Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was an English painter and author (he dropped the name 'Percy', which he disliked). He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST. His novels include his pre-World War I-era novel Tarr (set in Paris), and The Human Age, a trilogy comprising The Childermass (1928), Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta (both 1955), set in the afterworld. A fourth volume of The Human Age, The Trial of Man, was begun by Lewis but left in a fragmentary state at the time of his death. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes, Blasting and Bombardiering (1937) and Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date (1950).

Read more about Wyndham Lewis:  Early Life, The 1920s, The 1940s and After

Famous quotes by wyndham lewis:

    The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable rôle with the promise of rewards—material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the Garden of Eden.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    So-called ‘austerity,’ the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. ‘Pull in your belt’ is a slogan closely related to ‘gird up your loins,’ or the guns-butter metaphor.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice—the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)