Wyndham Lewis's Art Criticism in the 'Listener', 1946-1951: Postwar British Art in its Context of Ideas, Institutions, and Practice.

1949年，现代主义艺术家和评论家温德姆·刘易斯（Wyndham Lewis）写道，“英国目前拥有众多一流的艺术家”，因此英国艺术的复兴是可能的。1946年至1951年间，他为英国广播公司的文化周刊《听众》撰写了34篇当代艺术评论。这些评论标志着战后英国艺术发展的一个重要时刻。刘易斯对新艺术家的鼓励在诸如艾伦·戴维、圭亚那画家丹尼斯·威廉姆斯、弗朗西斯·培根、维克多·帕斯莫尔和苏格兰画家罗伯特·科尔克霍恩等人的职业发展中发挥了重要作用。我们的目的是制作这些重要评论的第一个完整版本，对它们进行注释并解释它们的背景，并在文本中添加多达200幅刘易斯讨论过的艺术作品的图像。然后，我们将把编辑过的文字和图片放在温德姆·刘易斯的网站上。本网站位于西班牙拉里奥哈大学英语系。通过这样做，我们希望为刘易斯（1882-1957）的研究带来一个国际维度，他是英国最重要的现代主义艺术家和艺术理论家之一。近年来，刘易斯作为艺术家和评论家的声誉越来越高，我们希望这个及时的项目将有助于重新评估的过程。网站发布将使该版本既可供从事二十世纪中期艺术实践和机构的专业学术观众使用，也可供更普通的观众使用，我们预计批判性文本和图像的结合将对他们特别感兴趣。文本和图像之间的关系将通过Roger Garside先生开发的高级软件程序为网站用户建立，并用于注释和解释约翰·罗斯金的“现代画家”版本，以及他的威尼斯笔记本（1849-50）。刘易斯在这些评论中讨论了超过75位英国和欧洲艺术家。这篇评论将展示刘易斯是如何以慷慨的言辞推广上述新一代英国画家的作品的，这些画家的名字还可以加上Ceri Richards、Michael Ayrton、William Scott、Keith Vaughan和John Craxton。与此同时，他重新评估了诸如爱泼斯坦、赫普沃斯、奥古斯都·约翰、格温·约翰和亨利·摩尔等知名艺术家的声誉。他对他以前的漩涡主义伙伴大卫·邦伯格、斯宾塞·戈尔、威廉·罗伯茨和爱德华·沃兹沃斯提出了新的批评。刘易斯还讨论了这些年来在伦敦展出的欧洲画家的作品：德·基里科、莱姆杰、莫奈、毕加索、修拉和维亚尔等人。刘易斯认为，这些英国艺术家的最佳作品值得纳入欧洲二十世纪的传统。因此，他抵制了他所认为的实现一体化的体制障碍。这解释了他这些年在这些评论和其他地方持续批评Chantrey遗产、皇家学院、艺术委员会和当代艺术研究所（ICA）的原因。他的批评在《倾听者》中引起了争议，随后的信件也将被编辑和解释。一份原始评论和信件的副本（连同三篇书评）将向该网站的用户展示刘易斯的作品是如何呈现给第一批读者的。

In 1949 Wyndham Lewis, the modernist artist and critic, wrote that 'England is so well-endowed with artists of a first-rate quality at the moment'' that a renaissance of British art might be possible. Between 1946 and 1951 he wrote thirty-four reviews of contemporary art for the BBC's weekly cultural journal the 'Listener'. These reviews mark an important moment in the development of post-war British art. Lewis's encouragement of new artists played a valuable part in the development of such careers as those of Alan Davie, the Guyanan painter Denis Williams, Francis Bacon, Victor Pasmore, and the Scottish painter Robert Colquhoun. Our purpose is to produce the first full edition of these important reviews, annotate them and explain their context, and add to the text up to 200 images of the works of art that Lewis discussed. We shall then place the edited text and the images on a website dedicated to Wyndham Lewis. This site is located in the English Department at the University of La Rioja in Spain. By doing this we hope to bring an international dimension to the study of Lewis (1882-1957), who is one of the most important British modernist artists and art theorists. Lewis's reputation as an artist and critic has been growing in recent years, and we hope this timely project will contribute ot he process of re-evaluation. Website publication will make the edition available to both a specialist academic audience engaged by the practice and institutions of mid-twentieth-century art, and to a more general audience for whom we anticipate that the conjunction of critical text and image will be of particular interest. The relationship between text and image will be established for the site's users by means of advanced software programming developed by Mr Roger Garside, and used previously to annotate and explain editions of John Ruskin's 'Modern Painters', and his Venetian Notebooks (1849-50). Lewis discussed more than seventy-five artists in these reviews, both British and European. The commentary will show how Lewis promoted, often in generous terms, the work of the new post-war generation of British painters named above, to whom the names of Ceri Richards, Michael Ayrton, William Scott, Keith Vaughan, and John Craxton can be added. At the same time he reassessed the reputations of such established artists as Epstein, Hepworth, Augustus John, Gwen John, and Henry Moore. He offered new critiques of his former Vorticist associates David Bomberg, Spencer Gore, William Roberts, and Edward Wadsworth. Lewis also discussed the work of European painters who exhibited in London during these years: de Chirico, Léger, Monet, Picasso, Seurat, and Vuillard, among others. Lewis believed that the best work of these British artists was worthy of inclusion in the European twentieth-century tradition. Consequently he resisted what he saw as institutional obstacles to achieving that integration. This explains his sustained critiques of the Chantrey Bequest, the Royal Academy, the Arts Council, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), in these reviews and elsewhere during these years. His criticism led to controversy in the 'Listener', and the ensuing correspondence will also be edited and explained. A facsimile of the original reviews and letters (together with three book reviews), will show users of the site how Lewis's work appeared to its first readers.