A couple of years ago the IWM North had a Wyndham Lewis exhibition. I went along out of curiosity and found his work to be quite striking. A couple of weeks ago I picked up the exhibition catalogue secondhand for £3.49*. I really took to the 1932 self-portrait above. It has a bit of a swagger to it and it’s fun to let the eye rove over it and pick out all the basic forms that he’s used. Below is a photograph of Wyndham as an artillery officer in 1917. Think of all those studio photographs you’ve seen from both world wars of expressionless men in uniform all doing their best to look ramrod straight and disciplined and military. In comparison this shot is an absolute scream: the dangling cigarette, the sidelong pose, the provocative glance, the hooded eyes, the half-smile - a total subversion of the genre. What’s remarkable though is that it projects exactly the same swagger as the self-portrait. I always say that painting and the other visual arts have very little in common with photography but these two images seem to suggest otherwise.
* What is this bizarre retail convention of pricing articles a penny below a round sum? It should have died out years ago. Who uses pennies any more, after all?
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!