drawing
- Museum number
- 2003,0601.79
- Description
-
Design for Programme Cover - Kermesse; four Vorticist figures locked together and moving as one, robotic faces in profile. 1912
Pen and ink on paper with additions of paper pasted on top
- Production date
- 1912
- Dimensions
-
Height: 295 millimetres (irregular)
-
Width: 318 millimetres (irregular)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This programme design was for Madame Strindberg's notorious nightclub 'The Cave of the Golden Calf' in the London West End. The angular Cubist-inspired figures are engaged in an orgiastic dance. The drawing is reproduced on page 75 of 'Blast', no.2 (July 1915), edited by Wyndham Lewis, where it is entitled 'Design for Programme Cover - Kermesse'. Lewis gave instructions to the printer on the back of this drawing on how large it was to be reproduced in 'Blast'. Wyndham Lewis' subsequent nine-foot square painting 'Kermesse', now lost, confirmed his position as leader of the English avant-garde when it was shown at the Allied Artists' exhibition in 1912. David Brown purchased this study from the London dealer Phillip Granville while on leave from Africa in 1958-9.
See Walter Michel, 'Wyndham Lewis, paintings and drawings', London 1971, cat.52, who gives its provenance as from John Quinn (sale cat. no.304B) R.Wyndham, and the Leicester Galleries (in 1956).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
ND, London, Tate Gallery
1968 Mar, Southampton City Art Gallery
1980, Manchester Art Gallery, Wyndham Lewis, no.14
2003/4 Dec-April, BM, Three Great Gifts: The David Brown Bequest
2010/11 Sep-Jan, North Carolina, Nasher MA, The Vorticists: ...
2011 Jan-May, Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Coll, The Vorticists: ...
2011 June-Sep, London, Tate Britain, The Vorticists:...
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Blast (no.2)
- Acquisition date
- 2003
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
Purchased by David Brown from Philip Granville in 1958/9 for £50. David Brown's will states as point 21.b that the works in his bequest should not "be lent to other galleries for more than eight months in any period of ten years".
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2003,0601.79
