Paul Nash at Avebury

[shewhomust]

Since I was in Newcastle yesterday for the Reading Group, I visited the Paul Nash exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery (Guardian preview of the show at the Tate, not all of which, I think, transferred to Newcastle).

I arrived late, and didn't have as much time as I had intended, but as it turned out I had as much as I wanted. There were one or two amazing paintings, but overall my reaction (and yes, this is about my limitations, not Nash's) was: too much surrealism, not enough Black Dog.

I liked this passage, though:

Last summer I walked in a field near Avebury where two rough monoliths stand up, sixteen feet high ... A mile away, a green pyramid casts a gigantic shadow. In the hedge at hand, the white trumpet of a convolvulus turns from its spiral stem, following the sun. In my art I would solve such an equation.

I didn't have a notebook with me, so I am indebted to Outlandish Knight for the transcription (and for some of Nash's paintings of Avebury).

Comments

[helenraven]

I saw the Nash show at the Tate, and also found it far too heavy on the surrealism. Which wouldn't be a problem in itself, but Nash's surrealism was so boring, humourless and repetitive. By the time I came out of the exhibition, the surrealism had driven out almost all of my memories of the landscape paintings that I'm enjoyed at the beginning.

Black Dog, on the other hand, looks wonderful, and gives me a new appreciation of both McKean and Nash.

[shewhomust]

Not jusr me, then? Phew!

[poliphilo]

The great surrealists are shocking and comic and sometimes both- but Nash is neither. He noodles around with sunflowers and standing stones and hardly ever achieves the compelling, unforgettable image that's so wrong it's right. His peacetime work is charming, whimsical, soporific.

He achieved something like greatness in the First World War and then again in the Second.

[shewhomust]

Yes. And acrually, there is a surreal quality to - well, The Menin Road for example. Realistic paintings that are a bit off kilter.

What appealed to me about this quotation is that it does at least explain what he is aiming for.

[poliphilo]

There's a dark romanticism about a lot of mid-20th century English art- not just painting- but film and literature and music. You find it on both sides of the Second World War. It rejoices in mysticism, folk tradition, pagan survival, 17th century prose and so on. It's in that current I'd place Nash.

[shewhomust]

That certainly fits what I saw.