David Jones leaves out everything except the magic

Fiona MacCarthy salutes a modernist maker on the brink of a major revival by writing in today's Guardian about the work of poet and artist David Jones in advance of exhibitions of his work at Pallant House and Ditchling Museum of Arts and Crafts. 

She notes that: 'Kenneth Clark, in the mid-1930s, was describing Jones as “the most gifted of all the young British painters”. TS Eliot regarded In Parenthesis, Jones’s modernist epic of the first world war, as “a work of genius”. Auden judged The Anathemata, published in 1957, as “very probably the finest long poem to be written in English this century”.'

'One of his art teachers at college recognised his talent, saying of his work, “Look at that, you see, Jones leaves out everything except the magic.”'

MacCarthy suggests 'We need to view him as fundamentally a maker. He formed things with his hands as he shaped things in his mind, combining the visual and verbal with creative intensity not seen in Britain since the time of William Blake.'

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David Jones - In Parenthesis.