Wyndham Lewis had the “tandem talents” of painting and writing. In an essay entitled ‘Beginnings’ (1935) Lewis explained that for him “there has been no mixing of the genres. The waste product of every painting, when it is a painter’s painting, makes the most highly selective and ideal material for the pure writer.” For Lewis, in theory, the two arts were separate yet complementary practices, and he aimed for a ‘painter’s painting’ and a ‘writer’s writing’. His writing was the “crystallization of what I had to keep out of my consciousness while painting. Otherwise the painting would have been a bad painting.”
The description of Isabel Kein in The Apes of God would therefore be viewed by Lewis as complementary yet distinct from the painting of her. Whether his theory accurately describes his practice is another matter.
Cover of The Apes of God (1930)
The Arthur Press, London