BLACK AND WHITE (PAUL NASH)

Even in his colored paintings, Paul Nash tended to project the world (inner and outer) in neutral tones, not dissimilar to these 1920 black and white woodblock prints of (top to bottom) promenade 2, the bay, and the tide dymchurch.  I’m a sideline spectator only, unskilled in art, but I also see the world that way. I have always wondered why and suspect it has to do with television’s strong influence.  Sitting endless hours in front of a black and white console as a child, consuming all entertainment genres in velvety shades of gray, left its mark, I think. I always found it odd that when the world was deep into the “color era” (the company I worked for even defined a motion picture as a color motion picture in our contracts) that black and white acquired “art-y” status.  To me it looks like reality and it keeps me from becoming (too) overwrought.

Velvet Underground: I Heard Her Call My Name (Link) 

 

SOLITARY

The human ass comes under fire
Asses resemble closely other asses
In curves & masses
Firing the same at the right time
Best if one is like oneself, solitary
Best when men mix to be the one unmixed,
neat, undiluted, solitary

What gladness to flee the world
Into a new world made largely with the intellect
Amid the ravishing lucidity there,
things that can be & cannot be
get well churned together
There big & little must be the same
in that the difference doesn't make any
"Little" is transformed,
from being small "a paltry thing
becomes the janitor of the wide world"

Like you
Is this "you" not yourself?
Not you? Why not? Not long enough?
You & your long enough
Who do you think I am?
I am you
Yes, you - that whole great
majestically startling
mentally epic burning
model of heaven

 

John Greaves: Solitary (wr. Blegvad/Greaves) (link)

Pictures:

I.  Paul Nash:  We are making a new world, 1918

II.  Paul Nash:  The Ypres Salient at Night, 1917-18

III.  Paul Nash:  The Menin Road, 1919

IV.  Paul Nash:  We are making a new world, 1918

V.  For more Paul Nash, see The Bay (link).