“The Third Factor”: Modernity and the Absent City in the Work of Paul Nash, 1919–36

Abstract

Modernity and the city have a long history of association, the urban functioning as a metonymy and symbol of the modern. English artists were interested in representing the city and modern life before 1914, but the War reinforced a negative view of modernity and work addressing it proved difficult to produce after 1918. Nevertheless, Paul Nash saw modernity as an experiential truth demanding expression, a position disclosed in the persistent, if hidden or displaced, presence of urban form in his painting during these years.

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Notes on contributors

David Peters Corbett

David Peters Corbett, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, has written on Wyndham Lewis, Laurence Binyon, and T. Sturge Moore and Yeats, and is editor of an anthology on English Late Romantic art and literature. He is currently working on a book on English art and culture in the 1920s and editing Wyndham Lewis's journal [Department of History of Art & Design, Manchester Polytechnic, Manchester M15 6BG, England].