Wyndham Lewis: an exhibition within the Fine Art, Design & Antiques fair Olympia London 1-6 March 2005

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Angus Stewart

WYNDHAM LEWIS 1882-1957

In his day admired and abhorred in equal measure, now Almost forgotten or ignored, this artist and author had a Devilish insight into human vagaries.

Wyndham Lewis was an inordinately influential twentieth-century artist. In an age of volcanic social change, his was a disciplined, stable and overwhelming intelligence.

Often unkempt, usually poverty stricken and always derided for his pleas for support, which alternated with bouts of searing ingratitude, Lewis did not have an endearing personality. But with the benefit of hindsight it might be true to say that these unattractive traits were maintained for his self-protection, if his behaviour had been merely bohemian he would have been tolerated, cherished and, possibly, drowned in charity: a fate which overtook his friend Augustus John. Lewis's integrity was clothed in tougher leather.

On the pronouncements of the Delphic oracle, Heraclitus wrote that it 'neither says nor conceals, but gives a sign'. The oracular fragments that survive are dense and cryptic, which means that interpretation is all. The same is true of Lewis's imagery, It is decorative, pleasing and attractive. It appears not to demand close examination. But beware, for what it at first appears to reveal is not necessarily the signal Lewis intended.

In his writings Lewis put his thoughts and his experience on view. Heraclitus's sentence 'I went in search of myself' can be applied to Lewis. And just as the writings refer back to their author, so Lewis's paintings reflect some momentary insight--each is a visual aphorism.

Satire is a term too frequently used in association with Lewis; it is applied as if to excuse his writings and pictures. But it is an inappropriate term, for it places his work in the category of humour, exaggeration and ridicule, thus suggesting that he thought his subjects were indulging in amusing, stupid or vicious practises. Of course he knew this was exactly what they were doing; and that this was what he did. Nevertheless, Lewis's interest in vice and folly was not to pass judgement, but to understand. Calling him a satirist is the equivalent of describing an adult's behaviour as childish or adolescent; it is a tag of subtle denigration, a camouflaged expression of contempt.

The childishness, the adolescence and the mischief inherent in human nature were Lewis's pleasures as well as the source of his invention. He did not mock or despise; he wondered why he and others took the actions they did; he was resigned to folly; he did not condemn it, indeed he rejoiced in it. Expelled from the exotic intellectual circle that surrounded the Sitwells, an unabashed Lewis remarked that Edith 'is one of my most hoary, tried and reliable enemies. We are two good old enemies, Edith and I, inseparables, in fact'.

Fact preoccupied Lewis and yet he was a fantasist with brush and pencil and pen. The comedie bumaine was for him rooted in small everyday events. In his novels it is reality that is unblinking; shame and apology and the like were little moves in the great game, of no more importance than a brief gesture. In Tarr, written in 1916, and published in 1918, the author recorded the mishaps of a post-pubescent artistic demi-monde set in pre-war Paris. Forty years later, in Self Condemned, a book described by T.S. Eliot as of 'almost unbearable agony', Lewis told the tale of an academic frozen by his self-discovery. If Lewis was an outsider, by choice a self-willed exile, it was due to his refusal or inability to dance to the music of his time. In the detail of his judgement and in the depths of his errors there was a risk, arrogance and grandeur reminiscent of Periclean Greece.

On first impression, many of Lewis's pictures appear to be illustrations--slight, immediate and possibly superficial. The opposite is truer. The imagery has an affinity with Cycladic sculpture, with the forms of the archaic kouros, with the masks of the Luba from Zaire, and many other forms of expression evolved by rustics as opposed to urbanites. Lewis in terms of his art was a metropolitan in search of the visceral and his analysis of the life force was forensic in its intensity. He applied the same concentrated thought which led Newton to identify gravity. Like all scientists, Lewis was consistently on the prowl.

Imagination and intellect in Lewis were balanced; keeping those scales even was one of the artist's great skills. In words and in images he undressed human folly, and after re-shaping, recolouring and re-assembling it he sent out glyphs and icons such as had not been seen before, but which justly reflected his time. Lewis appears to have accepted Montaigne's saw 'It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity.'

Picasso, his contemporary, gave Lewis much enjoyment; but the critic, the aesthete, the philosopher in Lewis was not bamboozled. He wrote:

   It is possible to admire Picasso, to
   marvel at his great agility, but to
   admire other artists more. And I
   believe there are other models whose
   superior merits should be stressed,
   especially at the present time. For it
   is no longer a question of defending
   Picasso against the censure or abuse
   of the ignorant. Picasso's reputation
   is quite safe. It is, in fact, a question
   of saving art itself.