Event on the Downs, Paul Nash 1934 [Tate]
…do you believe in ghosts?
Ghosts. All right, it’s not the right word. I don’t mean something white and flitting, or an armoured man with his head held under his arm. The presences in Nash-world are something far less defined and less definable. It is haunted all through. Or that’s partly it. But I’m not sure that even Nash found the right words for his spell.
In his essay “The Life of the Inanimate Object”, he wrote about “the endowment of natural objects, organic but not human, with powers or personal influences…” The hills are alive – and the rocks and stones and trees are too! Yes, with any English outdoor art, especially one that is set in a handful of favourite locations, these Wordsworthian terms are going to be tempting.
Paul Nash, hauntologist? A nice piece from the Independent announcing a new exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery