The Elements: A Retrospective of War Artist Paul Nash (original) (raw)
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RUPERT BROOKE AND PAUL NASH: THE POET AND THE PAINTER OF WORLD WAR I
Original Article ISSN (Online): 2582-7472 ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts January 2024 5(1), 1–5, 2024
This paper discusses the artistic and aesthetic genius of the poet Rupert Brooke and the painter Paul Nash in their respective areas. Rupert Brooke is acclaimed as one of the finest representative war poets of the time. During the modern writings of fragmented, free, dense and long verses Brooke adapted the sonnet to share war experiences. These sonnets by Brooke have been placed among the supreme expressions of English patriotism and the few notable poems produced by the Great War. His best five war sonnets (1914) are entitled-'Peace', 'Safety', 'The Dead', 'The Dead' and 'The Soldier'. Paul Nash was a British surrealist painter and war artist, photographer and writer. In 1917 he was officially announced as a war artist. Nash found his inspiration in landscape from the elements of ancient history. His artworks during the Great War are considered the most iconic images of conflict. Nash's works are often believed to be influenced by the Vorticist movement. The medium he used were water colour, ink and chalk, etc. His notable works are-'We are Making a New World' (1918), 'The Menin Road' (1918), 'Spring in the Trenches' (1918), 'Wire' (1919), etc. How successfully has their artistic vision made people able to understand the need of the future world? The Relevance of these artistic and literary pieces for today's human race, etc. will be the focal points of discussion. The paper will be prepared with a comparative and analytical study of the subject matter.
With the advent of the Second World War, a number of British artists left their urban environments for the relative peace and safety of rural and coastal residence in Cornwall. This paper examines a particular place in time: St Ives in the 1940s and 50s. It begins by tracking the artistic biographies of two of the leading exponents of British abstract art: Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. It considers their encounter with the coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis and their subsequent move to the town where he had worked. The paper is framed by a theoretical perspective derived from the work of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and his conceptualisation of artistic avant-gardes. It consequently employs a three-level approach involving analysis of biographical habitus and field structures. The paper shows how artists of a certain habitus constituted themselves as an avant-garde by positioning themselves within the art field, and within the broader social space. Configurations of social, economic and cultural capital will be examined to show the education and formation of a particular British artistic style which, for a time at least, became an international avant-garde. The work of such painters as Heron, Barnes-Graham, Lanyon, and Wells will also be considered. Finally, the paper explores how such a social analytical approach to aesthetics enriches and deepens our understanding of both the 'rules' and values of art. The presentation will take the form of a discursive montage using text, diagrams, biographical analyses together with several examples of paintings and sculpture.
Walsh, M. ‘Conflict, Contrast and Controversy in Paintings of War’ War in History (March, 2005).
C.R.W. Nevinson's place in the history of art is assured as one of the key British artists of the First World War. This article analyses the nature of Nevinson's success and the controversy which surrounded his painting, within a context of taste and acceptability in wartime Britain. It also examines public perception and official guidance in an often dichotomous socio-artistic context, where censorship and the struggle for freedom often sat very uncomfortably side by side. The initial conclusions demonstrate, perhaps surprisingly, that Nevinson's brand of early war modernism was actually preferable to the lies and armchair patriotism of the ultra-conservative right, and preferable also to the impenetrable abstractions of the uncompromising and now discredited left. Equally surprising are the conclusions drawn from a study of his technically conservative late pictures which were deemed unacceptable, not through any breach in academic orthodoxy, but because of their potent subject matter which, it was felt, demanded censorship. The article also questions whether or not Nevinson knowingly manipulated the censorship issue to continue his quest for publicity after the armistice.
Exploring the role and value of contemporary art in the context of international conflict. An illustrated online journal, supported by an award by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to the Royal College of Art, with articles by artists, academics and curators.
Back From the Front: Contemporary Artists at War and Peace
Back From the Front: Contemporary Artists at War and Peace In the year which marked the centenary of the start of the First World War, a series of creative projects in Bristol considered past, contemporary and continuing conflicts. A unique record of these exhibitions and events has now been captured for this book. Under the generic title Back From the Front: Art, Memory and the Aftermath of War the projects consisted of five overlapping exhibitions staged at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, UK - a curated show of work by John and Paul Nash; a unique gathering of work by contemporary artists examining war and peace under the title Shock and Awe: Contemporary Artists at War and Peace, and a sequence of exhibitions united under the word Re-membering, which were a series of commissions funded by the Arts Council England and co-ordinated by the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and Bristol 2014. A fifth exhibition The Death of Nature gave a showcase to the recent paintings of Michael Porter RWA.
The Obscure Dimensions of Conflict: Three Contemporary War Artists Speak
Journal of War and Culture Studies, 2015
This essay explains how and why three contemporary artists took on a commission from the Australian War Memorial. In doing so, it will examine how art that deals with conflict during the contemporary period has expanded and altered. It surveys the increasing preoccupation with conflict art and war photography in the West during the twenty-first century due to Western enmeshment in ongoing conflicts since Vietnam and up to Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, Libya, and Syria. It argues that different types of war image have emerged that blur the edges of art, document, and technology; in engaging with contemporaneity and contemporary art, war images have turned away from the traditional rhetoric of war art – both pro- and anti-war – and therefore challenge the public’s investment in evolving national stories that, it has been far too easily assumed, would be made manifest in official war art and photography.