What 20th-century artist was named:
Question 1: A war artist without a war (by himself)?
Answer: Paul Nash
Paul Nash (1889-1946) was a 20th-century English landscape painter, Surrealist, and war artist.
At the outset of World War I, Nash used his front-line sketches to make a series of drawings of the war. These drawings show the influence of Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticism movement. As a result of these drawings, Nash was recruited by the propaganda branch of the British government as an official war artist. Nash used this opportunity to create a dramatic series of expressionist oil paintings that show viewers the horrors of war.
Nash was employed once again as a war artist in 1940 during World War II. Ultimately, he began to feel less like an artist and more like a “messenger for those who want the war to go on forever.”
After the wars Nash experimented with Surrealism and abstract art, both of which made for a powerful combination with his stark landscapes. Nash said that he found his personal inspiration in the English countryside, harking back to his childhood fascination with nature. He was especially drawn to areas with a sense of history: burial grounds, ancient forts, Stonehenge. He painted such places of vital and spiritual inspiration repeatedly and fancied himself as following the tradition of mystic William Blake.
His harsh landscapes from his experience in the wars continue to give a lasting impression. Today his paintings continue to be displayed as representative of the reality of war. For example, viewers can see “We Are Making a New World” (1918) at the Imperial War Museum in London and “Eclipse of the Sunflower” (1940) can be viewed at the Tate Museum in London.
Question 2. The Watteau of Surrealism (by Sarane Alexandrian)?
Answer: Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (1900–1955) was a French 20th-century Surrealist painter. As a young man, after seeing one of the metaphysical paintings by Georgio de Chirico (which he supposedly jumped off a moving bus to see), he was so moved that he determined to become an artist himself despite his lack of formal artistic training.
Surrealism was an intellectual movement espoused and defined by writer Andre Breton. Breton insisted that Surrealism was not an aesthetic movement, nor a series of techniques and tools, but instead was the means to an ongoing revolt against the reduction of humanity in relationship to materialism, religious traditions, and general misery. In art, Surrealism means that the subconscious sensibility takes precedence over form or realism in order to free the imagination. It influenced the onset of postmodernism.
Yves Tanguy’s paintings focus on imaginative and nonrepresentational landscapes in a limited color palette. The landscapes are dotted with strange, unidentifiable, abstract shapes.
Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) is a leading French Rococo painter. While Rococo emphasizes bright colors and a light approach, Watteau sometimes displays a somber or melancholy feeling in his paintings and, as such, is considered of all the 18th-century painters closest to modern sensibility. In making his comment that Tanguy is “the Watteau of Surrealism,” French art historian Sarane Alexandrian (1970) somehow draws a connection between Tanguy and the 18th-century genius Watteau. Alexandrian also has stated that the Surrealist movement died when Andre Breton died.
During his lifetime, Tanguy may not have been known as a leading artist in the Surrealist movement, but today he is famous for his contribution to the movement and is recognized as the only one of the Surrealist painters who was entirely self-taught. His paintings can be viewed at the Tate Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Sources:
Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.
Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2007.
