The Awakening of Female Vorticism in Jessica Dismorr’s Textual and Visual Representations

Abstract

Vorticism was a London-based avant-garde movement of art and literature in the early 20th century. Launched by Wyndham Lewis with “The Vorticist Manifesto” in 1914, Vorticism employed the depiction of an image’s movement and exalted the dynamism of the wartime machine age. Inspired by Futurism and Cubism, Vorticism is often considered masculinist, excluding women from the textual and visual canons. The British avant-garde poet and artist Jessica Dismorr (1885-1939) was one of the two female members of Vorticism. She contributed to the movement with her textual and artistic representations from its commencement to its demise; however, she was long overlooked by literary and aesthetic critics. This article, from intertextual, aesthetic and feminist perspectives, investigates how the textual and visual narrators in Dismorr’s prose-poems “June Night” (1915) and “London Notes” (1915) and her painting, Abstract Composition (c.1915) problematize the exclusion of women in London’s male-dominated city and public spaces and argues the relationship between urbanization and “Female Vorticism.”

Keywords

• Jessica Dismorr
• Female Vorticism
• Feminist Urbanization
• Abstract Composition
• “June Night
• ” “London Notes

References

1. Beckett J. and Cherry, D. (1998). Modern women, modern spaces: Women, metropolitan culture and vorticism. (1998). Kate Deepwell (Ed.), Manchester: Manchester University Press.
2. “Biography of Jessica Dismorr.” https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Jessica- Dismorr/67E92A418C11C886/Biography Accessed on 15 June, 2023.
3. Brooks, J. (2015). Jessie Dismorr: Walking and rewriting London. Flashpoint Magazine: a Journal of the Arts and Politics, (17), Spring 2015.
4. https://www.flashpointmag.com/Francesca_Brooks_Jessie_Dismorr_Walking_and_Rewriting_London.htm Accessed on 10 July, 2023.
5. Cottrell, J. (2013). Into the female vortex: Why Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders can be considered as central figures within the vorticist movement. [Undergraduate Dissertation, Birkbeck College, University of London].
6. De Saint-Point, V. “Manifesto of futurist woman (Response to F. T. Marinetti)” (1912). http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/DadaSurrealism/DadaSurrReadings/FtrstWoman.pdf Accessed 17 May, 2023.
7. Dismorr, J. Abstract Composition. (c.1915). https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dismorr-abstract-composition-t01084 Accessed 30 May, 2023.
8. --Izidora. (1911). https://www.flashpointmag.com/Jessica_Dismorr_writings.htm Accessed 28 May, 2023.

9. --“June Night.” (1915). Blast, (2), 67. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head.
10. --Landscape with Figures (c.1911-1912). https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/landscape-with-figures-72090 Accessed 12 June, 2023.
11. --“London Notes.” (1915). Blast, (2), 65-66. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head.
12. --Night Scene, Martigues. (1911-1912). https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Night-Scene--Martigues/D6CC9C082D2795A0 Accessed 19 June, 2023.
13. --Related Forms. (1937). https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jessica-dismorr- 1012 Accessed 21 June, 2023.
14. --Self-Portrait (1914). https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1037042/self-portrait-watercolour-dismorr-jessica/ Accessed 18 June, 2023.
15. --Sunlight, Martigues (c.1911-1912). https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Sunlight-Martigues/C15B966055A5FBFF Accessed 18 June, 2023.
16. --Superimposed Forms. (1938). https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/superimposed-forms-34002 Accessed 20 June, 2023.
17. Freeman, J. (2020). Radical women: Jessica Dismorr and her contemporaries. Pallant House, Chichester, The British Art Journal, (20)3, 134.
18. Gaudier-Brzeska, H. (1914). Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/henri-gaudier-brzeska-hieratic-head-of-ezra-pound. Accessed 16 May, 2023.
19. Hickman, M. (2013). The gender of vorticism: Jessie Dismorr, Helen Saunders, and vorticist feminism. In Vorticism: New perspectives, Mark Antliff and Scott W. Klein (Eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 119-136.
20. Jaskosky, H. Mina Loy Outsider artist. (1993). Journal of Modern Literature, (18)4, Fall 1993, 349-368.
21. Kouidis, V. (1980). Mina Loy: American modernist poet. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
22. Marinetti, F. T. (1909). “The founding and manifesto of futurism.” Futurism: An anthology. Lawrence Rainey, et al. (Eds.). Yale University Press, 2009, 49-55.
23. Meyers, J. (March 1983). Kate Lechmere’s “Wyndham Lewis from 1912.” Journal of Modern Literature. Indiana University Press. (10)1, 158-166.
24. Lewis, W. (July 1915) Blast: Review of the great English vortex. (Ed.) W. Lewis. https://monoskop.org/images/c/c1/Blast_2.pdf Accessed 12 March, 2023.
25. -- The Dancers. (1912). https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-dancers-study-for-kermesse-233022 Accessed 12 April, 2023.
26. --"The radical vorticist manifesto.” (June 1914). W. Lewis. (Ed.). Blast, (1), London: John Lane, The Bodley Head. https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Blast/Blast1-1_Manifesto.pdf Accessed 12 April, 2022.
27. Nochlin, L. (January 1971). “Why have there been no great women artists?” ARTnews. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Nochlin-Linda_Why-Have-There-Been-No-Great-Women-Artists.pdf. Accessed 18 May, 2023.
28. Peppin, B. (Summer 2011). “Women that a movement forgot: The vorticists I.” Tate Etc. https://www.flashpointmag.com/Kate_Lechmere_main.htm Accessed on 17 July, 2023.
29. “Perspectives,” “Radical Women: Jessica Dismorr and her contemporaries, Exhibition 2 Nov 2019-23 Feb 2020.” (2020). https://pallant.org.uk/perspectives-shelf-life-catalogues/ Accessed on 10 June, 2023.
30. Roberts, W. (1961-62). The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring, 1915. Courtesy of Tate, London. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/roberts-the-vorticists-at-the-restaurant-de-la-tour-eiffel-spring-1915-t00528 Accessed on 19 June, 2023.
31. Solomon, T. (2022). A lost masterpiece from a British avant-garde movement will go on display in London. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/lost-vorticist-masterpiece-discovered-courtauld-1234637123/ Accessed 14 July, 2023.
32. Truett, B. (2021). Materialities of abstraction: Jessie Dismorr’s Poems, transatlantic modernism, and feminist poetics. Twentieth-Century Literature, 67(2), 191-214.
33. “Vorticism: The style that never existed. (2020, June 8). https://arthive.com/encyclopedia/102~Vorticism Accessed 12 July, 2023.
34. Yılmaz, V. B. (2021). Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out: Carnivalization of gender spaces. Journal of Narrative and Language Studies. (9)16, 96-105.