May 30, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
17 
The Indispensable Artist : By Charles Marriott 
h 
n 
\ 
/ 
:vv^^ 
As an artist, Lieutenant Paul Nash owes notliing 
to the war, though he probably owes a great 
deal to it as an exhibitor. Hundreds of people 
will go to see his "Void of War" pictures at the 
Leicester Galleries who would never have 
glanced at his landscape drawings and paintings in the London 
Group and other exhibitions, though, granting that he has 
had a little more practice in the interval, they were just as 
good and striking as are his war pictures. There is nothing 
to grumble at in that ; but the point is worth emphasising 
because t4-iere is an idea about that war "improves" the 
artist — that it makes a man of him, so to speak. The idea 
cannot be too strongly or too often denied, because if it were 
true the Germans would be right, and we would be wrong. 
What happens to 
the artist iq war 
is what happens 
to the plumber or 
any other man 
when he puts on 
khaki : he is not 
greatly changed, 
but our eyes are 
opened to his 
value and import- 
ance. 
One of the few 
satisfactory things 
about war is that 
it does distinguish 
between dispens- 
able and indis- 
pensable people 
and things. It 
shows the un- 
reality of business 
and brings out the 
reahty of work. 
More than that, it 
abolishes the false 
distinctions be- 
tween one kind of 
work and another ; 
and though it 
makes its first call 
upon the . fighter. 
it proves that 
while the trades- 
man is a doubtful convenience, the artist, equally with the 
man with the hoe and the man with the hammer, is a neces- 
sary person. There never was a war that did not make a 
direct call upon the services of art and literature ; but the 
striking thing about this war is that it shows the indispensa- 
bility of art and hterature on their own terms as art and 
literature, and not merely as instruments adaptable to the 
occasion. 
Persons whose contact with reality is habitually com- 
promised by the vague thing called business are always 
imploring us to look at the facts. Well, there are the facts : 
how are you going to explain them ? The draughtsmen 
and jjainters supply a something other than pictorial informa- 
tion, a something beyond the power of photography, the 
need for which is imperative. 
That something is interpretation. What the authorities 
want, and what the artist alone can supply is not so much a 
representation as a reading of the facts. The "stc^rn arbitra- 
ment of war," which proves the futility of so many human 
activities, only confirms the reality of art, and confirms it 
in its highest function. Under the sheer pressure of events, 
the artist is found to be indispensable. 
The particular interpretation of war given by Lieutenant 
Paul Nash is that of its absolute sterility. This, of course, 
affects nothing of the human spirit which finds magnificent 
expression in war as it does in any emergency. It is extremely 
doubtful if the finer things of war can be told in pictures, 
e.vcept symbolically, though they can be told in words. In 
all probability the visible accidents of heroic deeds are 
absurdly undignified. Being a landscape painter, Lieutenan 
Nash takes the human spirit for granted, atwl limits his 
judgment of war to its effects upon inanimate nature. His 
judgment is entirely unsentimental and all the more forcible 
on that account. He shows that as a destructive agent 
war has not even the merit of originality, hut only repeats 
%M 
La Fol 
Cross to Canadians 
the foundry scrap-heap and the blasted quarry on a " kolossal " 
scale." 
He is not indebted to war even for the undoubted strange- 
ness of his work, for he has always had the gift of the 
imaginative man of finding everything strange. No other 
artist that I can think of can so bring back the wonder of 
trees as they appear to the child : and this not by fantastic 
exaggeration, but rather by insisting on their character. 
Even when he is dealing with the wildest disorder there is a 
curious tidiness about his work, as if he disdained to make 
use of accidents and relied rather on the force of under- 
statement. He has perceived, as few have, the peculipr 
slowness of explosions ; the weighty jar which jumps earth 
or masonry out of place ; and he explains the aptness of the 
word "crater," his 
drawings of such 
phenomena recall- 
ing no|hing so 
much as pictures- 
of landscapes in 
the moon. Wheth- 
er or not the 
effects will be 
permanen t , he con- 
veys the impres- 
sion that the earth 
in the war zone 
has been killed. 
Nothing could 
bring home more 
forcibly the stupid- 
ity of war. 
.Though, as 1 
said. Lieutenant 
Nash takes the 
human spirit for 
granted, it is all 
there by implica- 
tion. In a sense 
there could not be 
a stronger tribute 
to the sublime en- 
durance of our 
men than the de- 
solation he so- 
remorselessly con- 
veys. He will not 
even allow that 
of the picturesque. They have 
Without a single heroic gesture, 
with, indeed, an occasional hint of sensible scuttling, he 
convoys an impression of massive determination that no 
other artist has been able to suggest. 
Lieutenant Nash undoubtedly owes a great deal to the 
consistency of his method. It might be called a method of 
super-realism, in which the effect of truth is got by dis- 
regarding accuracy and reducing everything to its essentials. 
Nothing could be further from photographic truth or show 
more clearly the entire independence of the arts of painting 
and photography. Equally arts, they have ■ absolutely 
nothing in common except subject matter. One reflects the 
thing and stands or falls by the accuracy of the reflection, 
the other translates the thing and stands or falls by the 
completeness and con.isteiicy of the translation. The differ- 
ence in result is that between a record and a commemoration 
or interpretation, which latter implies human consideration 
and judgment. 
This applies not only to the whole scene or event, but to 
every particular ; and there is not a single line, curve, or tone 
in Lieutenant Nash's work -that merely copies the lines, 
curves, or tones of nature. Generally, the thing has been 
greatly simplified, with emphasis upon its typical rather 
than its accidental form. This has a practical as well as an 
aesthetic value ; for, as Sir Arthur Quiller Couch pointed 6ut 
in one of his lectures on poetry, the first effect of measured 
language is to make a thing memorable. -.i 
So the reason or instinct which leads the au'horities to 
employ draughtsmen and painters to commemorate the war 
is as sound as that which led our forefathers to say : 
"Thirty days hath September" ; and the reason or instinct 
which led them to employ Lieutenant Nash was particularly 
sound and accurate because it is seen that he has a very- 
definite and complete convention. 
ic Wood 
fallen on Vimy 
By Lieutenant Paul Nash 
Ridge 
they have the support 
nothing but their duty. 
