Visiting the Tate archive ahead of its major new retrospective of Paul Nash, I was struck again by the artist’s powerful way with words. Whether carefully typing up an explanation of the various elements that make up his 1941 masterpiece Battle of Britain, or playfully describing his feelings about death – “death, I believe, is the only solution to this problem of how to be able to fly. Personally, I feel that if death can give us that, death will be good” – Nash was that rare thing: a brilliant painter who could also write.
For which reason, you could do worse this autumn than invest in Lund Humphries’s new edition of Nash’s unfinished but nonetheless wholly wonderful 1949 autobiography, Outline. Supplemented by illustrations and photographs, a selection of letters written to his wife, Margaret, from the western front in 1917, and by a hitherto unpublished memoir she wrote in 1951, it promises to be a volume worth owning.
Of course, book junkie that I am, what I still hanker for most of all is a first edition of Outline (mine for about £100 on Abe, I see). The last time I saw one of these in real life, it was in the hands of Dave McKean, the illustrator and comic book artist, during an event in July at the House of Illustration in King’s Cross, London; he was talking about his new graphic novel, a commission by the first world war centenary arts programme, 14-18 Now, and the Lakes international comic art festival, for which he had drawn on Outline for inspiration.
Back then, the graphic novel in question existed only as a performance piece and as a limited-edition artist’s book. Now, though, it, too, is to be published properly. Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash is more episodic than Outline, and much darker; McKean has given violent physical form to emotions that Nash himself is apt to treat more obliquely. All the same, it’s a fitting and extremely beautiful tribute to the artist, each frame a kind of homage to a different aspect of his practice – and together, the two books, one old and one startlingly new, make for surprisingly good companions.
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash is published by Dark Horse Comics (£18.99). Click here to buy it for £15.57
