Devolving Scottish Art
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Slides for Stage 3 elective Contemporary Scottish Visual Culture Week 9: Thursday 19th Nov 2009
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Devolving Scottish Art
- 1. Devolving Scottish Art Myth Makars 1957-
- 2. Myth Makars (not Glasgow Miracles) 1890s - Spook School 1980s - New Image Glasgow 1990s - Scotia Nostra etc.
- 3. John Byrne and Alasdair Gray
- 9. Alexander Moffat Poets' Pub (1980) features the poets Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, Christopher Murray Grieve, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Edwin Morgan, Robert Garioch, Alan Bold and John A. Tonge.
- 12. February 1975
- 14. New 57 situated at 105 Rose Street, Edinburgh from 1965-73
- 17. 57 is comparable to the example set by grass-roots cultural initiatives like the Festival Fringe (founded 1947) and run in parallel with other radical developments such as Jim Haynes Paperback Bookshop (opened 1959), Traverse Theatre (founded 1963), Richard Demarco Gallery (founded 1966), Edinburgh Arts (founded 1972) and WASPS (Workshop and Artists Studio Provision, Scotland founded 1977).
- 18. Scottish Realism (1971) SAC touring exhibition curated by the poet Alan Bold. The importance of Rocket magazine should be noted here, in particular issue 8 which featured Alan Bold’s manifesto on Scottish Realism.
- 20. Stan Bell Hex , (1975) SAC Mural George’s Cross, Glasgow Ronnie Forbes Domestic Interior (1974) Acrylic on canvas 152 x 183cm From Recent TV Series Collins Gallery, Glasgow 1974.
- 22. Tom McGrath, poet and playwright. Founding Editor of International Times (1966), author of The Hardman (1977) and Director Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre (1974-77).
- 24. May 1975
- 28. BALTHUS The Street (1933)
- 34. Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer over the Sea of Fog (1818)
- 35. John Everett Millais John Ruskin (1854)
- 39. Orange Juice Poor Old Soul 7" Postcard, 1981-2
- 42. Adrian Wiszniewski Attack of a Right Wing Nature
- 46. Lawrence Weiner at Transmission and Fruitmarket Early 1990s
- 47. Douglas Gordon Something between my mouth and your ear (1994)
- 48. Douglas Gordon , Selfportrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe (detail) 1996
- 49. Douglas Gordon, Selfportrait ( Kissing with scopolamine) 1994
- 50. Confessions of a Justified Sinner 1995 Video installation, two parts, each 300 x 400 cm Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris
- 51. Richard Prince Claude Closky
- 52. Douglas Gordon, A Divided Self II , 1996, video installation,
- 53. Smith / Stewart Mouth to Mouth (1995)
- 54. Abramovic / Ulay «Rest Energy» 1980 Shown at: 'Ulay/Abramovic, Performance works 1976-1988', Tramway, Glasgow, UK, 1998
- 55. Ross Sinclair Real Life TV (1994)
- 57. Ross Sinclair Real Life Rocky Mountain, 1996, CCA Glasgow
- 59. Douglas Gordon , 24 Hour Psycho (1994)
- 60. Roderick Buchanan Work in Progress 39 Colour Prints
- 61. Roderick Buchanan Yankees Kreuzberg, Berlin 1996
- 62. Christine Borland The Dead Teach the Living (1997)
- 64. Julie Roberts Restraining Coat (1995)
- 65. Martin Boyce Chair Noir , 2000
- 66. Nathan Coley Pigeon Lofts (1997) Installation view, Kunsthalle Bern
- 67. Nathan Coley Villa Savoye 1997
- 68. Simon Starling: Tabernas Desert Run , 2004; installation view at 'Tabernas Desert Run', The Modern Institute, November 2004
- 69. Toby Paterson: Black Elegy , 2004; Installation View, GOMA, Glasgow
- 71. David Sherry Carrying a Bucket of Water Around for a Week
- 79. Lucy McKenzie
- 81. A rite of passage : from T-shirts into shirts Keith Farquhar, Craig Gibson, Creig Stamper, Ryan Doolan, Lee O'Connor, Emma Butler, Julian Reid (2003) Galleria Laura Pecci, Via Bocconi 9 Milano
- 82. Keith Farquhar V-Necks Vs Round-Necks - 2003 Art Unlimited, Art Basel 03 Pringle jumpers, golf clubs and mixed media
- 83. Keith Farquhar Hooded (2003) at Neu, Berlin Keith Farquhar at Nyehaus, New York (2005)
- 84. David Hall TV Interruptions (1971) Ten unannounced broadcasts on Scottish Television in August and September 1971.
- 85. Peter McCaughey Wave (1993) Installation 3000cm x 4000cm Ten synchronised video projectors project images onto screens hung in windows of Tmax Mill in Glasgow. The event took place eight hours after demolition of Queen Elizabeth Tower Blocks. Images from the demolition were rapidly remixed and included in an event.
- 86. Peter McCaughey No Way Back (1994) Installation 700cm x 1000cm Cinemascope film format, 35mm Cinema trailer, installed in various cinemas between other trailers. Dealing in currency of false history and possible futures. 73 seconds.
- 87. Peter McCaughey X MARKS THE SPOT (1995) At Glasgow Hunterian Museum (part of University of Glasgow, the 19th century principal building a tall Gothic ecclesiastical looking construction). In the grounds, a dancer, Vanessa Smith danced with her group marking out an X movement on the ground, an Irish performance artist (can't remember the name) worked with flour (probably also an X), a buto dancer (Alex Rigg) danced in the river, and Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty (KLF) and Marc J Hawker (who later changed his name to "Nation") pissed in the wind.
- 88. Peter McCaughey The Futurist , Liverpool Biennial 2004 "The door schematizes two strong possibilities, which sharply classify two types of daydream. At times, it is closed, bolted, padlocked. At others, it is open, that is to say wide open.” Gaston Bachelard "The Poetics of Space" Pg 222
- 89. Luke Fowler / Shadazz Video cover image by Rory Crichton Design by Robert Johnston Evil Eye is Source Limited Edition VHS tape Distributed by BdV (Europe)/Shadazz (UK) Collection of ten collaborative videos made by artists paired with musicians.
- 90. Stephen Sutcliffe That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore DVD
- 91. Torsten Lauschmann Transmission, Glasgow 9th November- 4th December 2004 Suburbia in 3D: Chasing Butterflies (2004) Video projection and twigs. A Lover Waits for Good Times (2004) Video projection.
- 92. Torsten Lauschmann Mother and Child (2004) Video projection and gold leaf Every Friday at 7pm and Saturday at 4pm in the basement lounge Lauschmann presented a series of experimental film and video works by a variety of artists, musicians, film makers and media activists.
- 94. Katy Dove: You (2003) DVD animation, 5:06mins
- 95. Katy Dove Melodia (2002) Animation
- 96. A Kind of Bliss Polly Apfelbaum, Katy Dove, Len Lye & Lily van der Stokker 19 February - 28 March 2004 The Drawing Room, London, 2004
- 97. Katy Dove flora flora (June 4-22, 2002) Transmission, Glasgow A screensaver for the Transmission website was launched at the gallery on Saturday June 15th 2002 at 7:30pm.
- 99. Peter Donaldson- THE FALL OF BABYLON (PARTS I & II) Video projection (3 min & 4 min)
- 101. Sarah Tripp - ANTI-PROPHET (2000) documentary Commissioned by Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow ‘ What do you believe in?’ is the question put to twenty people living in and around Glasgow. Each interviewee nominates the next person to be interviewed to form a chain of questions and answers across a range of social and spiritual backgrounds.
- 103. Keith MacIsaac Myoan True (Lloyd Cole) (2003-) Collage for incomplete project
- 104. Keith MacIsaac Bridgeness (2004) Digital Projection 24 mins
- 105. Keith MacIsaac Régina Flat/Studio Practice (2005) Digital Projection, 13 mins
- 106. Keith MacIsaac Régina Flat/Studio Practice (2005) Digital Projection, 13 mins
- 107. Creative Scotland?
Notas del editor
- The title is 'Devolving Scottish Art' as I will mainly look at efforts to create 'Scottish' and localised art forms roughly between the establishment of SAC and 1980. Creating confidence in a home grown art during this period involved elements of myth making, but this wasn’t always confined to a singular urban environment (civic pride having died out by the 60s) or to a singular ethnocentric notion of ‘Scottishness’. In Glasgow, as in the rest of Scotland, there was no figurative ‘revival’ in 1980, rather a deadening continuity that was broken only by artists who, while working within figurative and narrative conventions, did not adopt the media-centric conservatism, urbane aesthetics or reactionary ethics of the academy. Their narrative works were ingrained rather in a notion of figuration that was integrated with folk and mass popular culture and which echoed its polyglot character. This is in some ways about the question of Realism and media fetishism vs metafiction and polymathic approaches but there's only one bit of the equation that's ultimately centred around Glasgow since it's so heavily connected with the rise of the 'Scottish question' / the 70s oil fields / the devolution paper and referendum – it took on ‘One Scotland’ and placed it in an international context.
- New Image Glasgow – Myth Makars (not Glasgow Miracles) The devolution and reconstruction of the art infrastructure during the latter half of the 1970s helped to build a more responsive environment for artists living and working in Scotland. As a direct result, Scottish art began to benefit from the input of younger artists who were politically motivated and who had first hand knowledge of self-organisation, allowing them to remain quasi-independent. Moffat’s involvement with the independent art infrastructure proved to be crucial in the promotion of his graduates from GSA in the early 80s. Expressive Images (1982) held at the New 57 in Edinburgh brought recent graduates Murdena Campbell, Steven Campbell, Simon Fraser, Alastari Hearsum, Scott Gilmour, Mario Rossi and Andrew Walker to the attention of the Scottish public, overshadowing the SAC organized Scottish Art Now show which was being held simultaneously downstairs in the Fruitmarket complex. Moffat’s New Image Glasgow touring exhibition launched at the Third Eye Centre in 1985. These manifesto shows packaged the artists as a semi-coherent group in the eyes of the public, something that has tended to misrepresent their work subsequently. Ken Currie claims that the only thing they often had in common was "a predilection for figurative imagery as a reaction against the semi-abstract painting that flourished in Glasgow School of Art for years. They differed in the nature of figurative imagery and its aims, ranging from the poetic to the political. They had no common programme, rarely exchanged ideas, at times were diametrically opposed in terms of subject matter and content and were fuelled by a passionate, often violent, rivalry."[1] While the ‘Glasgow narrative painting’ tag is actually rather trivial and did little to explore what differentiated Campbell and Wiszneiwski from Currie and Howson – it did, nevertheless, help to draw attention to artists based in Glasgow and in Scotland in general. This is a process of canonisation that we can see in The Spook School and the Scotia Nostra (although one of self-mythologisation perhaps) – it’s one that’s less obviously evident in the 70s (perhaps since it didn’t quite spark the public’s imagination in the same way; it wasn’t group-based so there was no ‘team’ to support) and hence perhaps explains its relative invisibility. It would be folly to attempt to construct a canon as the only way to re-imagine the 70s – it’s also impossible to conceive of a canon now, but we can see some abortive self-conscious attempts were made to establish something approaching a canon and that artists continue to think of ways that they can animate their surroundings via collective effort. [1] Ken Currie, 'New Glasgow Painting in Context', Edinburgh Review, No.72, February 1986, p73.
- Of all the artists that attended Scottish art schools in the late 1950s and early 60s, two key cultural figures remain John Byrne (Graduated GSA 1964) and Alasdair Gray (Graduated GSA 1957). Graduates of GSA, both artists are literally ‘literary’, known primarily as writers rather than as visual artists. They are polymathic – they adopt whichever means they deem most appropriate and can’t simply be considered as artists or painters despite their schooling. This has partly been due to the lack of any market for the kind of work they produced early in their careers in Scotland; other means of survival had to be found. In 1967 Byrne sent a small painting to London’s Portal Gallery, a gallery specialising in naïve works of art, claiming that the painting was by his self-taught father Patrick Byrne, a satirical ruse that grabbed attention by gratifying metropolitan prejudices. The Portal decided to represent Byrne despite him confessing authorship. The artist quickly became a celebrity patronised by the new moneyed set of sixties swinging London. Gray, who graduated from Mural Painting in 1957, has spent much of his life taking up mural commissions and teaching posts in Glasgow to sustain his practice. In their unconventional and inclusive approaches they have both been connected to Scots diglossia [1] and to a particular emphasis on generalism found in Scottish education (encapsulated in their status as ‘Makars’).
- Both artists have made careers from illustration. Byrne has produced designs for The Beatles and The Humblebums and numerous book sleeves, while most of Gray’s art is known through the wood cuts and illustrations he produces concurrently with his writing. Reminiscent of totemic ideographs and illuminated Celtic manuscripts, designs for books such as Poor Things (1992) are Gray’s most public artworks while Byrne’s Teddy Boy illustrations are equally visible. Both artists share a crisp and confident draftsmanship and predilection for the ornate and the decorative informed by the Scottish decorative revival of the late 19th century. This has set an important catalyst for many contemporary artists working in Scotland with transmedia. Both artists are also important in that they can clearly be seen to work imaginatively with what surrounds them, producing tightly drafted, illuminated works that are socially informed. Crucially, their works are metafictive and autopoietic rather than naïvely ‘realist’ or naturalistic; they simultaneously discard the gentrified modernist expressionism and the lacklustre Realist traditions that dominated Scottish art in the twentieth century. [1] The need for those who speak Scots to constantly swap between the Scots and English languages.
- Byrne’s practice as an artist has to be seen as allied to the transformation of working class ethics in Tory 1950s Glasgow[1], a period in which American-style mass consumerism was becoming increasingly pervasive. These interests were reflected in Byrne’s painstaking paintings which merged a fascination with popular Americana, folk and naïve art, self-consciously encapsulating the glamorous myth of rock n’ roll authenticity and America’s false promise of an inclusive primitivism. This way of working went entirely against the grain of the beat-inspired abstraction found amidst mytho-poetic ethnocentric Scottish painters such as Alan Davie. If Davie’s ethno-Celtic sensibility and the Nationalistic tropes of Scottish painting located in the landscape were rejected, it was in favour of an urban-folk vision that is best encapsulated in the music of The Humblebums (1969), Gerry Rafferty’s early collaboration with Billy Connolly. This duo scorned the bogus ethnicity and affectation of Celtic folk music and old men’s blues in favour of a mix of lewd steelworker jokes and jukebox folk-pop. Byrne’s own folk history is most clearly inscribed in the rapier-like wit of three slab boys in the Design Studios of A.F. Slobo Carpet Manufacturers, Paisley. Each dreams of leaving their dreary small town jobs. Spanky Farrell thinks of becoming a rock n’ roll star in the USA, Hector McKenzie, of marrying the mailroom girl Lucille, and Phil McCann of gaining admission to art school. Byrne is a composite of each character, his life echoing theirs - he went to art school and then got married and returned to Paisley to work in as a carpet designer.[2] [1] This was the time of Harold MacMillan’s Tory triumphalism. Although Scotland is the home of Labourism, especially since the 1970s, the Conservative and Unionist Party gained more than 50% of the Scottish popular vote in the 1950s. [2] This cycle of expectation followed almost certainly by disappointment (and thus to chronic lack of expectation) is central to discussions of Scotland’s miserablist sensibility, a fatalistic acceptance of ‘urban entrapment’ and dependency culture that New Labour are keen to break in order to inspire confidence in the economy. The popularity of schadenfreude and the cycle of inferiorism is seen to stem from the 1707 Act of Union by many commentators. See Beveridge, Craig, and Ronald Turnbull. The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism and the Intellectuals . Edinburgh: Polygon, 1989 and Carol Craig’s The Scots Crisis in Confidence , Big Thinking, 2003 the thesis which ‘justifies’ the work of the Centre for Confidence Studies which she now directs .
- We can see comparable narratives of urban entrapment at play in Gray’s early works produced while he was still a student, including noir-esque period pieces such as Night Street Self Portrait (1953) and Clergyman with Ominous Street Scene (1952) which reveal the flourishing of Gray’s idiosyncratic imagination. Such works are sketches of sorts for Gray’s Unthank, a dystopic city modelled on Glasgow that features in his novel Lanark (1981). Gray’s alter-ego is Duncan Thaw who, in Lanark , vainly attempts to paint the story of Genesis in Cowlairs Parish Kirk. “Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music-hall song and a few bad novels” bemoans Thaw. “That’s all we’ve given the world outside. That’s all we’ve given ourselves.”[3] Gray’s novel is known for its lengthy passages of metafiction, the author liberally entering into discussions with the main character or offering the reader extended notes on his acts of plagiarism. A similarly playful kunstwollen belies Gray’s grandest pictorial schemes. Arguably the most ambitious public art work in Scotland, a mural scheme has been slowly materialising in recent years in Òran Mór, an auditorium, theatre, nightclub, bar and restaurant that occupies the former Kelvinside Parish Kirk in Glasgow. Extending the meta-fictive universe of Lanark , Òran Mór takes the role of the Elite Café just as Gray plays his alter-ego Duncan Thaw. Thaw’s quest to paint his city imaginatively is materialising in Òran Mór. The scheme rallies against the kirk’s prescriptive Calvinist inheritance; it is speculative, outward looking and inventive.[4] [3] Thaw in Kenneth McAlpin Chapter 22, Book 2, Alasdair Gray, Lanark , p243. In their own ways Byrne and Gray both productively break the cycle of inferiorism by addressing it directly, with great ambition and much humour. They are thus both rightfully regarded as pivotal Scottish artists. It should be noted that this recognition has come late in both of their lives despite the efforts of the art establishment to ignore them and their work. Most talented artists in Scotland in the 50s and 60s were not prepared to pay this price and thus joined the Diaspora (mainly) to London where they found success came more easily (e.g. Eduardo Paolozzi, The Boyle Family, John Bellany, Bruce McLean, etc.) Thus the cycle has continued apace until a different example was set by these artists. [4] This could just as easily describe the music of The Humblebums and by extension the kind of Scotland as imagined by Byrne and his peers.
- It is crucial to adopt a narratological approach to grasp what is distinctive and imperative about Gray and Byrne’s practices. Both artists approach the production of art in the same way as they approach the writing of fiction since their visions of Scotland must be imagined before they can be realized. If the nation is an imaginary community then creating an image of Scotland as it could be rather than simply as it appears to be was paramount. It is therefore highly significant that these artists have consistently conceived of themselves as implied authors which is to say that the trope of the artist as it appears in their work is a shadow of the ‘real’ artist, a fiction that narrates the works in question into being and which often features within them reminding us that we are viewing a fiction. Both artists make extensive use of visual overdetermination, baroque pictorial devices that we might usefully think of as pastiching extravagant purple prose while nevertheless harbouring utopian aspirations. This, again, fundamentally separates these artists from the drive for authenticity that dominated, in different ways, both abstract and Realist painting in Scotland during the 50s, 60s and, as we shall see, the 70s.
- Byrne and Gray’s figurative work negotiates an increasingly Americanised Scottish urbanism on home-spun terms. To what extent can we see a burgeoning sense of postmodern or postcolonial practice? Is this work simply parochial or does it aspire to the international impact and visibility that Lanark has undoubtedly has had? This desire to be both Scottish and international had its most powerful advocates in the magazine Scottish International (1968-74), a cross-cultural journal edited by Bob Tait.
- Scottish International showcased the literati of the 60s who gravitated around Edinburgh’s Milne’s Bar (Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Robert Garioch, Sorley MacLean and Edwin Morgan) as well as the work of then lesser known Glasgow writers such as Gray. [1] [1] See for example Gray’s short story “The Comedy of the White Dog”, Scottish International , 8, November 1969, p18-21, later published by Glasgow Print Studio Press in 1979.
- This desire is also at the heart of Richard Demarco’s links with Europe, with the New 57 Gallery’s fascination with German modernism and with the rise of new institutions such as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (founded 1960). The aim was to spearhead a cultural revival which would be ‘Scottish’, in the sense that it would rediscover its cultural and economic independence amidst the ruins of an imperialist British culture, and international in so far as it would explore Scotland’s independent links and networks with the world beyond the British Commonwealth.[1] [1] Scotland and its people played a central role in the growth of the British Empire (as colonizing nation). With the collapse of the Empire and with it the raison d'être of the British State, Scottish self-determination has become increasing appealing. In the early 1970s, North Sea oil fields promised to deliver an economic bounty that would allow Scotland to become a wealthy independent state once more and allow it to renegotiate its relations with the world.
- Until the Scottish Parliament was re-opened in 1999, this quest for (inter)national autonomy was pursued through cultural devolution. In artistic terms this was encouraged, moderately, by the establishment of the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) in 1967. The SAC helped for a time, in part, to create the economic conditions in which an independent artistic microclimate might grow. As was the case with Eire, funding was (and still is) given to organisations which make particular claims to pursue distinctly ‘Scottish’ programming policy. Despite this, Scottish artists largely regarded the SAC with suspicion, as a clone of its parent organization the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB). SAC tended to keep a tight reign on the organizations it sponsored.
- Unlike the ACGB it actually administered and curated some galleries directly, notably the gallery now known as Fruitmarket in Edinburgh which grew out of their HQ in Charlotte Square and the Glasgow SAC Centre in Blythswood Square which would form the basis for the Third Eye on Sauchiehall Street. SAC Attempted to respond to the need to regionalise the arts with innovations such as the Travelling Gallery.
- 1976 – Reform of Local Government 1976 – Devolution Referendum in the air – Together this would create even greater demand for national and local devolution – So: The need for an alternative to this London-led model of centralized cultural administration was deeply felt. This was something that already emerged since the late 60s via Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs), organizations that have proved to be crucial to the Scottish art infrastructure and the health of art practice.
- The first of what has become a wave of key ARIs, the 57 Gallery opened on the 9th of February 1957 in Daphne Dyce Sharp’s sculpture studio at 53 George Street. The artist run collective mutated into the New 57 situated at 105 Rose Street from 1965-73, where, benefiting greatly from the arm’s length funding of the SAC, it mainly showcased work by emerging Scottish artists who were excluded from the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the commercial galleries of the New Town. There were also important exhibitions from established artists including
- Jim Dine (1971)
- Max Beckmann (1970) Max Ernst, John Heartfeld
- 57 is comparable to the example set by grass-roots cultural initiatives like the Festival Fringe (founded 1947) and run in parallel with other radical developments such as Jim Haynes Paperback Bookshop (opened 1959), Traverse Theatre (founded 1963), Richard Demarco Gallery (founded 1966), Edinburgh Arts (founded 1972) and WASPS (Workshop and Artists Studio Provision, Scotland founded 1977). Chaired by painter Sandy Moffat from 1968-78, the New 57 operated as a cooperative, run mainly by painters that included Ian Patterson, Roger Askham, Mark Jones, Kirkland Main, Alan Johnston, Jim Birrell and Glen Onwin who took responsibility for the support of contemporary art practices that renegotiated the constraints engendered by national, municipal and commercial venues in Edinburgh. Artists associated with the New 57 - such as Ian Guthrie, Michael Docherty and John Mooney – also exhibited their work at David Balfour’s Bookshop Gallery (opened 1971) at 17 West Nicolson Street, and annually at the Edinburgh Festival 20 x 57 group shows held at the University of Edinburgh’s William Robertson Building in George Square from 1969. The shows were straightforward affairs, solo or groups exhibitions mainly of paintings and graphics devoid of any pressing curatorial intervention.
- To confirm his credentials as a cultural worker, Moffat worked at an engineering factory from 1964-1966 and in 1967 visited Dresden, Halle, Weimar, East Berlin and Buchenwald concentration camp in the German Democratic Republic with Bold and Bellany. Moffat’s work featured in Scottish Realism (1971) SAC touring exhibition selected by his friend the poet Alan Bold. [1] Bold’s advocacy of, a rather poorly theorized, Realism appears naïve, nostalgic and retrograde in the context of contemporary international art practice of the early 70s. This impression is particularly acute when we consider such work alongside innovative developments in conceptualism, feminism and systems based-practices - all of which were regularly exposed through the ambitious and groundbreaking programming of the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh. There is sense in which artists associated with the New 57 saw the Demarco Gallery as something to compete with rather than a context to embrace, despite the fact that they saw their primary target to be the conservatism of the RSA. To New 57 artists both Demarco and the RSA represented the ‘establishment’ since both were major recipients of SAC awards, grants that seemed to elude artists who wanted to run their own infrastructures. [2] As such both were regarded to be distant from the daily practice of the artist, both were managerial, administrative and distant from the wider audience. Given that the insistence on a Realist agenda didn’t bode particularly well with Scotland’s commercial galleries the New 57’s independence from commercial concerns and academic proprieties and its ability to nurture communities of artists made it crucial in the development and promotion of new art in Scotland. [1] The importance of Rocket magazine should be noted here, in particular issue 8 which featured Alan Bold’s manifesto on Scottish Realism. [2] Examining the accounts of the SAC in the 1970s shows clearly that the Demarco Gallery was receiving large subsidies while the New 57 was, in comparison, rather poorly supported. For example in 1972-3 the Demarco Gallery received £17,000 in grants (the largest award given in that year) compared with the more modest £1,250 awarded to the New 57. This certainly reflects the ambitions and experience of each organisation but is, nevertheless, indicative of a lack of investment in ARIs and is indicative of the deliberate maintenance of a sweat-equity economy that continues in Scottish art to the time of writing.
- Bold’s advocacy of Scottish Realism existed alongside a growing desire to produce work that would be encountered beyond the gallery system. The mural schemes of the early 1970s were one means by which this desire was broached. This set a number of precedents for what was to follow in Scotland. The mural schemes were large and ambitious, encouraging following generations of artists to aim to produce work on a similar scale. They were also largely iconographic (although there were a few abstract murals). Muralism picked up in the late 60s when much of the Victorian tenements of urban Central Scotland was being bulldozed. The old buildings vanished partly to make way for modern housing developments and partly to allow the introduction of new motorways, particularly in Glasgow. Murals were thus painted on Gable Ends to brighten up the scars left by the new concrete megastructures. These early schemes soon morphed into regenerative public art schemes in the Blackness area of Dundee, in Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Inverness, Perth and Arbroath. The Scottish Arts Council’s 1974 mural scheme commissioned four friezes in Glasgow, including a design by John Byrne.
- The murals themselves were largely ‘pictorialist’, blow ups of gallery art previously exhibited at the Glasgow League of Artists (GLA). The GLA, however, like many muralists in 1970s Britain, were a radicalised co-operative. Founded in 1971, they aimed to continue the spirit of 1968. “These ideas included a re-affirmation of the importance of art and all creative activity; greater public access to art as well as greater involvement in art activities; a belief in self-help and mutual aid to get things done, rather than passive dependence on ‘experts’ and established authority.”[1]. One important effect of the 70s projects was to bolster the popularity of mural painting and mixed media degree programmes led by Roger Hoare at GSA (wherein Campbell and Adrian Wiszneiwski were students) and in Bob McGilvray at DJCAD. These programmes laid the ground for later developments such as the GSA’s Department of Environmental Art and in turn for the greatly celebrated site and audience orientated public art produced in Scotland in the early 1990s. [1] Bell, Stan, ‘The Spirit of ‘68”, Roots into the 80’s: Glasgow League of Artists Yearbook , Glasgow: John Watson, 1979.
- The devolving Scotland was also to gain one of its most important and resolutely polymathic institutions when, in 1975, Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre opened to the public.
- The arts centre was directed by the Italo-Scot musician, poet and playwright Tom McGrath[1] founding editor of the underground magazine International Times in 1966. McGrath’s return to Scotland was a great catalyst for a burgeoning transmedia approach to art practice, one that combined radical politics, media and performance to startling effect. [1] McGrath was also musical director of The Great Northern Welly Boot Show , starring comedian Billy Connolly. He established the foundations of the Third Eye Centre in 1974 and ran it for three years.
- Sarah Tripp TESTATIKA (2001) documentary Commissioned by Scottish Screen and Cornerhouse, Manchester this 20 minute digital video tells the story of the Testatika, the ‘free energy’ machine invented by a religious cult called Methernitha who are based in the Swiss mountains near Bern. This film takes us on a scientific pilgrimage to New Hampshire (USA), Newcastle (UK) and finally to Bern (Switzerland) in search of this new source of environmentally clean energy. Screened at: Edinburgh Film Festival, 2001 Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2001 South London Gallery, 'About Belief' 2002 Galerry Sztuki, Warsaw, 'Happy Outsiders' 2002 Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark, 'Fundamentalisms of the New Order' 2002 Dundee Contemporary Art Cinema, 2002 Cork Film Festival, 2002
- I can try to conclude by looking at what's happening to SAC now and think about how such things would have fared under the proposed new regime. The end of arm’s length principles will destroy the ability of artists to create their own mythologies – it will put back the clock to before 1966 and take the localised elements out of Scottish art.