X (magazine)

''X, A Quarterly Review'', often referred to as ''X magazine'', was a British review of literature and the arts published in London which ran for seven issues between 1959 and 1962. It was co-founded and co-edited by Patrick Swift and David Wright.

Authors and artists

Among the authors and artists included in ''X'' are:

Dannie Abse, Craigie Aitchison, Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, George Barker, Samuel Beckett, David Bomberg, Yves Bonnefoy, Anthony Cronin, René Daumal, Lucian Freud, David Gascoyne, Ghika, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Graves, John Heath-Stubbs, Aidan Higgins, Geoffrey Hill, Philippe Jaccottet, Patrick Kavanagh, Oskar Kokoschka, Malcolm Lowry, Hugh MacDiarmid, Charles Marowitz, Phillip Martin artist, André Masson, John McGahern, O. V. de L. Milosz, Dom Moraes, Robert Nye, Boris Pasternak, Robert Pinget, Ezra Pound, Malcolm Quantrill, Michel Saint-Denis, Martin Seymour-Smith, C. H. Sisson, Stevie Smith, Jules Supervielle, Nathaniel Tarn, and Vernon Watkins.

Aims and objectives

From the foreword to ''X: Volume I'', Numbers 1-4 (Barrie & Rockliff 1961): "...the real thing, the productions of the individual vision... If two things are granted, and they are not often denied, (i) that the productions of the true artist are vital to a healthy society, (ii) that even in the best societies there is the constant risk that these very things will wither and die for want of the minimum support, then the collection of writing, poetry, and art brought together here needs no further apology... There is at the heart of any interesting idea of art or poetry an anarchic volatile centre – a sort of living principle – which will not tolerate categoric definition so that even the wildest of surrealist or anti-art proclamations militate against the sort of freedom the artist values. This does not mean that we exist to initiate a drift from principle and clear proposition. It means that only propositions sufficiently accurate to include the necessary complexity of any interesting artistic viewpoint are good enough for us. And that any attitude based upon the notion that there exists a total and rational explanation for the artistic impulse and activity is for us the enemy of real poetry. And so it is that throughout all the critical articles published in this journal will be found a questioning and sceptical curiosity about the prevailing and fashionable conceptions which now dominate the scene... the real enemy now is probably confusion-general; complete intellectual confusion with a prevalent readiness to pounce on anything that looks like a moral issue provided it be simple, accessible, and public enough- in short, safe. If we allow ourselves a convenient division of purpose the first aim, to bring to the light of day the work of the best with qualification that preference be given to the unknown and the neglected or the known but unhonoured, is a clear and basic function which demands absolute precedence, while the second, to question and expose the nature of prevailing and fashionable theory and practice, is a more complex function difficult to perform.
The hardest thing that anybody can do is to think for himself, to like something because he likes it and not because he knows or is told that ten or ten thousand or ten million other people do. The artist is a man who experiences for himself and believes in the validity of that experience...They are individuals, not a group; not even a group of individuals. And if they have anything in common it is the seriousness with which they take their art—not that lugubrious dedication... but the apparent frivolity with which they ignore the terrible worries of our time in favour of the apparently selfish delight of creating some image of personal vision, some faint echo of the eternally liberation 'I am'."

History

David Wright's introduction to ''An Anthology from X'': "''X'', a quarterly review of literature and the arts, flourished, or at any rate existed, between the years 1959 and 1962. It took its name from the algebraic symbol for the unknown quantity—‘incalculable or mysterious fact or influence’ as the ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' defines it. Neither manifesto nor editorial introduced the first number: its contents were the manifesto...Through the poet David Gascoyne, Swift had become acquainted with an extraordinary old lady, one of the last survivors of Bloomsbury. This was Mary Hutchinson, a cousin of Lytton Strachey... It had long been her ambition to start a magazine devoted to literature and the arts, and as editors Swift and I seemed to her to be the answer. This was before the days when literary magazines could get financial backing from the Arts Council...However, Mrs Hutchinson and he were confident that she would be able to find a backer for the venture...Our benefactor was Michael Berry 911-2001 now Lord Hartwell, the owner of the ''Daily Telegraph''. He undertook to guarantee the first four volumes of ''X'', and proved an ideal backer—he never interfered. Indeed, I never even met him...Apart from Swift and myself there was no other staff, for we had determined to cut out all unnecessary expenses...The first number of ''X'' was carefully planned, and well received. Philip Toynbee hailed it in the Observer as 'an event, if only because a literary magazine of this kind has not existed for a long time. The admirable impression of a review devoted to attacking both the corruptions of an established avant-garde and the dreary "retrenchments" of the age is reinforced by every article and poem which appear here.' In a leading article the Times Literary Supplement was also laudatory: 'A concern for "rethinking" about the nature of literary and artistic experience is apparent throughout the pages of ''X'', and gives the whole of the first issue a unity uncommon among periodicals now'... About 3,000 of the first number were sold, and the circulation remained at this figure, more or less, until its demise. Much of its impact was due to the layout that Patrick Swift designed, and to its unusual format, which was in fact determined by the dimensions of a menu card in a caff off Victoria Station where we happened to be having a cup of coffee. To begin with we were resolved to avoid insularity. Poems, essays, and graphics by European writers and artists...appeared in our pages...
Swift was, of course, responsible for the art side of the magazine. These were the boom years of abstract art. Swift, twenty years ahead of his time... romotedthe work of then unknown or unfashionable figurative painters, among them the young Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, and Craigie Atchison, and such as-yet uncanonized painters as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and the forgotten David Bomberg Kokoschka,_Alberto_Giacometti.html" "title="Oskar_Kokoschka.html" ;"title="o say nothing of the continentals like Oskar Kokoschka">Kokoschka, Alberto Giacometti">Giacometti