Vorticism

The vortex of the avant-garde in the United Kingdom

Vorticism was a short-lived, radical artistic and literary British movement that blasted onto the scene before, during and after World War One. In many ways it can be seen as a British equivalent or counter point to Futurism, with a similar veneration of machines, industrialisation and urbanisation. The artworks celebrated modernity through abstraction, bold lines, strong colours, fragmentation and graphic compositions.

The movement was founded by English/Canadian writer and artist Wyndham Lewis, who painted his first forays into the style in 1912. He had a vision of a mechanical future, and saw his art as a counterpoint to the conservatism of British institutions and traditions. Vorticism’s coming out party arrived with the publication of radical magazine Blast by Lewis and American author Ezra Pound in 1914. It contained early Vorticist artworks, writings by Pound and others, as well as a fiery Vorticist manifesto penned by Lewis himself (and co-signed by eleven other artists). The manifesto took a similar bombastic and controversial approach to the Futurists, as it railed against the pretentiousness of British art, society and culture.  

The artwork of Vorticism was heavily influenced by Cubism and Futurism, with the Futurist founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti being a significant figure within the London artistic community at the time. However, a huge schism formed between the Futurists and Wyndham Lewis, with the publication of Blast and its manifesto being in large part intended to distance themselves from Marinetti.

The movement was named by Ezra Pound, who wrote “the Vortex is the point of maximum energy. It represents, in mechanics, the greatest efficiency”.  Lewis elaborated on this: “at the heart of the whirlpool is a great silent place where all the energy is concentrated; and there at the point of concentration is the Vorticist.”

World War One erupted not long after the first edition of Blast, with the second and final edition coming out in 1915. Their first group exhibition was also held in 1915, however it got minimal press coverage with only a few negative reviews. Many of the artists including Lewis fought in the war, with several losing their lives. The movement never really regained its momentum or relevance after the war, although Lewis did attempt to rekindle it with the 1920 Group X exhibition.

An interesting side foray of Vorticism occurred when American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn met Ezra Pound in 1916. Inspired by Vorticist art, he wanted to prove that photography was not incompatible with abstraction. He invented a kaleidoscope-like instrument with three mirrors clamped over the end of the lens, which Pound named the Vortoscope. He took a series of ground-breaking abstract, surreal, graphic images of Pound, other artists and found objects. They were first exhibited in London in 1917, with Pound dubbing them Vortographs.

Like the Italian Futurists, some of the Vorticists held some pretty unpleasant views which I profoundly disagree with (although I find their art fascinating). Wyndham Lewis was a misogynist, antisemite and fascist. He also wrote the first biography of Adolf Hitler. Ezra Pound’s pro-Mussolini radio broadcasts in Italy led to his later arrest by the United States and imprisonment from 1945-1958.

I am carrying on in the spirit of Alvin Coburn’s vortographs through the style of street photography – emphasising the strong, graphic compositions typical of the movement.*

* All effects in this chapter have been captured in-camera with prisms or my own self-assembled take on a ‘Vortoscope’.