Who were the editors of BLAST and at what times?
* Wyndham Lewis was the editor of BLAST for both of its issues from 1914 to 1915.
* Lewis also started magazines Tyro and Enemy, though both publications were as short-lived as BLAST. Lewis was one of the fathers of the Vorticist movement, which combined the color and geometry of Cubism with the industrialism of Futurism. The typographical adventurousness of BLAST was cited as a major influence in graphic design of the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Above is artist William Robert's rendering of BLAST's intimate circle of Vorticists. Seated left to right: Cuthbert Hamilton, Ezra Pound, William Roberts, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells and Edward Wadsworth. Standing in the doorway are Jessica Dismorr, Freda Kahlo, and Helen Saunders.
Where was BLAST printed and by which firm?
* BLAST was published in New York and in London by John Lane (John Lane Company in New York and Bodley Head in London).
* Lane was a self-educated man who was mainly associated with publishing controversial and audacious texts for small sophisticated audiences, including The Yellow Book and Lane’s Keynote Series. His nephew, Allen, later went on to found P Penguin Books.
The Yellow Book, 1894.
* The Bodley Head was founded by John Lane and Elkin Matthews in 1887. Traded in rare books of ‘stylish decadence.’
--Courtney Fenner
Bibliographic Description of Blast
My colleagues having established who the editors of the Blast magazine were, I will attempt to give some treatment to the magazine’s readership, as well as, the Initial distribution and current availability of the magazine. In preparing this section of the paper I have examined MJP's introduction to Blast by Mark Morrison and the electronic copies of both editions, also on MJP website. I also searched the internet for additional information about the magazine.
It’s amazing that a magazine that was only published twice, the first in the summer of 1914 and the second a year later, made such an impact on literary evolution. Mark Morrison, in HYPERLINK http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/mjp_journals.xq Blast: An Introduction, provides an explanation.
He wrote, “Blast's engaging combination of modernist art and literature with audacious advertising strategies and polemics had an influence well beyond the journal's short life-and makes it worthy of electronic publication in our own time, as we face our own resurgence of nationalism and question the role of art and literature in a mass-mediated world.”
Consistent with its audacious advertising strategies, Blast’s editorial staff sought to project the magazine beyond national borders. It is common practice that the editorial staff of any newspapers, magazine or journal will first seek to define the audience it wants to reach or influence and then seek to editorialize and structure the publication for the target audience. Additionally, editorial staff generally seeks to capitalize on prevailing trends and themes. The editorial staff of the Blast confirmed to these principles, or may have even been an harbinger in some instances.
HYPERLINK "http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/mets.xq?metsid=mjp.2005.00.097" Morrison wrote, “Yet Blast was a serious journal of art and literature. It was meant as a bold intervention in a rapidly changing art world. Its editor and the avant-garde Vorticists had high aspirations for the circulation and influence of the little magazine, though it never achieved mass circulation during its brief life.” He also wrote:
“ HYPERLINK "http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/plookup.xq?id=LewisWyndham" Lewis and the other painters and authors involved in Blast intended the magazine not to be a small-circulation affair but to circulate widely and have an impact outside of London. They attempted to advertise the movement, and HYPERLINK "http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/plookup.xq?id=LewisWyndham" Lewis and Wadsworth envisioned an initial print run of about 3,000 for the first issue — a large run for a new modern art journal. Wadsworth worked out an international distribution list that included major American and European cities as far flung as Bucharest and Petersburg, pushed advertising in other journals,”
One can therefore conclude that the Blast readership was both local (England) and international – continental Europe and the United States of America.
Lewis, the co-founder and editor of Blast, was on a nationalist crusade and sought to use Blast to induce change in England, as well as internationally, and in doing so its ideology of Vorticism invariably conflicted with other prevailing avant-garde ideologies such as Italian Futurism and Impressionism, and various political trends of the period. Because the magazine wanted to induce change, one can conclude that its target audience would have included those elements of society capable of influencing change – most prominently the educated and elite class. An examination of the language used in the magazine demonstrates that the magazine could not have been intended for those who were literary unaccomplished.
Though the circulation was wide, an intended initial publication of 3,000 is considerably meager by today’s standard, yet, it would have been considered significant for a first run in the early twentieth century. And if we are extrapolate, it is the belief of some schools of thought that an average of 10 to fifteen persons read every circulated copy of a magazine within the first few months of its publication, we may conclude that the size of the readership may have been extended to as much as 45,000.
Apart from the fact that this magazine is available electronically and perhaps in limited hard copies at Brown University and the University of Tulsa, it proved difficult to ascertain which other library, archives and museums are currently housing hard copies of this magazine. However, it may be reasonable to conclude that Wyndham Lewis Trust Foundation should have a collection of this magazine. It should also be noted that this magazine was reprinted on several occasions and therefore a more detailed search should be able reveal other locations where this magazine may be housed. Interestingly, one can purchase reproduced copies of this magazine online on HYPERLINK "http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=736532&matches=6&author=Wyndham+Lewis&title=Blast&cm_sp=works*listing*cover" alibris website. The cost first edition ranges from $69.00 to $460.00 and the second edition ranges from $13.56 to $125.00.
The question may be asked: was Blast successful in what it owners set out to do? Mark Morrison quoted Paige Reynolds thus:
“By celebrating the conflation of art and advertising, the vorticists could define themselves in opposition to other art groups in London, both native and continental. Just as important, this celebration allowed them to extol English advertising practices, practices that displayed for the world England's preeminence in industry, economics, politics, and culture. Most obviously, Blast displayed and celebrated this merger of English avant-garde and commercial art through the journal's aesthetics” HYPERLINK "http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/display.xq?docid=mjp.2005.00.097" \l "bib_15" (Reynolds 245).
--Wycliff McAllister
Which dates/issues/pages did you examine?
Due to the short length of Blast’s run and its editor’s predilection for large font, I was able to examine a significant portion of this magazine. I paid particular attention to the writings of editor, Wyndham Lewis, as he most forcefully (albeit obnoxiously) voiced the ideology of the Vorticist movement. Additionally, I read “The Saddest Story” by Ford Maddox Hueffer, and “Indisolluble Matrimony,” by Rebecca West, both of which appeared in Blast’s first issue. I was interested in Hueffer’s “installment” because I read The Good Soldier in its entirety earlier this year, and was curious to see how my response to it might change having gained the knowledge that its author was at one point aligned with the Vorticist movement. Prior to beginning this course, I was scarcely aware of Ford Maddox Ford’s status as an avant-garde author, let alone his association with so radical as group as the “Rebel Artists,” and was struck by the application of Bornstein’s discourse about the “multiple versions of the text” to this literary encounter.
Politics and Aesthetics in Blast
It would be impossible to discuss Blast’s aesthetics without discussing its politics, as the two are inextricably linked. A (deceptively) nationalistic magazine, Blast’s aesthetic style celebrates what its creators perceive to be one of England’s greatest achievements: its unparalleled industrial success. And the founders of the magazine, both through the deliberate construction of its “bibliographic codes” as well as through its voluble proclamations about “Art” and “Life,” make it clear that the English artist must fight to draw creative potency from his highly industrialized country, rather than grow soft in a soulless quest to refine culture through the production of sentimental art.
With its original electric puce covering, Blast aims to aggressively seize the attention of its readers, and, one might argue, to shame or intimidate them into compliance with its views. Just as its garish cover accosts the reader’s sight-sense, so does its content assail his character -- or at least, the character of the typical Englishman. In many ways, Blast is a call to arms, a challenge to all true champions of Art to save England from the stultifying effects of “Romance” and “Sentimentality,” (much of which, Lewis relishes pointing out, derives from nations of “the Continent) and to “plunge into the heart of the present.” Lewis acknowledges, even agrees with, the assessment that England is “ ‘the unmusical, anti-artistic, unphilosophical country,” but trumpets his conviction that for this very same reason, “a movement towards art and imagination could burst up here with more force than anywhere else” (No. 1, p. 32).
Undoubtedly, he magazine’s affirmation of “Machinery…the greatest Earth-medium,” (No. 1, p. 39) is evident in the numerous illustrations and photographs that appear in its pages. The painting below is typical of “Illustrations” (as they are called in the first issue) and “Designs” (as they are called in the second) found throughout the publication. Clearly, this piece of art rejects the “realist” or “representational” impulses of artists Lewis is so fond of berating, and instead glorifies the new “nature” of the “modern world” – the “steel trees where the green ones were lacking” (No. 1, p. 36 ).
However, Blast’s celebration of (and indebtedness to) the fruits of industry extends far beyond the art it promotes, lending form and vitality to both its bibliographic codes and its “literary” tone. Integral to early twentieth century English industry, of course, was the birth of modern, commercial/promotional practices – practices that are relied upon heavily throughout Blast’s two issues. Mark Morrison, the author MJP’s introduction to Blast, talks a great deal about “the journal’s efforts to draw upon the promotional energies and industrial culture of British modernity,” and indeed I found this to be an apt observation.
The bold, uppercase, diagonal typeface on the cover of the first issue provides an excellent point of entry into the magazine’s artistic and political vision. Making good on its expletive title, this publication upbraids a seemingly endless list of individuals, artistic movements, cultures, customs, and so forth, in the very modern format of its “Blasts” section. The “Blasts,” along with their counterpoint, “Blesses,” are one of the features that may have prompted Hugh Kenner to comment upon the “posterish conventions” of the magazine, as noted in Morrison’s introduction. Indeed, as is typical of the non-prose items in Blast (for example, Lewis’s “Manifestoes” in the first issue), the page layout, typeface and variable font size of “Blasts” and “Blesses” strongly suggest an advertisement, or perhaps a protest poster. In fact, the attention-grabbing page layout, coupled by the uncompromising tone of these “hate-lists” and manifestoes, helps explain why parallels have been drawn between the Vorticist and Suffragist movements.
The second issue of Blast, which was released over a year after the first, is entitled the “War Number,” and it is indeed focused primarily on issues surrounding World War I. Probably the most obvious difference between the two issues is the transition from the bright pink cover of the first, to the staid beige of the second. Morrison’s introduction explains that Lewis was advised by Edward Wadsorth (another Blast artist) to name his second issue the “War Number,” and perhaps he was also advised to adopt a slightly more serious treatment of his subjects. The “Blasts” and “Blesses” section of this issue do not appear till the very end of the journal, they are a good deal shorter, and their format is much more conventional – the font size is static, items are listed in a straight column running down the middle of the page, and there is less use of “white space.”
--Ashley Carlisle
