REVIEW Clare Henry on the that travels badly Northern Lowlights When the 'first authoritative develop apace and three survey' of 'Scottish Art Since years is a long time in the 1900', opened last June in career of fast movers. , my heart sank. No new work from Ron Then anger set in. This long- O'Donnell and Calum Colvin, awaited exhibition could make the two photographers now or break 's reputa- on the world circuit; nothing tion. The timing was right. ambitious from star sculptor Scotland's international stand- David Mach; nothing at all ing has been riding high for from Alison Watt, Beth several years. Fisher, Joyce Cairns or any From the century's early of the other women who are decades, Scottish Colourist now giving the Scots macho paintings have started fetch- image a run for its money. ing more than £0.5m, selling Indeed, out of 107 artists who to America and Japan. And make up this 'major survey' as for the present day, young only 17 are women. painters are at last Why? Could it be because able to make a living and this exhibition was organised receive widespread critical by the establishment Scott- acclaim. The Scottish Re- ish National Gallery of Mod- naissance is flourishing. ern Art? And the catalogue One look at the exhibition sponsored by Baillie Gifford and my hopes crumbled. & Co, an old firm of invest- Tame, misleading, with serious ment managers whose by- omissions, it politely chro- word is safety not exp- nicles an enfeebled version eriment? of Scottish art. It lacks im- Yet over the past 30 years pact, excitement, punch. This the Scottish National Gallery is, in the main, conservative has spent many millions on its permanent collection. 'This is conservative Edin- They have also been very lucky with bequests and burgh drawing-room art. It gifts. And where gaps exist, eschews dangerous topics. pictures have been borrowed No vitriol; little passion* for this exhibition. This is where the whole Edinburgh drawing-room art. claim to be a 'survey' show It eschews dangerous topics. falls down. Many of the No vitriol; little passion. most influential living art- News that the show is to be ists (Jack Knox, Bruce exhibited at 's Barbi- McLean, Elizabeth Black- can Centre (Scottish Art adder, Mark Boyle for in- Since 1900, February 8 - stance) are merely repre- April 16,1990) only deepened sented by a token early my disappointment. work, often done when they Glasgow is representing were just out of college. Britain as European Capital Major artists are repre- of Culture for 1990, thus sented by minor works. Yet drawing immense attention a simple telephone call to Scotland. While America could have secured a top- and Germany have taken class example from each modern Scottish visual art to and every artist. their hearts, the English, and In some instances the lack London in particular, have of balance is scandalous. regarded this hype with Essential Scots omitted, suspicion, fear and some- second-rate artists included times envy. All Scots are for no apparent reason. aware that they must live up Where pictures have been to the promise. But with borrowed, often from Lon- friends like the organisers of don dealers, the choices are this exhibition, who needs so flawed that one can only enemies? assume they have been sum- Scotland's new talent: 'Glasgow Boy' Peter Howson's St George (1989) While the exhibition's pre- moned, as in the case of ab- war period can just about get stracts from John McLean, tion is made with little evi- cultural claims over recent by, the contemporary section to fit a misconceived pre- dence and no research among years. It has seemed to me a is a farce. There is nothing mise. For instance, most those artists still alive - and false argument to try and recent from the famous would dispute the catalo- there are many - who were force all Scots artists into the Glasgow Boys - Campbell, gue's claim that 'Scots looked around in the 1960s. strait-jacket of group ideo- Howson, Currie, Wiszniew- to New York for inspiration National identity has pro- logy, 'Scottishness', 'painter- ski. Young turks like these in the 1960s'. This assump- mpted extensive political and liness', or equally, into 'social

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realism'. What good Scottish artists have in common is their excellent training and su- perb basics: draughtsman- ship, compositional skills and so on. A good old- fashioned art education sys- tem, now ironically in danger, has seen to that. The diverse range of work was demonstrated in the 1987 Edinburgh Festival ex- hibition 'The Vigorous Ima- gination', when 17 very dif- ferent artists put Scotland on the international map 'as a centre of prodigious activi- ty'. That exhibition was later cited by American art critics as on a par with Berlin's 'Zeitgeist' and London's 'New Spirit in Painting' and placed the seal on the Scottish Revival. Regionalists, however, do have grounds for complaint. The north-east is outra- geously ignored, as though Scotland stopped at the Firth of Forth. Only one single Aberdonian, Ian McKenzie Smith, is included despite the fact that Aberdeen has been a lively creative centre for the past 20 years. Until now it has been all too easy to equate 'Scottish' with 'figurative' art: with the ur- ban deprivation or rural irony of Howson, Currie or Camp- bell. Although this has been true of the 80s, the 1990s already show signs of change, with a move toward abstrac- tion and conceptualism. Ironically, just as the great popularity of figurative art is peaking, Glasgow's La- bour council has established a £3m fund to buy contem- porary Scottish art for the city. Until now, as leader Pat Lally admits, the city has badly neglected contempor- ary art and their holdings are 'abysmal'. Have the councillors de- veloped a sense of loyalty - or perhaps just realised the investment potential? Whichever, it now means that Glasgow can easily out- strip Edinburgh's National Gallery acquisitions. So how about Glasgow putting on a truly marvellous representa- tive exhibition of 'Scottish Art since 1945' in a few years' time - and setting the record straight?©

II MARXISM TODAY FEBRUARY 1990