How can the concepts of creativity and transformation be applied to Nash’s work?
‘The Menin Road’ is one of the most iconic Landscape pieces painted during WW1 by Paul Nash. Nash is a former landscape artist who was enlisted as a soldier and later appointed as an official propaganda artist by the British government. Enlisted as a war artist, Nash’s art goes through abrupt change as he experiences the despair wrought by war, transforming his art from illustrating beauties of nature, to creatively expressing his anger and revealing the horrific nature of war. Nash achieves this through using modernism and irony in his art whilst further creating paradoxical imagery to ultimately portray the dangerously close reality of war to the surrealistic art he paints. Thus, despite his given role, his art comes far from depicting heroic visions of war as he depicts in “The Menin Road”, the desolation of the battle-ravaged earth.
One of the most salient elements of Nash’s work comes from the modernist style in which he creatively transforms his landscapes to create paradoxes. The seemingly surrealistic art becomes rather recognizable through nature symbolic objects; such as the trees and the clouds. These trees serve another crucial purpose to the art as Nash uses them to creatively depict the perception of depth as they are sized differently. With this, Nash is able to illustrate the scale of destruction caused by war, which is interestingly further emphasised through the infinitely stretching horizon. This creates a paradoxical imagery as the horizon symbolises the potential to escape from war whilst it being ironically unreachable. Another paradoxical element Nash creates to emphasise the destruction of war is the perception of the seemingly emptiness of land. Despite the desolation and almost “flat” nature of its land, in reality, its contents are filled with the mass byproducts of war. The desolate field even ends up blending well with the subtly foregrounded pairs of soldiers which may not only suggest the lesser significance of these soldiers but also to foreshadow their inevitable demise. However, the most disturbing imagery is perhaps the two shining beams of divine lights through the clouds; this is symbolic of hope, heaven or the presence of god. These lights are completely misplaced as they shine down onto the void of land, which perhaps works to subtly subvert the British government’s orders of creating an art that illustrates heroic sacrifices.