The Bloomsbury Group

When I say this is to be brief, I mean this will be BRIEF.

When we were being introduced to the Fashion Spectrum someone mentioned The Bloomsbury Group. After looking through my notes, I have no recollection to what they had to do with the subject. However, I wrote the name down, which meant I thought it should be something for me to learn about. In the end I still have no idea what they had to do with the Fashion Spectrum, but I still found it interesting and thought a quick blog about them would do no harm.

Now, The Bloomsbury Group was a group of writers, artists, and intellectuals who in 1905 began to meet at the London home of artist Vanessa Bell and her writer sister Virginia Woolf. They formed a close friendship whilst sharing ideas and supporting each other's creative activities. The Bloomsbury Group was formed from two different groups of people, the writers and the artists. The writers group met on Thursdays for drinks and conversation at the home that Vanessa and her brothers and sisters shared at 46 Gordon Square, London. Key members of the group included the writer Lytton Strachey, art critic Clive Bell, publisher Leonard Woolf and the economist John Maynard Keynes. The artists group met on Fridays. It was started in 1905 by Vanessa Bell and some of her friends from art school. They met to talk about their work and ideas, discuss what was happening in the wider art world, and organise exhibitions. As well as Vanessa and her art school friends; artists Duncan Grant, John Nash, Henry Lamb and Edward Wadsworth were Friday Club members. Then Art critic, Roger Fry, was introduced in 1910 and became an important influence on the group.

They came from wealthy backgrounds, which had given them social advantages and self-confidence. However, they were linked by a spirit of rebellion, against what they saw as the unnecessary conventions, restraints and double standards of their parents’ generation. As a group they were politically liberal, and also had liberal ideas about sex, which meant there were often complicated relationships and affairs within The Bloomsbury Group.

A variety of personalities both literary and artistic made up the Bloomsbury Group. They were friends, lovers and family members.

Although the art of Bloomsbury may today look rather traditional when compared with later twentieth-century art, their influence and contribution to British art was important. Fry, Bell, and Grant were amongst the first artists in Britain to make purely abstract paintings.

The Bloomsbury Group’s most important artistic contribution was the focus and support it gave to young artists.The London Artists Association was founded largely as a result of the inspiration and hard work of Bloomsbury members, particularly Maynard Keynes. This provided artists with a means of selling their work.

The Hogarth Press was set up in 1917 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf to publish contemporary fiction and political comment and published work by some of the most important writers of the twentieth century. Virginia Woolf, T.S.Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and E.M.Forster were among its writers. It also later published translations of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud.

Like I said, this was to be brief, but the research I have done on these people is fascinating. This was a group of people who were intellectual, bohemian and interested in nuance and ambiguity.

I am a fan of interesting people who are interested in things, and this group was a group of people who were interested in things, and curious about things, and wanted to help and share, and make art social. I found this group so INTERESTING.

Ta Ta for now, My Lovelies.

Miss Blue.