The Arrival

When this work was first exhibited a reviewer commented: ‘It resembles a Channel steamer after a violent collision with a pier. You detect funnels, smoke, gangplanks, distant hotels, numbers, posters all thrown into the melting-pot, so to speak. Mr. Nevinson acted as interpreter, explaining that it represented a state of simultaneous mind’.Nevinson co-wrote Vital English Art: A Futurist Manifesto. He was fascinated by the idea of ‘simultaneity’, championed by the French Orphists and Italian Futurists. This is shown here in his attempt to capture in one composition the multitude of views and movements happening at a single moment.