Wyndham Lewis

The works of (Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) are an essential port of call for anyone interested in twentieth century visual art, literature, philosophy, social and political theory, and the map of modernism generally. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only example of an English movement deserving of the title ‘avant-garde’. His insistence on the value of Art as a predominant critical category involves a complicated series of interventions in normative thinking that give way in the 1930s to a more ‘approachable’ literary output, alongside an unclassifiable series of works headed by The Childermass. The progression of his ideas from the early Wild Body narratives to his final writings, and from his early images to his later output, can be read as a barometer of how Art might survive its perceived antagonists. His construction of the ‘Enemy’ persona reveals a reflexive commitment to critical activity in the face of modernity’s depredations. His multivalent exploration of twentieth century values, as they appear within and across disciplines, include landmark studies of how best to represent and critique these values in the light of emerging historical co-ordinates. His work often stages provocative issues, leaving their significance to critical reception. Careful reading reveals that the character and content of his work cannot be confined to neat descriptive labels.

He was one of the ‘Men of 1914’, yet his work has still to receive the kind of attention accorded to other modernists. Yet interest continues to grow, supported by scholarly exegesis and critical assessments, the latter often with a high degree of sophistication following Fredric Jameson’s Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist (1979), whose title belies the author’s interrogative approach to Lewis’s apparent political affiliation.

The scope, density, development, and interdisciplinarity of Lewis’s work present a remarkable challenge to scholarship that in the past has sometimes foundered on narrow particularities, or a lack of nuanced engagement. We hope the contents of this website serve to enhance an understanding of Lewis’s irruptive, but also symptomatic, contribution to twentieth century thought, and its relevance for the present.