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).