Wyndham Lewis's Cultural Criticism and the Infrastructures of Patronage

Wyndham Lewis wasboth a serious proponent and forthright critic of modernism. His assault uponhis contemporaries foreshadowed the twenty-first century scholarly interest inthe networks, professions, and coteries – rather than the myths and heroics –of modernism. Lewis, after a long period of neglect, now sits increasingly atthe heart of a revised field of modernist studies.This book explores Lewis’scultural criticism as a valuable body of writing which posed questions thathave yet to be answered about subsidy and the function of the artist, aboutprofessionalism and ethics, about who should pay for the arts, and what theartist’s obligations should be in return. It is the first book-length study ofthis body of critical writing, through which Lewis articulated the central andmost lasting of his critical preoccupations: the question of how the work ofthe artist is to be valued, and the artist to be paid, in a professionalisedsociety.This book makes animportant contribution to the long overdue reassessment of a complex,contrarian figure, spanning the disciplines of literature and the visual arts,who asked pressing questions about the role and status of the artist, andultimately about the value (economic, civic, political) of the work of art.

Nathan O’Donnell lectures at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin.