December 2025. Blast (issue 1), edited by Wyndham Lewis

1914, The Bodley Head, 206 pages. Written in English, read in English

[Blast is a short lived literary magazine published by Wyndham Lewis as an introduction to the Vorticist artistic movement in 1914— only 2 issues were published, of which I read the first for the purpose of this article]

First there was futurism. An artistic movement, started by an Italian poet and theorist but primarily affecting plastic art — painting and sculpture. The futuristic movement called for a departure from the classical art, primarily that which had its roots in Italian history, through jagged, forceful lines and colours, through more brutalistic means, and the glorification of war and destruction as a means of progress and distancing from the past. As futurism was a form of avant-garde, on his first visit to the UK, Marinetti, who was the founder of the movement, incorporated almost all of the main avant-garde practitioners in the UK at the time as signatories to an article he published in The Observer, including Wyndham Lewis. Lewis, and some of his contemporaries who were also signed without their consent on the article, did not like the implication that being an avant-gardist automatically means being a futurist, and organized a demonstration during a reading of one of Marinetti’s poems, during which they’ve shouted and hackled the poet, preventing the reading from continuing as planned.

Lewis decided to respond further by initiating an artistic movement that would act as a counter measure to futurism, and so vorticism was born. The plastic art that was borne out of that movement — still jagged, still forceful, but somehow appeared more in line with nature, as if a series of geometric shapes were an organic being that was just being portrayed.

An artistic movement that respects itself needs a manifesto, and therefore Lewis and his associates decided to found a magazine that would include the manifesto and some examples of the art that erupts from this manifesto, and so Blast was born. In addition to the manifesto, it was important to set boundaries — a series of examples that will easily orient the reader to where vorticism sits in relation to other cultural phenomena — and so the magazine also includes a list of cultural references to bless, those that the vorticists approved of, and a list of cultural references to blast, those that the vorticists abhorred and called to eliminate. The name of the magazine itself, then, is either a reference to it being part of the latter list, or an indication that the more important cultural items are those that should be blasted.

The manifesto, and the bless and blast lists, take up the first fifth of the first issue of the magazine. The rest of it is dedicated to several poems by Ezra Pound, several paintings by Edward Wordsworth, Wyndham Lewis, Spencer Gore and others, some short stories (one of which, an attempt to serialize a novel with view of a long living magazine, seemed to me at the beginning to be a parody of a novel I’ve read, “The Good Soldier”, but turned out to be an early version of the beginning of the actual novel), some opinion pieces, and some art reviews (including a scathing review of a contemporary Picasso exhibition).

The first issue of the magazine seems to be primarily focused on being a declaration of intent — this is vorticism, this is what it looks like, and we, its progenitors and practitioners, are here to stay — it seems to say. History thought otherwise. While futurism, and also vorticism to some extent, glorified war and destruction, an actual war, bringing with it an unfathomable amount of destruction, erupted a month after the first issue was published. Two of the magazine’s contributors were killed in action already in the first months of the war. Lewis managed to publish one more issue of the magazine and was then mobilized himself in 1916. When the war was over, Lewis did not succeed in publishing any additional issues of the magazine, or creating new ventures for vorticism — the momentum was gone, and with it vorticism itself.

The January 2026 selection for the David Bowie Book Club will be The Prime of Miss Jane Brodie by Muriel Spark.