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Featured here is one of the many works in the Government Art Collection, accompanied by further information about the work and the artist. The selection of works will change on a regular basis, so please come back again.
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January 2006
Event on the Downs |
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© Tate, London, 2005 |
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| Artist |
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Paul NASH |
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| Title |
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| Date |
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1934 |
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| Medium |
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Oil on canvas |
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| Dimensions |
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51(H) x 61(W) |
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| Inscription |
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bl: Paul Nash |
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| Acquisition |
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Purchased from Leicester Galleries, July 1969 |
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| Number |
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8536 |
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Description
'Event on the Downs' depicts the view from Whitecliff Farm on Ballard Down, near Swanage in Dorset, where Nash and his wife stayed between October 1934 and February 1935. It is, however, more than a simple landscape. Indications of its meaning can be found in the incongruous placement of three motifs which are recurrent in Nash's art of this time: the tennis ball, the tree stump and the cloud.
Nash was then interested in Chinese art and philosophy, and the tennis ball should be read as an equivalent for the yin-yang symbol. The black (active, masculine) part, subtly indicated here by a shadow, is thought to activate the body in life along with the white (passive, feminine) part. At the point of death, the two are thought to separate. The masculine element rises into the sky, represented here by the cloud, while the feminine element sinks into the earth, represented by the tree sttump, a romantic symbol of death. Like yin and yang, the tree stump and cloud echo each other in shape, and the cloud seems as solid looking as the chalky cliffs beneath it. Paul Nash had been preoccupied with issues of mortality since the death of his father in 1929, and this is one of a number of works to deal with the theme. Nash was influenced by Surrealism from the late 1920s but considered his approach to be an individualistic one, rather than one directly motivated by surrealist manifestos.
Adapted from Mary Beal, 'Paul Nash's "Event on the Downs" reconsidered', 'Burlington Magazine' November 1989. |
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