Exhibitions
Wyndham Lewis: Art and War (Imperial War Museum, till 11 October)
Spiked gun
Giles Auty
The era in which Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) came to maturity as a painter was one of the more complex, not just in terms of art but of world affairs in general, within recent history. The precise place Lewis occupied in all of this and his longer- term significance are equally problematic to pronounce upon. The Imperial War Museum is to be congratulated on mount- ing this timely exhibition which may help one resolve at least some of the questions.
Lewis was a painter, critic, author and polemicist whose posthumous reputation has suffered from the taint of anti- radicalism in politics and latterly in criti- cism. Of course, the least whiff of reac- tionary sentiment — however well justified — invites similar opprobrium still in the world of modern art museums, broadcast- ing and teaching. Although this country has never had a Marxist government nor yet a Communist Party polling even five per cent of our vote, the teaching of modern art his- tory from a Marxist perspective continues apace now in British universities. I may well be the only person in the country who finds this state of affairs remarkable. Since I do not know him, I cannot ask Mr Yel- tsin's opinion on the matter, but I imagine he would find it hardly less peculiar than I.
Percy Wyndham Lewis was born in Canada of Anglo-American parents and arrived in Britain at the age of six. He attended the Slade School and may thus owe at least some of his subsequent skills as a draughtsman to the teaching of Tonics. After a good deal of travel, Lewis wound up in Paris, where he formed a friendship with Augustus John, who had preceded him at the Slade. Lewis's early art reflected the influences of Cubism and Futurism and he was instrumental in adding another 'ism' to the language: Vorticism. In brief, Vorti- cism rendered not only the man-made but the organic and humankind itself in mecha- nistic form. Vorticism did not escape the bombast of claims made for other new ways of seeing and avant-gardist philoso- phies. To those of us born later, the attrac- tion of many of the intellectual enthusiasms of the time and their almost total absence of logic seem close to incom- prehensible. Thus I could never understand the great enthusiasm of so inquiring a man as my late father not just for the writing but for the pseudo-philosophy of D.H. Lawrence. I must presume there was a time when even intelligent people found it fun or even flattering to be considered 'mod- ern' in some way or other. This may be because the whole idea of modernism and its unruly child avant-gardism — con- tinues to enjoy unqualified adulation, in terms of modern art history, at least. Avant-gardist ideas and philosophies may have been — indeed often were — barely thought through, bringing catastrophic con- sequences subsequently for generations of artistic innocents. Yet they are praised still, in general, as though they have brought humankind nothing but untold and unqual- ified benefits. This was a matter Wyndham Lewis pointed out forcibly at the end of his life, in an anthology of his critical writings, mostly from the Listener, for which he wrote from 1946 to 1951. These were pub- `Battery Position in a Wood; 1918, pen and ink, crayon, watercolour, by Wyndham Lewis lished by Faber in 1954 under the title The Demon of Progress in the Arts, a polemic against the excesses of avant-gardism. Although blind by then, Lewis saw a great deal more clearly than a majority of art critics who have written subsequently.
There is much to admire in Wyndham Lewis's thinking and writing, not least that he made the habit of doing the one before the other. I wish I could confess, therefore, to slightly greater liking for his visual pro- ductions. My problem here is that I tend to judge the adequacy or otherwise of works of art simply as works of art, rather than as a synthesis of the fashionable ideas of their period. In essence, I try to rid my mind of the knowledge of when a painting or sculp- ture was made; this is one of a number of extrinsic factors which does not, in my view, affect the intrinsic quality of the fin- ished artefact. Naturally such a method is absolute heresy to art historians, who often esteem objects largely or even solely by their date of manufacture.
The current exhibition at the Imperial War Museum features some 77 works and a more than usually intelligent catalogue with a fine foreword by the keeper of art there, Angela Weight. Lewis had the graphic ability with which to express his vision at least adequately. Much of the work on view relates to the first world war and its attendant ennuis and horrors. Some of the major set piece works, such as 'A Canadian Gun Pit' (1918), abandon the stylistic excesses of Vorticism. This painting has proved a less controversial production than the equally vast 'A Battery Shelled' (1919), which has less obvious stylistic unity. Lewis's war pictures lack the human- ism of Eric Kennington, symbolism of Paul Nash or compositional charms of Sydney Carline or Christopher Nevinson. In fact, the spikiness of Lewis's art and mind con- tinue to deter many from the value of their message. The death of John Piper earlier this week at the age of 88 removes a fine artist and civilised man from our midst. I met him for the first time in 1967, and remem- ber tea at his house for the remarkable variety of honeys on offer and for his patience with a young man's enthusiasms. We talked about stained glass and the lat- est modes in painting. He presented me with some books and I gave him some tiny oil paintings on paper. I wonder whether he kept them. I do not feel his merits have been recognised adequately by a museum world dedicated still to the excesses of avant-gardism. The artist was justly annoyed to be represented at the end of his career by a single, atypical abstract painting in the survey show British Art in the 20th Century, which took place in 1987 at the Royal Academy. Piper was, in fact, one of therespected leaders of the important British neo-Romantic movement which was hardly represented at all. I hope time and more sensible evaluation of art history will serve him better.
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