Unlike its Vorticist predecessor, Blast, Wyndham Lewis's second short-lived magazine, The Tyro, concerns itself less with aesthetic/theoretical didacticism than it does with critical analyses of modernist issues, particularly in art. The ostensible aim in publishing such articles is to disprove the prevailing belief, observed by Lewis, that "Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism, and all the rest of that revolutionary phase of art, is dead" (No. 2, page 3). In the second (and final) issue of The Tyro, published in 1922, authors O. Raymond Drey and Jessie Dismorr each make a case for the continued relevance of modern art: Drey, by deconstructing the complicated and often bemused societal attitudes toward modernism, and Dismorr by cataloguing the recent crop of modern artists working out of Russia, whose emerging bodies of vital, experimental work in painting, sculpture and costume disproved the notion that modernism was dead.
Drey's article, "Abstract Art and Some Analogies," primarily addresses the belief that, lacking function, abstract art is useless. He counters this idea with the contention that, though its function is unusual, it serves a function nevertheless. Unlike those objects with aesthetic value related to the direct relationship between form and function, as in the beauty of a yacht's hull or "the cambered wings of an aeroplane," the aesthetic value of the abstract is not related to productivity (14). Rather, the effect of abstract art is "on the mind and imagination of the spectator who is sensitive to formal design" (14). Drey also addresses the detractors of the abstract, who cannot imagine its use, describing them as those viewers who "are the least sensitive to the prodigal confusion of abstract forms in the midst of which they move and have their being" (14-15). In other words, the abstract work is nothing more or less than the pure expression of the world in which it was created, a product of political, social, economic, global and local influences. Further, far from being irrelevant or useless, this kind of art is only appreciable by the viewer with an acute sensitivity/susceptibility to the emotionality of pure form, rather than to meanings conveyed through narratives or poetic allusion (15).
Drey goes on to address other factors which may contribute to the unpopularity of the modern or abstract work, contending that its authors hinder the skeptic's ability to apprehend meaning by attempting to associate the work with "recognisable objects" (15). A piece entitled "A Portrait of Madame X," for example may perplex the viewer who seeks to identify the conventional form of a woman within the abstract picture. Such complicating titles are alienating, not only in the creation of distance between the viewer and the work's possible meanings, but by inspiring in the viewer feelings of frustration at not being able to understand a kind of inside "joke" (16). Further, applying recognizable titles to abstract pieces dilutes the potency of the art itself. As Drey puts it, "Those who are naturally impervious to the music of form, and those others who misprize it unless combined with a more complex form of appeal, are not to be won by explanation." That is to say, the abstract is sensed or experienced and should not be intellectualized in order to be understood.
For her part, Jessie Dismorr seeks to validate the work of modern and abstract artists by highlighting the various efforts of working artists in Russia. Dismorr's piece, "Some Russian Artists," is an interesting artifact of criticism, as it contemporarily reviews the work of a few artists whose work would prove to be important well after the modernist period. She hails the futurist Natalia Goncharova whose work spanned various mediums such as painting and costume design, for her "daring" juxtaposition of "chromes and majentas," as well as for employing "cubist devices" in her work with costumes (19). Dismorr also interestingly places Chagal among the Russian artists, calling him/his work "a curious vessel of the national [Russian] spirit" (19).
Although Drey's and Dismorr's respective approaches to the subject of modernist art are quite different (the former writes critical theory, while the latter writes art criticism), both pieces demonstrate The Tyro's dedication to affirming and promoting modernist art well after a skeptical public had begun to dismiss it. Each piece proves that, despite contemporary skepticism, the importance and meanings of such art were still being widely discussed and considered; as such, The Tyro itself is a fantastic artifact of an emerging strain of art criticism and theory from a period of great innovation and creativity.
