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Lot Essay
In the summer of 1912, Wyndham Lewis made his early reputation as an artist with a colossal painting called Kermesse. Almost nine-feet square in size, this spectacular masterpiece contained ‘three festive figures’ caught up in the abstraction of a ‘whirling design.’ Sadly, the painting is now lost, but Lewis succeeded in using the same theme of dramatic dancers when he made decorations for the celebrated Cabaret Theatre Club, an adventurous London night-club in a basement just off Regent Street. His poster for the Club, founded by the notorious Madame Frida Strindberg, was dominated by a dramatically gesturing figure. And in Lewis’s large wall decoration for the Club’s interior, three ecstatic dancers performed against an abstract setting filled with splintered forms.
Nothing now survives either of this painting, or Lewis’s ‘backcloth for the stage’ where performers entertained the Cabaret’s boisterous clientele. One eye-witness described it as ‘almost abstract, painted in very bright colours’, and Madame Strindberg used to tell me it was the product, ‘not of talent, but of genius!’ The controversial Club did not last long, but Lewis remained immensely stimulated by the work he had produced there. His Dancing Figures of 1914, a brilliantly composed image executed with great finesse in a combination of oil, watercolour, ink and pencil, is closely related to Lewis’s Cabaret work. The female dancer on the left, thrusting out an almost metallic arm, clutches a flower in her hand. One of her legs rises up in a high kick, and Lewis gives her skirt a sharp, jagged edge. Her neck is astonishingly long, terminating in a head with no visible hair. She almost seems to be leaning against an architectural structure, but it is very abstract.
The surroundings in this picture are mechanistic, and belong to the modern industrial world which Vorticism focused on all the time. Jagged lines run through the composition, and a large dancer at the centre of this picture seems to be performing inside a machine-like structure. It does not imprison her, though. If anything, she is strengthened by these metallic elements, and revels in being half-human, half-robot. The heated orange colour spreading around her adds to the sense of excitement, and the dancer whose leg is near her head appears to be thrusting upwards from an empty space below. The gender of this figure is unclear, and its limbs appear less liberated than the other dancers.
Lewis gives the whole picture a dizzying quality, as if to suggest that they are all caught up in a truly ecstatic performance. The figure on the right certainly seems to be revelling in her dance, and flings out both arms with feisty exuberance. They are surprisingly thin, but the thrusting strength of her neck leads up to a head-dress crowned by a sharp jagged edge. Its ferocity reminds us that, during the momentous year when Lewis executed Dancing Figures, the First World War erupted and unleashed a devastating amount of violence and destruction.
Richard Cork
We are very grateful to Paul Edwards for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Nothing now survives either of this painting, or Lewis’s ‘backcloth for the stage’ where performers entertained the Cabaret’s boisterous clientele. One eye-witness described it as ‘almost abstract, painted in very bright colours’, and Madame Strindberg used to tell me it was the product, ‘not of talent, but of genius!’ The controversial Club did not last long, but Lewis remained immensely stimulated by the work he had produced there. His Dancing Figures of 1914, a brilliantly composed image executed with great finesse in a combination of oil, watercolour, ink and pencil, is closely related to Lewis’s Cabaret work. The female dancer on the left, thrusting out an almost metallic arm, clutches a flower in her hand. One of her legs rises up in a high kick, and Lewis gives her skirt a sharp, jagged edge. Her neck is astonishingly long, terminating in a head with no visible hair. She almost seems to be leaning against an architectural structure, but it is very abstract.
The surroundings in this picture are mechanistic, and belong to the modern industrial world which Vorticism focused on all the time. Jagged lines run through the composition, and a large dancer at the centre of this picture seems to be performing inside a machine-like structure. It does not imprison her, though. If anything, she is strengthened by these metallic elements, and revels in being half-human, half-robot. The heated orange colour spreading around her adds to the sense of excitement, and the dancer whose leg is near her head appears to be thrusting upwards from an empty space below. The gender of this figure is unclear, and its limbs appear less liberated than the other dancers.
Lewis gives the whole picture a dizzying quality, as if to suggest that they are all caught up in a truly ecstatic performance. The figure on the right certainly seems to be revelling in her dance, and flings out both arms with feisty exuberance. They are surprisingly thin, but the thrusting strength of her neck leads up to a head-dress crowned by a sharp jagged edge. Its ferocity reminds us that, during the momentous year when Lewis executed Dancing Figures, the First World War erupted and unleashed a devastating amount of violence and destruction.
Richard Cork
We are very grateful to Paul Edwards for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.