On Turner's 'Rain, Steam, and Speed' (1844)

Amongst the insipidity of ships, sunsets,
Empty skies, and atmospheric beaches
A screaming black train hurtles
Across a bridge headlong into view.

The gentle mist mingles with the daubs of steam
Overpowered natural water obscure the light
The river vapours rising from dark depths
To enshroud the transformed landscape

Muted bird calls and whispering grasses all
Sounds dampened; making way for clamour
Metallic hammering modern rhythm
Filling the valley with repeated echoing futures

A new tang filling the senses, excited quivering
Sweet sulphur assaulting country nostrils
Leaving lives breathless for the modern way
Scattering all before, Vulcan's relentless demon

Rain, Steam and Speed at the National Gallery

Challenges

 
Frenetic challenging intense
A room of competing voices
Leaving mind numbly racing
Ideas demanding attention

Yes I'll deal with you later

Fragrant beguiling twilight
A day easing by the scents
Making sense of a change in pace
Ideas forming through anticipation
 
Yes these thoughts suit me fine

Fanciful meaningful philosophy
Contrasting connections with  glee
Scribbling still enjoying the thrill
Preferring the challenge of something new 

Exuberant and Orgiastic: Wyndham Lewis and his 'Kermesse'

This is a follow on from the Modernism posting and is also inspired by the current exhibition at Tate Britain on Picasso (and I may even have the Damien Hirst retrospective in mind too). It concerns an anti establishment figure from the British avant-garde. Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a controversial cosmopolitan figure, frequently at loggerheads with fellow artists, friends, critics, gallery owners, patrons and the public. What I wanted to focus on here was the decoration of London’s so called first modern night club and the creation of his influential Kermesse in 1912.

He recognised the potential of any kind of publicity very early on in his artistic and career. Though his background and education was already unconventional he cultivated an exotic appearance, with the writer Ford Maddox Ford describing his appearance in 1909 as Russian, Polish or Spanish, looking ‘every inch the genius’, ‘tall, swarthy…with romantically disordered hair, wearing a long black coat buttoned up to his chin’. Hemingway described him as ‘the nastiest man he has ever seen, looked like a frog and had the eyes of a frustrated rapist’.

Everything Wyndham Lewis said and did was designed to fight against the conservative reaction against modern radical art, Robert Chapman writes ‘Augustus John in Chiaroscuro presents Lewis as a wild mysterious figure, playing the part of an incarnate Loki, bearing the news and sowing discord with it’. Indeed, ‘harsh, sardonic and hard hitting, Lewis and his associates struck out against one and all and everyone they considered atrophied and outworn, not sparing the Cubists, Futurists or Expressionists from the ‘blast’’. His odd behaviours, sexual liaisons, uncompromising and confrontational attitude and his determination to blast the artistic and literary establishment in London guaranteed public interest and press controversy.

Hope Lost

The seductive embrace of the abyss beckons
Looking up shows the fallen depths
Paradise receding. That's not coming back.
The macabre dance of a skeletal soul

Bones picked bare, stripped of humanity
The pain all but invisible;
The sockets of insanity dulled
By persistent unconscious torture

An explorative embrace of the abyss inevitable
How far can brittle mind be pushed?
Paradise undeserved. With soul already gone
Hollowness remains to mock fake pretence