BLAST - front cover
BLAST
BLAST was the Vorticists' own periodical and manifesto. It was first published in June 1914. The journal's editor was Wyndham Lewis, the de facto leader of the Vorticists. Subtitled a 'Review of the Great English Vortex', it literally reviewed the state of art at this moment in Great Britain, and what was required to reinvigorate it after the years of Victorian neglect. Its physical appearance was startling. It was a magazine, but unlike any other magazine printed before. The format was a softback of a monstrous size - 12 by 9.5 inches (30.5 by 24cm). The cover was thick puce card, and there was just one word printed diagonally front and back: BLAST. The name of the publication, 'BLAST' is a derogatory exclamation, and is used repeatedly in the first and most important section of the publication, Manifesto I. CRW Nevinson, an artist friend of Lewis, had thought up the title late in 1913, a time which predates the term Vorticism. Nevinson had published ‘Vital English Art’ - a manifesto that effectively made English modern art as a local branch of Italian Futurism. Nevinson had added Lewis’s name as a signatory of this manifesto, though he was not consulted. When he found out about the manifesto, he broke with Nevinson and decided that the publication of BLAST should be put tether, and and the announcement of the group.
CONTENTS of BLAST 1:
Manifesto II.
Poems, by Ezra Pound.
The Saddest Story, by Ford Maddox Hueffer.
Indissoluble Matrimony, by Rebecca West.
"Inner Necessity": Review of Kandinsky's book, by Edward Wadsworth.
Vortices and Notes, by Wyndham Lewis --
"Life is the Important Thing".
Futurism, Magic and Life.
Notes on some German Woodcuts.
Policeman and Artist.
Feng Shui and Contemporary Form.
Relativism and Picasso's Latest Work.
The New egos.
Orchestra of Media.
The Melodrama of Modernity.
Exploitation of Vulgarity.
The Improvement of Life.
Our Vortex.
Frederick Spenser Gore, by Wyndham Lewis.
To Suffragettes.
Vortex, Pound.
Vortex, Gaudier Brzeska.
Next: The Vorticist Manifesto