Sunday 4 September 2011

The Vorticists - Tate Britain

Manifesto for a Modern World

Vorticism was an avant garde art movement that emerged in Britain in the wake of Cubism and Futurism. The term Vorticism was first coined by American poet Ezra Pound in 1914 and shortly afterwards the self-proclaimed leader of the movement, painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, launched the journal Blast setting out the ideas of the movement, 'blasting' and 'blessing' aspects of traditional culture.

Vorticism glorified the modern world, the machine age, even war but it only lasted four years, barely surviving the end of the First World War. War, it turned out, was anything but glorious especially the modern version using machines.

This exhibition focuses on the only two exhibitions of the Vorticist group in its lifetime and the two issues of Blast, emphasing the fact that this was not simply a movement of visual artists, but also of philosophers, poets, novelists and dramatists.

Wyndham Lewis - Workshop

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