Zigzag

I spent a total of 227 minutes in two Zoom meetings today, which is my personal best. I chose this photograph after reading about the Vorticists (see below) and the zigzags reminded me of the Edward Wadsworth painting.      

My first listen was to an album by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - "The Nashville Sound" (2017) on which my favourite song was White Man's World.

The Vorticists were a short-lived group of London-based artists and writers including Wyndham Lewis and the poet Ezra Pound who coined the term in 1913.  He drew on the idea of a vortex - a whirlpool of energy around a still still centre. They lasted as a group until 1915 although many of the group’s members had long careers as artists.

Lewis adopted the violent rhetoric of the Italian Futurists, celebrating technology, dynamism and war. He admired the machines and tall buildings of the modern world, often from unusual viewpoints. His A Battery Shelled (1919) was his description of experiences as an artillery soldier in World War I. The stylised figures and geometric structures are typically Vorticist.  The three dark figures on the left gaze impassively on the destruction wrought by their guns. During the 1930s, Lewis attracted criticism for his authoritarian views and sympathy for Fascism.

Edward Wadsworth was born in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire and worked as a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. His drawings and paintings of seaside scenes and Black Country industry were very successful in the 1920s. His Fortune's Well, Portland (1921) uses Cubist shapes for the rooftops and geometric diagonals, zigzagging through the painting, around a dominating pair of smokestacks. The colours - beige, grey, white, black and blue and the sooty clouds create a cold, harsh atmosphere.

William Roberts signed the Vorticists’ manifesto in 1914.  He then saw active service in World War 1 and became an official war artist.  Bank Holiday in the Park (1923) showed groups of figures (not socially distanced!) arranged in energetic positions, gesticulating and comical.

Roberts’ painting The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915 shows that the group were mostly male with just two female artists Jessica Dismoor and Helen Saunders.  They are placed at the back of the scene, standing near the door of the London restaurant whilst the men are all seated. Frederick Etchells holds a copy of the first issue of the Vorticist magazine “Blast” which contained their manifesto. Dismorr had a difficult relationship with Wyndham Lewis, and was, along with  Saunders said to be one of the "little lapdogs who wanted to be Lewis’s slaves and do everything for him”.

Few of Helen Saunders’ paintings remain. Vorticist Design (1915) is a typical example of her abstract work. Jessica Dismoor's self portrait (1929) recalls the style of Gwen John.