Sunday, 7 August 2011

The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World

















Illustration: William Roberts

If you are in London over the summer break I recommend the following show
at Tate Britain, the SHU library also has some fantastic printed examples of
Vorticist works in it's archive.

Tate Britain 14 June  –  4 September 2011

Vorticism was a radical art movement that shone briefly but brightly in the years before and during World War I. This exhibition celebrates the full electrifying force and vitality of this short-lived but pivotal modernist movement that was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.

The Vorticists forged a distinctive style combining machine-age forms and energetic imagery, embracing modernity and blasting away the staid legacy of the Edwardian past.

Focusing on the only two Vorticist exhibitions mounted during the lifetime, in London and New York, this striking exhibition brings together over 100 key works; including photography and literary ephemera, as well as seminal pieces by Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

This exhibition aims to shine a new light on this revolutionary group of artists, presenting the style, radical aesthetics and thoughts of one of the most truly avant-garde art movements in British history.