Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- List of abbreviations and note on references to The Cantos
- Introduction
- Part I Biography and works
- Part II Historical and cultural context
- 16 The classics
- 17 Provençal and the troubadours
- 18 Dante and early Italian poetry
- 19 America
- 20 Venice
- 21 London
- 22 Paris
- 23 Rapallo and Rome
- 24 Pisa
- 25 Imagism
- 26 Vorticism
- 27 Music
- 28 Visual arts
- 29 Confucius
- 30 The Orient
- 31 Little magazines
- 32 Publishing and publishers
- 33 Modernism
- 34 Fascism
- 35 Anti-Semitism
- 36 Gender and sexuality
- 37 Race
- 38 Travel
- Part III Critical reception
- Further reading
- Index
26 - Vorticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- List of abbreviations and note on references to The Cantos
- Introduction
- Part I Biography and works
- Part II Historical and cultural context
- 16 The classics
- 17 Provençal and the troubadours
- 18 Dante and early Italian poetry
- 19 America
- 20 Venice
- 21 London
- 22 Paris
- 23 Rapallo and Rome
- 24 Pisa
- 25 Imagism
- 26 Vorticism
- 27 Music
- 28 Visual arts
- 29 Confucius
- 30 The Orient
- 31 Little magazines
- 32 Publishing and publishers
- 33 Modernism
- 34 Fascism
- 35 Anti-Semitism
- 36 Gender and sexuality
- 37 Race
- 38 Travel
- Part III Critical reception
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
Writing from Rapallo in 1924, Ezra Pound waxed nostalgic to his comrade the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, reminiscing about a moment a decade earlier when he and Lewis had converged in London's avant-guerre artistic milieu. In 1914, Pound and Lewis had both been members of the newly emergent avant-garde movement of vorticism, known chiefly for its paintings – which featured a bold, angular, dynamic version of the geometric abstract idiom prevalent in the visual arts of the early twentieth century – but also involving sculpture, literature, and photography. Lewis had spearheaded the movement; Pound had joined it in mid 1914.
In his retrospective letter, Pound recalled Blast, the short-lived periodical (1914–15) that had served as vorticism's official organ and housed its manifestoes. A foot in height, with a bright puce cover stamped with aggressive black sans-serif lettering, Blast sported an outlandish visual code that signaled avant-garde defiance and mischief – and, as Paige Reynolds notes, that resonated with the visual signatures of advertising of the climate. Lewis would later fondly remember Blast as “that hugest and pinkest of magazines.” The magazine's contents – including hyperbolic manifestoes “blasting” Victorianism in gigantic type; geometric paintings; a phantasmagoric avant-garde play by Wyndham Lewis entitled Enemy of the Stars, ventured as an example of literary vorticism – sustained the audacity signaled by the magazine's bibliographic code.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ezra Pound in Context , pp. 285 - 297Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010