ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on works by two artists who each depicted images of both wars and which, among other things, reflect the change in emphasis from earth to air. It explores how the sister arts represent what happens when the Christian faith ‘goes to war’; and how painters and poets reconstruct the conventional idea of landscape as a means of conceptualising their relationship with war. From Paul Nash’s own account, Totes Meer is a mixture of fact and fantasy, propaganda and poetry. Totes Meer 1940–1941 stands centrally in Nash’s art as a major painting that combines elements of his First World War style with his later fascination with aircraft: earth and air are brought together in death. Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Christopher Nevinson, Eric Ravilious and others were all appointed by Government ministries to make a visual record of the conflicts.
