I was writing about the Vorticists last week so for the traditional Bloomsday post here’s a portrait of Joyce by Wyndham Lewis. The Vorticists were supporters of Joyce (he’s praised in the first issue of Blast), and Lewis produced several portrait sketches. This one—The Duc de Joyeux Sings—is the only example I’ve seen in something approaching the Vorticist style. It’s also a little cartoony but then there’s something of the caricature in many of Lewis’s more serious portraits. As usual, the month of June brings the Joyce-related news stories:
• Signed first edition of Ulysses set to make over €100,000
• How Would Ulysses Be Received Today?
• Finnegans Wake is a bestseller in China
• Ulysses and Us by Declan Kiberd
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dubliners
• Covering Joyce
• James Joyce in Reverbstorm
• Joyce in Time
• Happy Bloomsday
• Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
• Books for Bloomsday
there’s something of the caricature in many of Lewis’s more serious portraits
Did Lewis make much of a distinction between his commissioned portraits and, I dunno, his Tyros?
Last time I tried to struggle through ‘Childermass’, large parts of it read like outtakes from ‘Ulysses’.
I don’t know much about Lewis’s attitudes towards his art but I keep thinking I ought to give The Human Age a go. JG Ballard wrote an equivocal but intriguing review of the books for New Worlds magazine.