Wyndham Lewis the Artist: Holding the Mirror up to Politics

by Tom Normand

In this study of the artist, writer and polymath Wyndham Lewis, Normand offers a close analysis of the complex world which Lewis's paintings inhabit. The author adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine the relationship between Lewis's philosophical and social commentary, his political attitudes and his concerns in the visual arts. Beginning with his early career at the Slade School of Art, and his association with Augustus John, the text traces Lewis's emerging commitment to a 'classical' modernism, and goes on the explore the implications of his political associations with Oswald Moseley and British fascism. Without offering a reductivist view of the relationship between art and politics, Normand argues for a close correspondence between Lewis's political affiliations and both the form and content of his painting.

246 pages, Hardcover

First published January 29, 1993

About the author

Tom Normand was educated in Dunfermline, and subsequently took a degree in Sociology and Politics at Glasgow College. His doctoral thesis, in the Sociology of Culture, wass taken at Durham University. He has taught ant Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, and, since 1982, has lectured in the History of Art at the University of St. Andrews. He has published widely on the history of art, with a special interest in developments in art and photography in Scotland. He has lectured, nationally and internationally, on Scottish art, culture and society.