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Blast #2
Blast 2
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112 pages, Paperback
First published July 15, 1915
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 12, 2020
Stripped of nearly all of its fiction, this is undoubtedly worse than the first issue, and it's no surprise at all that this, the second issue, was the last. What a tedious collection of wankery it is - pompous, pontificating, essentially unintelligible. The only thing saving it from a single star is all the artwork. That is genuinely interesting - full of geometry and abstract forms, there was not a single piece of artwork here that I didn't spend substantial time looking at. The poetry, however, is largely indifferent if not actually dreadful, but it's the essays on art (and note the placing of that apostrophe, Mr. Lewis, because the difference between "its" and "it's" clearly escapes you) that's where the rot sets in. Well, you can see my opinion above. Of course it can only be appreciated by intelligent minds, so says the editor, in response to those who didn't slaver over issue one, but all I can think is new clothes and emperors, and that the production of stuff like this, even over a century ago, is what gives intellectualism a bad name.
March 28, 2022
An interesting but decidedly inferior sequel: it's clear the war hit the European avant-garde hard, despite Lewis' insistence that 'art would remain much the same'. No time or space for great moments of insight and raging polemic here, as Gaudier-Brzeska's fiery front-line memo that "MY VIEWS ON SCULPTURE REMAIN EXACTLY THE SAME" is extinguished by a notice of his death on the very next page and Lewis opens the volume apologising for the delay in publication and promising two more issues by the next year, neither of which would ever come to fruition.
The magazine itself is shorter, contains no fiction or drama, and is mostly filled up with Wyndham Lewis' slightly scattered musings on society and the state of modern art. Despite some intriguing insights into the London art scene and Cubism more generally ("HOWEVER MUSICAL OR VEGETARIAN A MAN MAY BE, HIS LIFE IS NOT SPENT EXCLUSIVELY AMONGST APPLES AND MANDOLINS." - man's absolutely savaging Picasso here), the analysis feels repetitive, circuitous and slightly recursive, as if Lewis hadn't quite worked out what more he wanted to put across in the year's gap between editions. The same targets (Marinetti, Victorian academic painters, the common people😭) reappear in his sights, and the same conclusions are drawn (always a horror of 'the crowd', a need to assert themselves as individual and alone even among contemporaries). Tbh it gets tiresome: Lewis' later claim that Vorticism basically amounted to "what I did and said at a particular time" is borne out here and not at all to his credit. Some of Blast #1's nastier undertones are in fuller display here, often in seemingly self-contradictory ways (Gaudier-Brzeska praises the war for killing the economically 'noxious' poor only a page after Lewis castigates Marinetti for glorifying the same thing).
That's not to say this is entirely disappointing though - much of Lewis' analysis of his own Vorticist buddies is enlightening and energising, as is his constant commitment to vitality and 'realism' (as opposed to sentimental naturalism). The volume also has a few great Pound poems, some of Eliot's beautiful early verse is printed here, and a few writers unknown to me (H. Sanders and Jessie Dismorr in particular, who are otherise primarily painters) have some great poetry. Lewis is also often a very funny guy, noting of the rival Camden Town group that he has no feud with them, "and if they would only allow me to alter their pictures a little, and would undergo a brief course of training prescribed by me, I would even AGREE with them"; Pound too has fun skewering an image of a critic of Blast #1:
The biggest draw of this issue, though, is not in its writing but its painting. The stark, black and white prints of Vorticist art scattered throughout the magazine are often stunning, as are the photos of sculptures by Gaudier-Brzeska (odious in his beliefs but clearly a genius) and Jacob Epstein. My favs were Gaudier-Brzeska's totemic Ezra Pound bust and a striking, angular snowscape by Dorothy Shakespear, but the highlights are pretty innumerable and by far the best thing about this volume.
Ultimately, this issue, marred as it is by war and delay, is useful mostly in getting a taste of the attitudes of the most theoretically engaged and rhetorically bombastic vanguard of the modernist movement. As a result there are inevitably a lot of distasteful moments, and sometimes a level of elitist pretension too high even for me (i knoww). It's also at times almost explicitly contradictory (e.g. after Lewis upholds realism, Pound praises a statement upholding that as long as a work of art has 'vivacity', it does not need to correspond to reality whatsoever), but there is a sense that this obstinate contradiction is, if not directly purposeful, supremely allowable so long as it unsettles the tastes of the time. Lewis at one point asserts that "for the sake of your good looks, you must become double", and, most revealingly, writes in 'Life has no Taste' that "taste should become deeper and exclusive: definitely a STRONGHOLD—a point and not a line." To me this sums up the entire attitude of Blast: its posturing is sometimes ridiculous, and eschews any level of nuance or compromise, but this is the whole point. This magazine, though sometimes brilliant, is not necessarily Pound or Lewis' finest or most thoughtful moment, but rather an exercise in combat and provocation, a stronghold of artistic reinvention aiming through sheer polemic attrition to batter a course through modern art; and that obviously comes with casualties.
The magazine itself is shorter, contains no fiction or drama, and is mostly filled up with Wyndham Lewis' slightly scattered musings on society and the state of modern art. Despite some intriguing insights into the London art scene and Cubism more generally ("HOWEVER MUSICAL OR VEGETARIAN A MAN MAY BE, HIS LIFE IS NOT SPENT EXCLUSIVELY AMONGST APPLES AND MANDOLINS." - man's absolutely savaging Picasso here), the analysis feels repetitive, circuitous and slightly recursive, as if Lewis hadn't quite worked out what more he wanted to put across in the year's gap between editions. The same targets (Marinetti, Victorian academic painters, the common people😭) reappear in his sights, and the same conclusions are drawn (always a horror of 'the crowd', a need to assert themselves as individual and alone even among contemporaries). Tbh it gets tiresome: Lewis' later claim that Vorticism basically amounted to "what I did and said at a particular time" is borne out here and not at all to his credit. Some of Blast #1's nastier undertones are in fuller display here, often in seemingly self-contradictory ways (Gaudier-Brzeska praises the war for killing the economically 'noxious' poor only a page after Lewis castigates Marinetti for glorifying the same thing).
That's not to say this is entirely disappointing though - much of Lewis' analysis of his own Vorticist buddies is enlightening and energising, as is his constant commitment to vitality and 'realism' (as opposed to sentimental naturalism). The volume also has a few great Pound poems, some of Eliot's beautiful early verse is printed here, and a few writers unknown to me (H. Sanders and Jessie Dismorr in particular, who are otherise primarily painters) have some great poetry. Lewis is also often a very funny guy, noting of the rival Camden Town group that he has no feud with them, "and if they would only allow me to alter their pictures a little, and would undergo a brief course of training prescribed by me, I would even AGREE with them"; Pound too has fun skewering an image of a critic of Blast #1:
"He dies a death of lingering horror at the thought that even after he has learned even the newest set of made ideas, there will still be more ideas, that the horrid things will grow, will go on growing in spite of him."
The biggest draw of this issue, though, is not in its writing but its painting. The stark, black and white prints of Vorticist art scattered throughout the magazine are often stunning, as are the photos of sculptures by Gaudier-Brzeska (odious in his beliefs but clearly a genius) and Jacob Epstein. My favs were Gaudier-Brzeska's totemic Ezra Pound bust and a striking, angular snowscape by Dorothy Shakespear, but the highlights are pretty innumerable and by far the best thing about this volume.
Ultimately, this issue, marred as it is by war and delay, is useful mostly in getting a taste of the attitudes of the most theoretically engaged and rhetorically bombastic vanguard of the modernist movement. As a result there are inevitably a lot of distasteful moments, and sometimes a level of elitist pretension too high even for me (i knoww). It's also at times almost explicitly contradictory (e.g. after Lewis upholds realism, Pound praises a statement upholding that as long as a work of art has 'vivacity', it does not need to correspond to reality whatsoever), but there is a sense that this obstinate contradiction is, if not directly purposeful, supremely allowable so long as it unsettles the tastes of the time. Lewis at one point asserts that "for the sake of your good looks, you must become double", and, most revealingly, writes in 'Life has no Taste' that "taste should become deeper and exclusive: definitely a STRONGHOLD—a point and not a line." To me this sums up the entire attitude of Blast: its posturing is sometimes ridiculous, and eschews any level of nuance or compromise, but this is the whole point. This magazine, though sometimes brilliant, is not necessarily Pound or Lewis' finest or most thoughtful moment, but rather an exercise in combat and provocation, a stronghold of artistic reinvention aiming through sheer polemic attrition to batter a course through modern art; and that obviously comes with casualties.
December 30, 2023
Forgettable, but for the artwork.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews