Straining over the blog..... More Tales from an Urbane Flâneur: Paul Nash and more at Tate Britain

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Paul Nash and more at Tate Britain

A wy in to Nash.

I had decided some time ago that I'd like to find out more about the British artist Paul Nash - the current exhibition at TATE Britain seemed an ideal opportunity.

The exhibition which has been running for about a month was surprisingly busy on a Tuesday (around midday) - it's a big exhibition organised across over 9 rooms and there were lots of people who seemed to be stuck at the start looking at his trees (so-so for me).

I did like some of his first world war paintings (room 2) including 'We are making a new world (1918)' and it was clear that the War to end all Wars mad a deep impression on him (far more than the works generated from the second world war.

It's fair to say that Nash experimented with lots of styles and approaches, some more successful than others I was impressed too with Month of March (1929) which plays with frames and horizontals.

I quite liked his Welsh Collage from 1939 too.

I'm afraid though I found that Nash's work which often uses muted tones was a little dull and it was the work around 'Unit One' that was the most vibrant where other artists, like Eileen Agar (Ladybird 1936 an interesting mixture of photography and painting ) were involved. Amongst this period a work I liked by Edward Wadsworth was also on show (Dux et Comes 1) and a work arriving at a similar form by John Bigge (Composition 1933).

Paul Nash died young of heart failure as a result of his long running asthma.

Walter Sickert in the BP Spotlight

I in fact enjoyed far more the smaller look in the 'BP Spotlight' on Walter Sickert's encounters via Photography - Sickert often used press photographs ads his starting point (like the Peggy Ashcroft portrait below) but he also made works around self portraits like the 'Lazarus breaks his fast).

There's a (to me) a fairly clear line between Sickert and later Pop Artists.