THE VORTICISM MOVEMENT
The Vorticism Movement is an art movement which I have picked to study as I found it interesting and it also ties in with my current studies. Within this essay, I am hoping to give the reader an insight into the art movement. To write this essay I require several sources of information, so I shall be using the internet, several books, articles, and possibly any exhibitions past and present about this movement. All sources I obtain information from shall be listed in the bibliography. For my essay I am hoping for it to consist of an introduction, then the background of the topic, how it has inspired me, how this has any relevance to my studies and to finalise the essay a conclusion. But with this essay, I shall be supporting it with an artistic piece of my own inspired by the artists involved in this movement.
The Vorticism was a “short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century”, it was England's first radical “avant-garde group” the movement was partially inspired by the Cubism movement which also occurred during the 20th century, it brought European painting and sculpture modernising it, and applying the 20th century input onto the art. The Vorticism movement was one that didn’t loom for long, its first announcement was in an issue of BLAST, this issue contained its “manifesto and the movement's rejection of landscape and nudes in favour of a geometrical vogue tending towards abstraction.”
The Vorticism art movement started off as a group in about October 1913, inspired in part by two important futurist art exhibitions held in London, in 1912 and 1913, and began with the Rebel Art Centre which Wyndham Lewis and others established after disagreeing with Omega Workshops this workshop was a design enterprise which was founded on July of 1913. The latter was supported by Lewis and a number of other associates in April 1914 once they left the ornamental arts company Omega Workshops following a quarrel with its owner Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934).In addition to Lewis, members of the Rebel Art Centre included Jessica Dismorr (1885-1939), Frederick Etchells (1886-1973), Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889-1946), Helen Saunders (1885-1963), and Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949).
A group exhibition of labour by Rebel Centre artists was command at the Allied Artists Association in June 1914, and the centre closed in July. The Vorticism movement was launched in the same month, with the publication of the first edition of the magazine Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex, which contained the Vorticist Manifesto.
The latter 'blasted' what was seen because the content self-satisfaction of nation arts and cultural institution and declared the new Vorticist aesthetic: "The New Vortex plunges to the heart of the Present: we tend to turn out a replacement Living Abstraction".
Signatories to the Manifesto included Lewis, Pound, Dismorr and Wadsworth, as well as the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) and the English painter William Roberts (1895-1980), a close friend of Lewis. With its key idea being. The workshop was for providing knowledge and expressing the graphical ethos of the workshop. Vorticism is a small and unknown art movement, it has several links due to similarities with other movements, for example, like stated earlier you have the link from cubism to Vorticism, but another link is from futurism. It too was a movement of the 20th century rooting from Italy this individual movement emphasised; speed, youth technology of its time. As well as being an art movement it was a social movement, this was started to “liberate Italy from its past”. The similarities between these two links are that both are a movement that looks towards the future whether it be through the style of art or the ideology behind the movement. Although a key link between the two is the “embrace of dynamism”. Some may even say that Vorticism derived from Futurism. Both contain some colour but Vorticism contains more bold colours and line in it in its abstract form both used geometry. The movement drew on “fragmentation of Cubism and futurism” with the significant links between the two.
Although it had only a short life, Vorticism made its mark and laid the groundwork for future developments in British abstract art.
During the 1920s and 1930s, something of the Vorticist idiom entered the cultural mainstream with Edward McKnight Kauffer's posters for London Transport.
I chose this topic for this essay due to my interest in art, prior to picking this topic I looked at all different movements and significant events in history and some famous artists, for example, I looked at the likes of Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso. It was when I was looking at Picasso, that I came across an abstract form of the art movement called Vorticism. It interested me due to the bright bold colours and images through painting. I also study art at a GCSE level, due to this my interest in art grew and I found myself picking the art movement. Thinking about this topic in depth and trying to portray an artist’s style in my own form for my final piece.