrive, today’s browse turning up 25 new items by “followers of” Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg and William Roberts. All are signed, though none are dated; all are described as a “deceased estate purchase”, and all are offered by London seller mortlakeunion2009 at prices up to £50. Just for the record, I show them here – click on thumbnails for the galleries. Similar items are offered by Laura Knight, Henry Moore and Mark Gertler, plus assorted Russian and Czech modernists, some at rather higher figures. Young Mortlake seems to be doing quite well with his/her artwork judging by his/her feedback, which shows multiple sales to a number of buyers, though the identities of items sold are nearly all blanked out on the feedback list. Buyers are presumably bottom end “art dealers” who sell this stuff onwards at a profit – though at this standard why don’t they just bang out their own and cut out the wholesaler?

The first Lewis here (above) is a re-run of the composition shown in my earlier post. The pasticheur has got a little of the jizz of 1914 Lewis, leaving some pen lines open ended or taking them fractionally beyond intersections, and being careful not to erase too much of the pencil under-drawing. But the compositions are hardly dynamic, tight or coherent, some whole sections being sliced off by grossly extended diagonal or horizontal lines that are not at all integrated. Some areas of watercolour are carelessly edged, and the use of three stripes occasionally has more of the feel of Adidas than of the Vortex. Even so, the Lewises are perhaps the best of the bunch.

The Bombergs (above) are far less successful, appearing clumsy and unknowing. This is particularly true of the first shown here, as well as the two superficial attempts at Ju-Jitsu type compositions where the faker has completely failed to understand the structural processes as discussed in my recent post on Vorticism and quilting. The final Bomberg shown here is a composition that doubles as two of the Roberts imitations (below), while a third Roberts re-employs many of the same motifs. The first, more figure-based, Roberts is a direct but very hesitant copy of his 1913 Study for a Nativity.

One could say more, but these hardly deserve the discussion. Though at least they are a tad better than the same seller’s lumpy attempts at Laura Knight drawings, which have to be seen to be disbelieved.