- Author
- Not stated (Wikipedia contributors)
- Published
- Last edited 6 September 2026
- Kind
- Encyclopedia article, collaboratively written
- Original
- en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorticism
- Subject
- Art movements and theory
- Themes
- How forms evolve
What it is
Wikipedia contributors wrote this reference article. It covers Wyndham Lewis's London group, the magazine BLAST, the war years and later reputation.
What it says
- Wyndham Lewis formed the London-based movement in 1914, partly inspired by Cubism.
- Ezra Pound's idea of the vortex named the movement. Lewis hoped its vagueness would suit the rebels.
- The Vorticist magazine BLAST was launched at a dinner on 15 July 1914.
- War began weeks later, and the 1915 Vorticist Exhibition was ignored by the press.
- Within a year of the war's start, most Vorticist artists had enlisted.
- Thirty-eight of forty-nine works shown in 1915 were later missing, according to Richard Cork.
- The movement was largely forgotten until a 1956 Tate dispute. Cork's 1974 show went further.
What evidence it gives
The article cites exhibition catalogues, memoirs and essays in its notes. It quotes Lewis's catalogue foreword, Pound and Lewis's Brighton introduction.
Interests and limits
Wikipedia is open to editing, so the text reflects its contributors at one date. The account leans on Cork's catalogue. It describes style in broad terms and shows few works in detail.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- Hauntology. Fisher and Reynolds apply hauntology to music about lost futures. Vorticism offers a case from an earlier century. It announced a future in July 1914, and war began weeks later. Richard Cork counts 38 of its 49 shown works as later missing.