SOURCE: "Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism," in Blast 3, edited by Seamus Cooney, and others, Black Sparrow Press, 1984, pp. 47-50.

In the following essay, Wees documents Lewis's activities as the founding figure of the Vorticist movement.

In 1914 Wyndham Lewis devoted much of his time to what he described as his "undeniable political activity." In the space of half a year Lewis directed London's new Rebel Art Centre, led a widely reported campaign against the Italian Futurists, and edited and made most of the major contributions to BLAST, Review of the Great English Vortex. These activities attracted attention—exactly the purpose of art politics—and won for Lewis a reputation as, in the words of the Daily News (7 April 1914), "the extremely able leader of the Cubist movement in England."

Lewis's sly self-caricature in Blasting and Bombardiering describes "Mr. W.L., Leader of the 'Great London Vortex,'" who discovered in himself...