Blast

Overview

The journal Blast was designed by editor Wyndham Lewis to promulgate the Vorticist movement in England. This movement included a rejection of traditional landscapes in art in favor of an abstract style inspired by cubism. Unfortunately, Lewis was only able to put out two editions of Blast before World War I killed many of his writers, as well as his movement. Before its demise, however, the movement hinged upon the assertion that Englishmen had lost their artistic senses. Lewis says, “We hear from America and the Continent all sorts of disagreeable things about England: ‘the unmusical, anti-artistic, unphilosophic country.’ We quite agree” (24; vol. 1).

The writers in Blast realized that the war had taken from the English nation its ability to create things simply for the cause of beauty. Part of this was due to the fact that not many people were left to be artists when the most able-bodied men were sent to fight in the war and everyone else who was left at home was forced to take over the soldiers’ former societal duties. However, Lewis remarks that the dismal background of war demands art more than any other era of time; “to suffragettes. You and artists are the only things . . . left in England with a little life in them” (193; vol. 1). Here, Lewis outlines his purpose: to encourage the creation of art in order to bring life back into a nation hollowed out by war.  

However, as the war wore on, even Lewis’ own writers lost their enthusiasm for Vorticist ideals, and Lewis himself shows concession in the second and final issue of his journal. “The Public lets its artists starve in peace time, there is really nothing to be said…under these circumstances artists probably should paint, fight, or make a living in some trade according to their inclination or means” (25; vol. 2). Lewis was called to the trenches soon after the publication of the second edition of Blast. With no editor to represent the movement, radical artists were left feeling that they had no place in the British nation.