Lawrence Atkinson, sculpture, and vorticist multimediality

Waddell, Nathan

Abstract

This article looks closely at the life and career of the avant-garde sculptor and painter Lawrence Atkinson (1873-1931) as a way to reconsider from a new angle at least three persistent clichés about Vorticism (that it was unmusical, that it was stopped by the First World War, and that its members formed a cohesive ‘group’); to establish more firmly an almost entirely unappreciated trajectory within post-war British sculpture, one running from Atkinson’s early interactions with the British Rhythmists to his encounters with Vorticism and beyond; and to re-examine what Matthew Hofer has called the ‘decidedly radical’ early twentieth-century project of non-institutional education focusing on ‘interdisciplinarity through the interaction of the arts’, a project to which Atkinson made a symbolically important contribution. The article suggests that Atkinson deserves a more visible place in histories of avant-garde, inter-disciplinary artistic instruction, and attempts to reclaim Atkinson as a subject worthy of critical scrutiny by showing his importance as a musician and teacher, roles that shaped and benefited from his career as a sculptor in important ways.

Citation

Waddell, N. (2016). Lawrence Atkinson, sculpture, and vorticist multimediality. Modernism/modernity, 1(3), https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0003

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2016
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 6, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 6, 2015
• Journal: Modernism/modernity
• Print ISSN: 1071-6068
• Electronic ISSN: 1080-6601
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 3
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0003
• Keywords: Lawrence Atkinson, sculpture
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/808743
• Publisher URL: https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/lawrence-atkinson-sculpture-and-vorticist-multimediality
• Additional Information: ©2016 Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Contract Date: Jul 6, 2015