Blast

Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex was a magazine founded by Wyndham Lewis with the assistance of Ezra Pound. It ran for just two issues, published in 1914 and 1915. The First World War killed it—along with some of its key contributors. Blast’s purpose was to promote a new movement in literature and visual art, christened “Vorticism” by Pound and Lewis. Unlike its immediate predecessors and rivals, Vorticism was English, rather than French or Italian, but its dogmas emerged from Imagism in literature and Cubism plus Futurism in the visual arts. The first issue of Blast includes artwork by Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, and others, along with a manifesto for Vorticism and lists of blasts, blesses, and curses of a whole range of people, concepts, and movements. It also includes a play by Lewis and fiction by Ford Madox Hueffer and Rebecca West. The second issue includes a notice of Gaudier-Brzeska’s death in France. Despite its short life, Blast was a powerful influence in the shaping and promoting of modernism. (Source).

Issues

Blast 1 (June 1914). 212 pages, 30.5 x 24.8 cm. Download (23 mb).

Blast 2 (July 1915). 112 pages, 30.5 x 24.8 cm. Download (10 mb).

The above PDFs are sourced from The Modernist Journals Project. Brown University Library hosts backups: Issue 1, Issue 2.

Literature

• Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, London: Tate Gallery, 1956. Catalogue.
• William C. Wees, Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde, University of Toronto Press, 1972, 273 pp.
• Vorticism and its Allies, ed. Richard Cork, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1974. Catalogue.
• Wallace Martin, "Vorticism", Contemporary Literature 15:1 (Winter 1974), pp 145-147. [1]
• Richard Cork, Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age, 2 vols., London: G. Fraser, 1975-76. [2]
• Timothy Materer, Vortex: Pound, Eliot, and Lewis, Cornell University Press, 1979, 251 pp. Review: Charles Clark (Modern Age).
• Richard Cork, "What Was Vorticism?", in Wyndham Lewis, ed. J. Farrington, London, 1980, pp 23-29.
• Reed Way Dasenbrock, The Literary Vorticism of Ezra Pound & Wyndham Lewis: Towards the Condition of Painting, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
• Richard Cork, "Vorticism", in Futurismo & futurismi, ed. P. Hulten, Venice: Pal. Grassi, 1986.
• Toby Avard Foshay, Wyndham Lewis and the Avant-Garde: The Politics of the Intellect, McGill Queens University Press, 1992.
• Vincent Sherry, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Radical Modernism, 1993.
• Blast: Vortizismus - die Erste Avantgarde in England, 1914-1918, Berlin: Ars Nicolai, 1996. Catalogue. (German)
• Paul Edwards (ed.), Blast: Vorticism, 1914-1918, Ashgate Publishing, 2000, 160 pp.
• Michael E. Leveridge, "The Printing of Blast", Wyndham Lewis Annual 7 (2000), pp 20-31.
• Blasting the Future! Vorticism in Britain 1910-1920, London: Philip Wilson, 2004. Catalogue.
• Mark Morrisson, "Blast: An Introduction", Brown University Library, c2005.
• Miranda B. Hickman, The Geometry of Modernism: the Vorticist Odiom in Lewis, Pound, H.D., and Yeats, University of Texas Press, 2005.
• Blasting the Future: Vorticism in Britain 1910-1920, London: Philip Wilson, 2006, 112 pp. [3]
• Vorticists, eds. Mark Antliff and Vivien Greene, London: Tate Publishing, 2010, 192 pp. Catalogue. [4] Exh. reviews: [5], [6].
• Mark Antliff, Scott W. Klein (eds.), Vorticism: New Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2013. [7]

Links

• Blast at Monoskop Log
• Blast in Index of Modernist Magazines
• http://richardawarren.wordpress.com/category/vorticism/

	Avant-garde and modernist magazines
Poesia (1905-09, 1920), Der Sturm (1910-32), Blast (1914-15), The Egoist (1914-19), The Little Review (1914-29), 291 (1915-16), MA (1916-25), De Stijl (1917-20, 1921-32), Dada (1917-21), Noi (1917-25), 391 (1917-24), Zenit (1921-26), Broom (1921-24), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet (1922), Die Form (1922, 1925-35), Contimporanul (1922-32), Secession (1922-24), Klaxon (1922-23), Merz (1923-32), LEF (1923-25), G (1923-26), Irradiador (1923), Sovremennaya architektura (1926-30), Novyi LEF (1927-29), ReD (1927-31), Close Up (1927-33), transition (1927-38).

	Full list
Entretiens politiques et littéraires (1890-93), Moderní revue (1894-1925), Volné směry (1897-1948), Mir iskusstva (1898-1904), Vesy (1904-09), Poesia (1905-09, 1920), Zolotoe runo (1906-10), The Mask (1908-29), Apollon (1909-17), Ukraïnska khata (1909-14), Der Sturm (1910-32), Thalia (1910-13), Rhythm (1911-13), Trudy i dni (1912), Simbolul (1912), The Glebe (1913-14), Ocharovannyi strannik (1913-16), Revolution (1913), Blast (1914-15), The Little Review (1914-29), Futuristy (1914), Zeit-Echo (1914-17), The Egoist (1914-19), L'Élan (1915-16), 291 (1915-16), Orpheu (1915), La Balza futurista (1915), MA (1916-25), SIC (1916-19), flamman (1916-21), The Blindman (1917), Nord-Sud (1917-18), De Stijl (1917-20, 1921-32), Dada (1917-21), Klingen (1917-20, 1942), Noi (1917-25), 391 (1917-24), Modernisme et compréhension (1917), Anarkhiia (1917-18), Iskusstvo kommuny (1918-19), Formiści (1919-21), S4N (1919-25), La Cité (1919-35), Aujourd'hui (1919), Exlex (1919-20), L'Esprit nouveau (1920-25), Orfeus (1920-21), Action (1920-22), Proverbe (1920-22), Ça ira (1920-23), Zenit (1921-26), Kinofon (1921-22), Het Overzicht (1921-25), Jednodńuwka futurystuw (1921), Nowa sztuka (1921-22), Broom (1921-24), Život (1921-48), Creación (1921-24), Jar-Ptitza (1921-26), New York Dada (1921), Aventure (1921-22), Spolokhi (1921-23), Gargoyle (1921-22), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet (1922), Kino-fot (1922-23), Le Coeur à barbe (1922), Die Form (1922, 1925-35), 7 Arts (1922-28), Manomètre (1922-28), Ultra (1922), Út (1922-25), Dada-Jok (1922), Dada Tank (1922), Dada Jazz (1922), Mécano (1922-23), Contimporanul (1922-32), Zwrotnica (1922-23, 1926-27), Secession (1922-24), Stavba (1922-38), Gostinitsa dlya puteshestvuyuschih v prekrasnom (1922-24), Putevi (1922-24), Klaxon (1922-23), Akasztott Ember (1922-23), MSS (1922-23), Perevoz Dada (1922-49), Egység (1922-24), L'Architecture vivante (1923-33), Merz (1923-32), LEF (1923-25), G (1923-26), The Next Call (1923-26), Russkoye iskusstvo (1923), Disk (1923-25), Irradiador (1923), Surréalisme (1924), Almanach Nowej Sztuki (1924-25), La Révolution surréaliste (1924-29), Blok (1924-26), Pásmo (1924-26), DAV (1924-37), Bulletin de l'Effort moderne (1924-27), ABC (1924-28), CAP (1924-28), Athena (1924-25), Punct (1924-25), 75HP (1924), Le Tour de Babel (1925), Periszkop (1925-26), Integral (1925-28), Praesens (1926, 1930), Sovremennaya architektura (1926-30), bauhaus (1926-31), Das neue Frankfurt (1926-31), L'Art cinématographique (1926-31), Dokumentum (1926-27), Kritisk Revy (1926-28), Novyi LEF (1927-29), i 10 (1927-29), Nova generatsiia (1927-30), ReD (1927-31), Dźwignia (1927-28), Tank (1927-28), Close Up (1927-33), Horizont (1927-32), transition (1927-38), Discontinuité (1928), Munka (1928-39), Quosego (1928-29), Urmuz (1928), Unu (1928-32), Revista de Antropofagia (1928-29), 50 u Evropi (1928-29), Documents (1929-30), L'Art Contemporain - Sztuka Współczesna (1929-30), Adam (1929-40), Art concret (1930), Zvěrokruh (1930), Alge (1930-31), Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930-33), Levá fronta (1930-33), Kvart (1930-37, 1945-49), Nová Bratislava (1931-32), Linja (1931-33), Spektrum (1931-33), Nadrealizam danas i ovde (1931-32), Ulise (1932-33), Die neue Stadt (1932-33), Mouvement (1933), PLAN (1933-36), Karavan (1934-35), Ekran (1934), Axis (1935-37), Acéphale (1936-39), Telehor (1936), aka (1937-38), Plastique (1937-39), Plus (1938-39), Les Réverbères (1938-39).