Waugh, Betjeman, Lewis, and the Missed Future of Modernism

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-80
Author(s):  
Ashley Maher
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
Evelyn Waugh ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Architectural Modernism

World War I has long been considered literary modernism’s defining historical event, a catastrophe that changed avant-garde optimism into postwar pessimism and fragmentation; however, the utopian rhetoric of post-World War I architecture, along with writers’ enthusiastic elaboration of that rhetoric through architectural criticism, undermines any neat division. Instead, this chapter establishes a late 1920s and 1930s tendency to identify in hindsight a wartime rupture between the national future and the modernist future, as literary and architectural cooperation began to dissolve. Amid the rise of architectural modernism in Britain, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and Wyndham Lewis scrutinized the cultural integration of modernist forms. While Waugh and Betjeman increasingly emphasized modernist architecture’s inability to provide a lasting social or physical structure for the nation, Lewis rued the perceived cooption of modernism by leftist, materialist movements and instead promoted the values of “extreme modernism.”

Vorticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Von Cannon
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Maximum Energy ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Geometric Shape ◽  
National Character ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde

In 1914, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound began the British avant-garde literary and visual arts movement known as Vorticism. In addition to Lewis and Pound, its members included writers and artists such as Richard Aldington, Lawrence Atkinson, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Dorothy Shakespear, and Edward Wasworth. David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were also associated with the group. Responding to Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism, the passéism of the British national character, and the rise of World War I, Vorticists produced artwork that emphasized geometric shape, hardness, motion, and power. Pound, who coined the term "vorticism," referred to the "vortex" as "the point of maximum energy." By depicting abstract motion and acceleration, they saw themselves as reacting specifically to French Cubism’s reliance on the material world and the speed-fetishism of F.T. Marinetti and the Italian Futurists. Marinetti’s understanding of movement relied on actual machines—cars, airplanes, etc.—whereas other Futurists, such as Umberto Boccioni, sought to explore the interior and exterior sensation of speed by combining abstract and concrete detail. The Vorticist competition with the Futurists was also part of their nationalistic avant-garde campaign. In contrast to what they saw as a reactionary and outdated British literature, Vorticists stressed individuality, attentiveness, and aggression in order to champion a new, modern British nation. Lewis introduced many of these ideas in the short-lived but highly influential magazine, Blast. The Vorticist movement itself disbanded in the early years of World War I.

Rodker, John (1894–1955)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Menmuir
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Close Friend ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Little Magazines ◽  
East End ◽  
Jewish Immigrants

The son of Polish-Jewish immigrants into Britain, John Rodker was born in Manchester on 18 December 1894 and subsequently raised in London from age six. A close friend of David Bomberg and Isaac Rosenberg (known widely as ‘The Whitechapel Boys’), he was schooled and encultured by the East End Jewish community in London, the context of which—politically vibrant, socially and culturally mixed, confrontational and embattled—shaped his literary and personal genius. Writing shortly before, during and after World War I, his work—essays, prose, poetry and translations—appeared in avant-garde and ‘little magazines’ such as The Egoist and New Freewoman, The Dial and The Little Review, and was appreciated and assessed by major figures of canonical modernism such as Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound.

Wadsworth, Edward Alexander (1889–1949)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kitty Hudson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
English Abstract ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
World War ◽  
Abstract Group ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Active Service ◽  
Individual Style

Edward Wadsworth played an important role alongside Wyndham Lewis in the short-lived avant-garde movement of Vorticism in 1913–1914. He continued to work in the abstracted, geometric style associated with the movement throughout World War I, though very little work of this period remains other than his woodcuts. After returning to England from active service in 1917, Wadsworth worked on the camouflage of shipping, known as "dazzle painting," and produced a large canvas entitled Dazzle Ships in Drydock at Liverpool (1919). The 1920s saw Wadsworth turn to the theme for which he is best known: the precise and realistic harbor scenes and maritime still lifes, largely painted in tempera. This highly individual style was often dubbed "surrealist" though Wadsworth did not encourage this association. His compositions became progressively more abstract in the early 1930s and, in 1933, Wadsworth joined the English abstract group "Unit One"; however, the following year he abruptly returned to his familiar marine paintings. Large-scale commissions included paintings for the smoke rooms of the Cunard ship Queen Mary and, during the 1939–1945 war, he produced advertising images for ICI. After 1945 his work tended once again towards the abstract, though always maintaining a link with earlier natural motifs and geometric forms.

scholarly journals Symbolism at war: Charles Ricketts and the politics of the stage

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 318-336
Author(s):  
Ana Parejo Vadillo
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Landscape

This article considers the effect of World War I on Charles Ricketts’ work for the stage as an avant-garde set and costume designer. It looks at his cosmopolitan designs in the context of European symbolism. The first part of the essay focuses on Ricketts’ symbolist manifesto ‘The art of stage decoration’ (1913). The essay then examines his designs for three Shakespeare plays that toured Le Havre in 1918 to entertain the troops. I argue that, in the aftermath of the war, Rickett’s symbolism became the lens through which he assessed the complex political landscape of the 1920s, and suggest that his stance against realism politicized his practice and explains his interest in Mussolini’s fascism.

The Rites of Spring

Nancy Cunard ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 103-120
Author(s):  
Jane Marcus
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
World War ◽  
Creation Myths ◽  
Rite Of Spring

The chapter explores primitivism, African creation myths, and an analysis of Diaghilev’s The Rite of Spring and Vernon Lee’s Satan the Waster in the context of Cunard’s poetic aesthetic. Marcus also contrasts Edith Sitwell’s anti-war Wheels anthology and Cunard’s engagement with African cultures and artifacts with Eliot’s primitivism. Additionally, the chapter investigates the visual primitivism of World War I and representations of the slaughter by William Roberts and Wyndham Lewis.

Grosz, George (1893–1959)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
World War ◽  
New Objectivity ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
George Grosz

George Grosz was a leading artist of Germany’s early 20th-century expressionist, Dada, and New Objectivity movements. His works from this period remain celebrated examples of the modernist avant-garde. Grosz began his career as a student at the Dresden Academy of Art in 1909. In 1912, he moved to Berlin, abandoned the academic rigor of his earlier work, and became part of the Expressionist avant-garde. His paintings and drawings soon adopted the fractured planes, vivid color, and psychologically troubled content of Expressionist art. Grosz became politically radicalized by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He helped to found Berlin Dada during the war years. His irreverent cut and paste Dada collages of this period assailed not only the concept of ‘‘art,’’ but also the vaunted notions of culture, militarism, and national pride that were part of a German social order Grosz had come to despise. At the end of World War I, Grosz joined the German Communist Party and became its leading artist. He fled to the United States in order to escape persecution after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933. Grosz settled in New York, where he pursued his art under the utterly changed circumstances of exile.

scholarly journals Zenitism and orientalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Iva Glišić ◽  
Tijana Vujošević
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Balkan Peninsula ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
World War ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Global Demand ◽  
The Aesthetic

Reflecting on the centenary of the birth of Zenitism, this essay examines how the movement engaged with stereotypes about the Slavic Orient, and in particular the discourse on Balkanism. The European orientalist reading of the Balkans became especially profound in years surrounding the World War I. Seeking to invert derogatory characterisations of the Balkan Peninsula, Zenitists would embark on a mission to "Balkanise Europe" by presenting the artist from the East as a rejuvenating, revolutionary force emerging from a cultural tabula rasa. Zenitism sought to destabilise the dominant Orient-Occident discourse by establishing parallels between existing negative stereotypes of the Balkans and the aesthetic tropes of the European avantgarde. Specifically, Zenitists established the Balkan "Barbarogenius" as the archetypal modernist primitive - precisely the figure conjured by the European intelligentsia as the saviour for its listless modern condition. In addition, the Zenitist movement established an analogy between the hallmark fragmentation of the Balkans and the cultural cacophony of the avant-garde. The political and aesthetic strategies of the movement, the authors assert, bear a striking similarity with those of the Black Atlantic, and its 'in-betweenness'-its ambition to straddle two opposing worlds. Organised around its eponymous journal Zenit, which was conceptualised as "the first Balkan journal in Europe and the first European journal in the Balkans," Zenitism employed European avant-garde aesthetic strategies while simultaneously rejecting European claims to cultural supremacy. For Yugoslav, Soviet, and Western European audiences, the journal had two parallel goals: the creative "Balkanisation" of Europe, and a commitment to dismantling Yugoslav "nesting orientalisms" by fighting against the reproduction of negative stereotypes among the region's own inhabitants. Against a backdrop of European crisis and a global demand for a renewed emancipatory struggle, the ambition of Zenitism holds strong appeal today.

L’Herbier, Marcel (1888–1979)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Silent Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Moral Atmosphere ◽  
Visual Music ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Post War

Marcel L’Herbier was a French pioneer avant-garde (impressionist) filmmaker and theorist who made more than forty films between the 1920s and the 1950s. During World War I he learned the basics of filmmaking in the Army Cinematographic Service. He wrote a seminal text, Hermès et le silence (1918), in which he stated that cinema is not an art but a new language which calls into question the traditional notion of art. One of his best attempts to put into practice his theories was the poetic Rose-France (1919). In 1921 he filmed one of his masterworks, El Dorado, mainly in Granada (Andalusia, Spain), which anticipated the German Kammerspiel. He used a range of cinematographic means—including color tinting of the image—to determine character psychology and the moral atmosphere of the space, defining a kind of "cinematic melodrama" and creating a visual music. Other similar films from his silent period include L’Inhumaine [The Inhuman Woman] (1924), a science fiction drama, and L’Argent (1928), adapted from Émile Zola’s novel. In the silent L’Argent, L’Herbier used sound in an original way, recording real sound effects, which were played back in some theaters. When talkies arrived, he renounced the avant-garde, but still made noteworthy films including Le Mystère de la chambrejaune [The Mystery of the Yellow Room] (1930) based on Gaston Leroux’s novel, and La Nuitfantastique [The Fantastic Night] (1942). L’Herbier was also the founder, in 1944, of the Institut des HautesÉtudesCinématographiques. During the post-war period he poured his energy into television productions.

BLAST (1914–1915)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Waddell
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
First World War ◽  
Ford Madox Ford ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
World War ◽  
Rebecca West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

BLAST was an early modernist ‘little magazine’ edited by Wyndham Lewis in London. Not to be confused with Alexander Berkman’s San Francisco-based anarchist newspaper The Blast (1916–17), BLAST proclaimed the arrival of the English avant-garde movement Vorticism. BLAST ran for two volumes, appearing in July 1914 and July 1915, before the First World War forced it to end. The magazine’s two instalments represent a key example of pre-war avant-garde periodical culture, and are recognised as exemplifying, through the differing commitments of their various contributors, some of the overlapping alliances and antagonisms of London’s early modernist socio-cultural scene. Key contributions include Lewis’s play Enemy of the Stars (1914) and stories by Ford Madox Ford (‘The Saddest Story’, 1914) and Rebecca West (‘Indissoluble Matrimony’, 1914). In promoting Vorticism, BLAST championed an intellectual aesthetic based on contemplative detachment and foregrounded inter-subjective relations. Both volumes of BLAST were heavily illustrated, featuring visual contributions from Jessie Dismorr, Jacob Epstein, Frederick Etchells, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Spencer Gore, Cuthbert Hamilton, Jacob Kramer, Lewis himself, C. R. W. Nevinson, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Dorothy Shakespear, and Edward Wadsworth.

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