The two articles "Inner Necessity" by Edward Wadsworth and "A Review of Contemporary Art" by Wyndham Lewis, appearing in the first and second issues of Blast respectively, offer interesting examples of early Modernist philosophies of painting and, moreover, the evolution thereof. As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane put it in "Movements, Magazines, and Manifestos": Within this period... innovation sometimes develops out of what has gone before; equally it sometimes repudiates it" (Bradbury and McFarlane 198). This assertion reads particularly true when analyzing the two Blast essays given that they were published one year apart by the same Vorticist journal and yet their particular opinions on painting are markedly different.
In order to understand the divergence of "Inner Necessity" and "A Review of Contemporary Art" is it perhaps advantageous to note where they are united in aim. "Inner Necessity" is essentially a recapitulation of Wassily Kandinsky's book Concerning the Spiritual in Art in which the author argues for a break from representative painting in favor of abstraction. This, he avers, will facilitate what should be the chief goal for artists, namely, to express the eternal, or that which "is particular to all art" (Wadsworth 119). Likewise, Lewis is interested in a break from tradition and similarly he argues that representation is an obstacle to true innovation in painting.
This rejection of corporeal depiction, however, does not alone satisfy the needs of a truly modern style, at least not for Lewis. In fact, "A Review of Contemporary Art" has equal criticism for Kandinsky's brand of mystical abstraction as well. It is, therefore, in this censure that the difference between the two arguments becomes apparent, though, given the context,also somewhat problematic.
In that Wydham Lewis was not only a contributer to, but also the editor of Blast, the criticism he levels of Kandinsky seems incongruent with his publication of "Inner Necessity" in the inaugural issue of his journal. The answer to this contradiction may simply be chronological, however. By the summer of 1915, when the second issue of Blast was produced, the tenets of Vorticism may have coalesced and as such a rejection of the other Modernist schools is a delimiting statement. Regardless, it is revealing to read these articles in their original context as it provides greater insight into the development of the ideas of the time.
