Vorticism
Started: 1913
Ended: 1915
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KEY ARTISTS
 | Wyndham Lewis Quick View Further External Info  |
| Wyndham Lewis |  |
| Wyndham Lewis was a twentieth-century English artist and author, founder of the English Rebel Art Centre, and the co-founder of the short-lived Vorticist art movement, which is commonly considered the English counterpart to the more well-known Italian Futurist movement, although neither movement claimed any association with the other. Politically, Lewis was a polarizing figure in literary circles, given his sympathy for Fascism and in particular Adolf Hitler, whom Lewis portrayed as a sympathetic victim of communist oppression in his book "Hitler." Further External Info | ||
 | Jacob Epstein Quick View Artist Page |
| Jacob Epstein | |
| Jacob Epstein was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He often produced controversial works, which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks. He also made paintings and drawings. Art Story: Jacob Epstein Artist Page | ||
 | Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Quick View Further External Info |
| Henri Gaudier-Brzeska | |
| Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving. He believed that sculpture should leave behind the highly finished, polished style of ancient Greece and embrace a more earthy direct carving, in which the tool marks are left visible on the final work as a fingerprint of the artist. Further External Info | ||
 | David Bomberg Quick View Further External Info |
| David Bomberg | |
| David Bomberg was an English painter and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I. Further External Info | ||
 | Ezra Pound Quick View Further External Info |
| Ezra Pound | |
| Ezra Pound, one of the most important modern poets in America, emphasized images and pithiness over traditional verse structures and rhyme schemes. He was an expatriate and espoused at times controversial political beliefs. Further External Info | ||
"The Vorticist is at his maximum point of energy when stillest."
Summary of Vorticism
Vorticism blasted onto the London art scene, becoming England's first radical avant-garde group. Embracing contradiction, humor, and ostentatious rhetoric, the Vorticists celebrated the energy and dynamism of the modern machine age and declared an assault on staid British traditions in order to inaugurate a new era where art belonged to all. Rebelling against the genteel semi-abstractions then fashionable among the London bourgeoisie and championed by critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell, the Vorticists developed an abstract style with bold colors, harsh lines, and sharp angles to depict the movement of industrial life. Vorticism encompassed many media, including painting, sculpture, literature, typography, and design in an effort to transform how people interacted with the world. The horrors of World War I, however, dampened their idealization of the machine and dissipated the momentous energy of the group.
Key Ideas
Beginnings:
Formed and named in 1914, the Vorticist group desired to unsettle England's Victorian attitudes toward art. Painter and author Wyndham Lewis founded the movement of artists and writers in an attempt to represent the energy and vitality of the modern era with what he described as "a new living abstraction." While Vorticism has been called the British version of the Italian Futurist movement, which shared similar influences, Lewis and poet Ezra Pound, who coined the name Vorticism, rejected this correlation.
Important Art and Artists of Vorticism | |
 Artwork Images | In the Station of the Metro (1913)Artist: Ezra Pound Artwork description & Analysis: This tiny poem by Ezra Pound contains only one "image." While the poem is usually associated with Pound's Imagist era, in which he strove to a precise clarity without extraneous verbiage, Pound discussed the poem extensively in his 1914 essay on Vorticism. Here he elaborated on the relationship between Vorticist poetry and visual art: Poem |
 Artwork Images | Torso in Metal from 'The Rock Drill' (1913-14)Artist: Jacob Epstein Artwork description & Analysis: Epstein's Torso in Metal from 'The Rock Drill' was born of the destruction wreaked by the First World War. In 1913, Epstein created a plaster cast of an abstracted human body - angular and hard - with an embryonic form in its abdomen and placed it astride an industrial mining drill. The result was a towering, menacing figure with great phallic power. It presented an image of the future of humanity as cyborgs, a celebration of the merging of man and machine, a vision of the frightening yet exciting possibilities made possible by the machine age. Bronze - Tate Modern, London |
  | Red Stone Dancer (c.1913)Artist: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Artwork description & Analysis: Red Stone Dancer, one of Gaudier-Brzeska's most important works, encapsulates his ideas of pure form and Vorticist dynamism. Gaudier-Brzeska abstracts the body of a dancer into broad planes and organizes them in such a way that they seem to twist around each other. The figure appears to be in mid-movement, suggesting continual motion despite the solid feel of the stone. In a 1912 letter, the artist explained, "Movement is the translation of life, and if art depicts life, movement should come into art, since we are only aware of life because it moves." Red Mansfield stone - Tate Modern, London |
More Vorticism Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 31 Jul 2017. Updated and modified regularly. 
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