The Caliph's Design

Wyndham Lewis's fierce, satirical manifesto for modern art opens with a clash between genuine creative force and the fatigue, fashion, and commercialism of the contemporary art world. He attacks painters, sculptors, the public, and especially architects for failing their roles, and calls for a constructive new order in which painting, design, and architecture shape life instead of merely decorating it. Modern painting, he argues, has been trapped in studios and dealer culture and must return to public life, even as he names its major figures while challenging trends such as nature-morte Cubism and overreliance on Cézanne. From there, Lewis ranges through a city of failed streets, shops, ornaments, and monuments, insisting that urban form affects the spirit of its people. He imagines engineers replacing the broken architect, a Caliph's abstract design made real, and a world where machinery, public spectacle, and even ugliness become material for art without becoming its fashion. Across comparisons of Sung painters, Assyrian sculptors, and modern pretenders, he argues that great art depends on freedom, discipline, and a living environment that lets creation, not deadness, prevail. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.