Where's the anger?
Andrew Lambirth
Blasting the Future! Vorticism in Britain 1910-20 Estonck Collection, until 18 April
BLAST First (from politeness) ENGLAND CURSE ITS CLIMATE FOR ITS SINS AND INFECTIONS DISMAL SYMBOL, set round Our bodies, of effeminate lout within. VICTORIAN VAMPIRE, the LONDON cloud sucks the TOWN'S heart.
So trumpets Wyndham Lewis's combativeive manifesto published in the first edition of his typographically challenging magazine Blast, which appeared in June 1914. Quite what it means is left alluringly ambiguous, but one gets the general impression: Mr Lewis is angry.
Blast was the mouthpiece of Vorticism (often referred to as the only 20th-century British art movement of international standing), an association of artists under Lewis's leadership which believed in a radical art suited to urban and industrial living, composed of hard, clear forms in a lather of vehement anti-sentimental activity. In outlook and aims it owed something to Futurism, and it is really the relation ship between the two movements which forms the substance of this modest new exhibition at the Estorick Collection.
The exhibition's title, then, is misleading. It is not really an in-depth study of Vorticism, but rather an intimate comparative exercise which offers the chance for the Estorick (a collection devoted, after all, to the propagation of Italian art) to exhibit some of its Futurist gems. So the display kicks off with a gentle woodcut landscape by Ardengo Soffici, closely followed by Boccioni's `Modern Idol', Severini's 'Dancer', and Balla's 'Speeding Automobile', the latter a rather beautiful coloured crayon drawing of ellipses. Then we reach the first Vorticist picture: David Bomberg's masterly `Ju-Jitsu', a stylised and geometric martial-arts ballet of considerable virtuosity. This is succeeded by C. R. W. Nevinson's 'Dance Hall Scene', a thing of repellent coloration and jazzy fracturing. Compare it to the much more tasteful effects of 'Rain on Princes Street' by the Scot, Stanley Cursiter, all in shades of grey.
What have these Vorticist pictures in common? They all say something about the energy and bustle of modern life, but they do not share a recognisable common language. The only picture of striking originality is the Bomberg, and not until we come to the Wyndham Lewis drawings is there a particular style which seems to fit the movement perfectly. (Interestingly, no one tried to imitate it — it remained Lewis's very own.) So here is 'The Vorticist' by Lewis, in ink and watercolour, an aggressive straddling figure (think of Epstein's 'Rock Drill'), mouth agape in declarative intent, firmly built from angles and strident lines. It is companioned by 'Two Vorticist Figures', altogether more restrained in mood, even pasha-like in their oriental calm and opulence of outline. The third drawing, in charcoal, `Vorticist Figure Composition', sounds a different note again, being much more dynamic, full of edgy movement and contained energy.
These excellent works are small-scale. The large oil painting nearby, entitled 'Woman at a Mirror' by Frederick Etchells (1913), is shown up mercilessly in comparison, in all its muddy colour and incompetent drawing. Among the other exhibits in this first gallery are several fine things by that brilliantly gifted sculptor who died so young in the war, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. There's a plaster low relief of wrestlers, backed up by a black conte design for a Vorticist ornament, and a carved brass doorknocker. Gaudier made a number of pierced forms in brass, small sculptures of talismanic force, intended to be handled and talked about, which are among the most memorable things he did. Also good is William Roberts's pencil drawing The Boxing Match, Novices'. The room ends with the black chalk portrait of Ezra Pound by Wyndham Lewis from c. 1920. Pound, who invented the term `Vorticism', defined the vortex as the point of maximum energy'. The torso is certainly energetically drawn, but something very strange has happened to the face, which is striped like a mask. Man as machine, perhaps?
A heterogeneous group of works, then, oddly ranging over a ten-year period, and hung rather unsuitably together. Later in the exhibition appears a drawing by Epstein for 'Rock Drill'. Why was it not hung beside Lewis's 'Vorticist'? Why put the late drawing of Pound in this introductory room? There seems to be something arbitrary and illogical about the whole hang. Room 2 focuses on Vorticism and the first world war. The Futurists thought of war as hygienic in its destructive properties, which is ironic, for it effectively put an end to their rival group, the Vorticists. War was a problem for them all. How to glorify the machine age in the midst of mass destruction by machines? 'Marching Men', Nevinson's small intense pastel of troops in movement, sweeps onward with the inevitability of figures on a merry-goround. Roberts went illustrational, even cartoony: look at 'Gunners Turning Out for an SOS' (1918). Only Lewis, the giant of the movement, manages to convey something of the stalking automata quality of exhausted men under orders, screwing their courage to the sticking-place.
An alternative was to go abstract as Lawrence Atkinson did, in a pleasing kind of way, scarcely Vorticist at all. There are a couple of decorative pieces by Helen Saunders, fashioned from lightning stabs and shuddering trident forms, purporting to be studies for cannon or some such, and a much better design by Edward Wadsworth, which openly admits to being abstract, but it's all very well-behaved. Where's the dynamism and the anger? Wadsworth's woodcut for dazzle ship-camouflage is superb, but that's something else, closer to McKnight Kauffer's magnificent 'Flight' image, penetrating further into the spirit of the age, and away from the specifics of Vorticism. Let's chuck in a `vortograph' by Alvin Langdon Coburn just to widen the field a bit more.
That's the trouble with this exhibition: it refuses to identify itself or properly examine its subject; it's too diffuse. Plus the fact that there are too many minor works on show (at least half-a-dozen masterpieces are needed, by the likes of Lewis, Epstein and Nevinson), and it ends up deeply compromised. The third room deals with the postwar era, strictly speaking not Vorticist at all. There are some lovely things here, by Nevinson and Wadsworth (though the latter got rather lost in the industrial landscape), but why bring in Jacob Kramer at this point, fine artist though he is? It simply confuses the issue once more.
What a contrast to turn to the immaculately selected and presented Piranesi exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. A national touring exhibition arranged by the South Bank Centre, this is the last venue (till 29 February) of a lengthy run. Thirty etchings and 15 drawings from the British Museum concentrate on Piranesi's great series of architectural fantasies. the 'Cat-cell'. or 'Imaginary Prisons'. The grandeur of his sublime vision rocked England in the 18th century and continues to exert an influence today. (Look, for instance, at the sets of Harry Potter, or Blade Runner.) An exquisitely compact show — the ink drawings are a delight — which makes its point unerringly. The Estorick should learn from its example.
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