What was Modern? (1910-1914)

Contemporary Drawings

C.R.W. Nevinson, The Chauffeur (NA 14.26, April 30, 1914)

The CONTEMPORARY DRAWINGS series, begun in March of 1914, can be understood as a polemical response to the representational style advocated by Sickert. Edited by T.E. Hulme, the series reproduced some of the most experimental paintings and drawings then being created by English artists. Hulme notes that [p]erhaps the only quality they possess in common is that they are all abstract in character NA 14.22:688. Though some of these works employ the angular geometrical distortions characteristic of cubism, Gaudier-Brzeska’s Dancer uses superimposition reminiscent of futurism as well as bold lines that call to mind the artist’s fascination with the exotic and primitive. Hulme emphasized that any resemblance that these abstract works bore to the real was entirely accidental; they were to produce a pleasurable response by enabling their viewer to contemplate pure forms, an aesthetic realm entirely removed from everyday life and local detail. To explain the theoretical premises upon which these abstract works were based, Hulme included brief explanatory notes in The New Age, or, in the case of Roberts’s Study, appended to the reproduction itself.