BLAST was created by Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, a magazine in support of Vorticism. It was first published in 1914 with lists of 'blessings' (things they supported) and 'blasts' (things they didn't). The whole issue was in 'manifesto' style. Here are a few images from the magazine and a quotation from the text...
L o n g L i v e t h e V o r t e x !
Long live the great art vortex sprung up in the centre of this town!
We stand for the Reality of the Present — not for the sentimental Future, or the sacripant Past.
We want to leave Nature and men alone.
The only way Humanity can help artists is to remain independent and work unconsciously.
WE NEED THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF HUMANITY — their stupidity, animalism and dreams.
We believe in no perfectibility except our own.
Intrinsic beauty is in the Interpreter and Seer, not in the object or content.
WE ONLY WANT THE WORLD TO LIVE, and to feel its crude energy flowing through us.
Blast sets out to be a venue for all those vivid and violent ideas that could reach the Public in no other way.
Blast will be popular, essentially. It will not apppeal to any particular class, but to the fundamental and popular instincts in every class and description of people. TO THE INDIVIDUAL. The moment a man feels or realizes himself as an artist, he ceases to belong to any milieu or time. Blast is created for this timeless, fundamental Artist that exists in everybody.
We want to make in England not a popular art, not a revival of lost folk art, or a romantic fostering of such unactual conditions, but to make individuals, wherever found.
We will convert the King if possible.
A VORTICIST KING ! WHY NOT ?
DO YOU THINK LLOYD GEORGE HAS THE VORTEX IN HIM?
MAY WE HOPE FOR ART FROM LADY MOND?
We are against the glorification of "the People" as we are against snobbery.
it is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hatt can well hold the Sixtine. a cheap hat could hide the image of Kephren.
AUTOMOBILISM (marinetteism) bores us. we don't want to go about making a hullo-bullo about motor cars. any more than about knives and forks, elephants or gas-pipes.
Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly.
Wilde gushed twenty years aboutt he beauty of machinery. Gissing, in his romantic delight with modern lodging houses was futurist in this sense.
The futurist is a sensational and sentimental mixture of the aesthete of 1890 and teh reaslist of 1870.
The "Poor" are detestable animals! They are noly picturesque and amusing for the sentimentalist or the romantic. The "Rich" are bores wihtout a single exception, en tant que riches!
We want those simple and great people found everywhere.
Blast presents an art of Individuals.
text taken from www.gingkopress.com/_cata/_lite/wl-blas2.htm
images from:
www.davidson.edu/academic/english/Little_Magazines/Blast/synopsis.html
Just for interest, here is a new manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson mimicking the BLAST style...
