Seated female nude

'Lewis's 'classical' line drawings of the human figure ... are not nostalgic revivalism, but critical engagements with this attitude and its transforming effect on humanism. One characteristic that can be attributed to the effect of a scientific, technological outlook is alienation. Science as Lewis later wrote in The Art of Being Ruled, makes us strangers to ourselves. Strangeness can be emphasised in figure drawing by choice of posture for the figure and viewpoint from which it is drawn. Acceptance of, or insistence on, such alienation in a drawing ensures that its ethos is one of 'problem-solving', both in terms of representing the unusual disposition and view of the figure, but also in terms of relating it to the format of the sheet. Such alienation is not purely a consequence of a scientific or technological attitude, and it has precedents in academic practice, but such practice itself originated in Renaissance science ... The disposition of the figure on the sheet (a result of viewpoint and posture of the figure) contributes to the problem-solving frame of reference for understanding these drawings. The image is sometimes disposed on the sheet so as to leave no room for extremities of the figure, and Lewis does not humanistically privilege heads over hands and feet when cropping is necessary ... The often compressed and compact shapes that result, laid out in such a way as to contrast with, or confirm, but always draw attention to, the implied vectors of the rectangular format, enrich the formal interest of the drawings. The effect is one of negotiation with the format, especially where the form is bled off at the edge of the sheet ... The principle of economy governing omissions of parts of the figure operates also in the use of media. Line is primarily used to describe the outline of the represented body, and its accuracy reduces the need to convey plasticity through contours, shading or other emphasis on musculature within the outline of the silhouette. Although wash plays an important part in many of these drawings, usually in assisting the modelling, its colour is not naturalistic' (see P. Edwards, Wyndham Lewis Painter and Writer, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 228-233).