contrast | abstract art | shale | landscape | still life
Associated Places:
England | United Kingdom | Dorset | Kimmeridge
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Paul Nash (Tate Britain, 2016-10-26 - 2017-03-05)Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)Revisiting Traditions [BAC 20th century painting & sculpture] (Yale Center for British Art, 2002-04-30 - 2005-05-18)Bloomsbury Contemporaries (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-05-20 - 2000-09-03)20th Century Paintings and Sculpture (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-27 - 2000-04-30)
Publications:
A. Bowness, Nash Exhibitions at Both the Redfern Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Arts Magazine, Vol. 35, May 1961, p. 23, N1 A415 + (A & A)Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, landscape and the life of objects , Lund Humphries, Farnham ; Burlington, VT, 2013, pp. 108, 109, no. 96, NJ18.N17 C28 2013 (YCBA)Matthew Hargraves, "Yale Center for British Art joins Art UK", ArtUK, 24 June 2019, https://artuk.org/discover/stories/yale-center-for-british-art-joins-art-ukJames Johnson, Churchill Painting Up for Sale, Scotsman, March 14, 1997, p. 20, Available on Line in Factiva Data BaseDesmond Morris, The British Surrealists, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 2022, p. 151, NJ18 .M8454 A12 2022Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 1, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
In 1932, Paul Nash wondered "whether it is possible to ‘go modern’ and still ‘be British.’" He wrote, "the battle lines have been drawn up: internationalism versus an indigenous culture; renovation versus conservatism; the industrial versus the pastoral; the functional versus the futile." Nash attempted to reconcile these binaries by developing a distinctively British form of surrealism in which mock monumental objects are set in the landscapes of southern England as if they were prehistoric megaliths. The objects stand out as gigantic, inexplicable presences and yet are deeply rooted in the landscape. Mineral Objects depicts pieces of bituminous shale (so-called coal money) from Kimmeridge, Dorset. The shale was worked to make jewelry and amulets in prehistoric and Roman times. When turned on a lath, the discarded pieces were usually left with a square hole. These objects are, Nash wrote, "dramatic . . . as symbols of their antiquity . . . hallowed remnants of an almost unknown civilization."\n\n Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2020