Wyndham Lewis is best known as the leader of Vorticism, due largely to his First World War paintings and the portraits he produced during the 1920s and 1930s. As well as editing the Vorticist magazine, Blast, he wrote forty books, including the novels Tarr (1918) and The Apes of God (1930), both satirical depictions of the art worlds of Paris and London. He wrote extensively on art and its cultural function in such books as The Caliph’s Design: Architects! Where is your Vortex? (1919) and Time and Western Man (1927). Until around 1922, Lewis was considered by many to be the most advanced artist working in Britain.