Kate Lechmere Main

Alas, the great
Vorticist Rebel Art Center proved a bust.
“Initially, the Centre had high aspirations,”
according to William Wees in his study of Vorticism.
“Its prospectus made the Rebel Art Centre sound like
a mixture of Omega, Kensington Town Hall, the Slade,
Saturday afternoons at 19 Fitzroy Street, and the
recently closed Cave of the Golden Calf.” There were
to be lectures by Marinetti, Pound, ‘some great
innovator in music, Schoenburg or Scriabin,’ and
others. Some ‘short plays or Ombres Chinoise,’
dances, and other ‘social entertainments’ were
promised, along with special exhibitions and
‘Saturday afternoon meetings of artists from 4 to 6
p.m .’ There was also to be ‘a Blast evening, or
meeting to celebrate the foundation and appearance
of the Review in that name,’ and at that event, said
the prospectus, ‘a manifesto of Rebel Art will be
read and an address given, to the sound of carefully
chosen trumpets.’ An ambitious art school was to
open on 26 April1914, offering not only drawing and
painting, but ‘instruction in various forms of
applied art, such as painting of screens, fans,
lampshades, scarves.  Mr.Wyndham Lewis will
visit the studio, as professor, five days a week.’

“A few of the
promised activities took place,” Wees recounts.
“Marinetti appeared, Pound talked on Vorticism (and
published a version of the talk in the Fortnightly
Review in September 1914), and Ford Madox Ford
lectured, only to have his peroration interrupted by
Lewis’ large Plan of War, which suddenly fell off
the wall and on to Ford, knocking the canvas loose
and trapping Ford inside the frame. Some ‘workshop’
items were made and displayed at the Allied Artists’
exhibition in June 1914. But the Centre’s major
project, its art school, never materialized, and
Lewis did not get to try out the role of professor
of art. Only two applicants turned up, according to
Kate Lechmere, ‘a man who wished to  improve
the design of gas-brackets and a lady
pornographer.'”

Kate Lechmere posing  with her painting  Buntem Vogel at the Rebel Art Centre, 1914 from the Evening Standard March 30, 1914

from Wikipedia Kate Lechmere page: _________________ About January 1914, Lechmere wrote to Wyndham Lewis from France suggesting that they set up a “modern art Studio in London, run on much the same lines as those in Paris”. After Lewis and Roger Fry fell out in 1914, Lewis with Lechmere and her money founded the Rebel Art Centre at 38 Great Ormond Street in opposition to Fry’s Omega Workshops. Lechmere paid the first three months’ rent for the centre, paid to have the interior walls moved in order to create the right sized spaces for studios, and even bought a new suit for Lewis. She lived in a small flat at the top of the building. Lechmere also lent Lewis £100 to produce the first edition of BLAST. Lewis suggested that she take 50 copies to sell but they had to be returned to the publishers when none sold. She was asked by Lewis to complete a drawing for the first edition of BLAST but due to the difficult atmosphere at the time she could not do so. As compensation she was “blessed” in its pages. She did not sign the Vorticist manifesto. The Centre attracted plenty of press attention, including a visit from the Evening Standard for which Lechmere posed pretending to finish one of her paintings. When the story appeared it ran with the caption “Artists a disappointment in real life”. In fact, she did very little painting at this time as she found the Vorticist aesthetic too abstract and lacking a human dimension.

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Kate Lechmere and a friend sew curtains for the Rebel Art Centre, 1914 ________ from Anthony d’Offay Gallery In Art Beyond the Gallery [p.195], Richard Cork tells us that the curtains were possibly the design of Cuthbert Hamilton or of Lawrence Atkinson, and that “one alert reporter was surely right in deciding that: ‘on a white curtain hung across the room points of purple and cubes of green and yellow, intermingling with spashes of deep rose-red, formed themselves, as one gazed at them, into fantastic human figures.’ (Sarah Roberts interview, 1982, Vorticism and Its Allies)

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The Rebel Art Centre from The Daily Mirror, March 30, 1914 ________________ Left: Wyndham Lewis; Far Right: Kate Lechmere with the Rebel Art Centre curtains Middle: (L to R) Hamilton, Wadsworth, Nevinson & Lewis hanging Wadsworth’s Caprice

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____ L to R standing: Wadsworth and Lewis L to R sitting:  Hamilton and Lechmere Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair which Lewis modeled on Kate Lechmere, is propped on the easel from the Evening Standard, March 30, 1914

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___________ A sample ticket to a Vorticist Evening at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel