Monthly Archives: April 2020

19th-century, Place and Space

What is Scottishness in art?

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There are books about Scottish art and Scottish artists, and they read like a pantheon of ‘greats’. The authors choose well-known stars like Alan Ramsay, David Wilkie, William McTaggart, Charles Rennie MacIntosh, The Scottish Colourists, The Glasgow boys, Susan Phillipsz. Even Joan Eardley will get a shoe-in, despite being born in Sussex. Celebrity status is important in selling exhibition tickets and books.

It’s a problem though to choose examples of Scottish art because there’s no agreement on what ‘Scottish’ means. Are these artists just good examples of quality, or do they create something exquisitely different that cannot be found anywhere else? Is ‘Scottishness’ an essential characteristic to be measured against ‘Italianness’, ‘Somalianness’ or ‘Englishness’? How Scottish am I compared to you? Are the Scottish Tories distinctively different from other Tories?

Questions like these underline the flexibility of the term. When Scottish means an ethnic group, then that identity can only be loosely defined and will be consistently contested. It cannot be a reasonable benchmark to evaluate anything, including art, against.

Yet, there is one aspect of ‘Scottishness’ that is distinct, that is different from any other ‘ishness’ on the planet….the place, the territory that we currently call ‘Scotland’. This place provides the context that any artist who works here shares, even if they live in different centuries.

William McTaggart. 1890. The Storm. Oil on canvas. 122.00 x 183.00 cm. National Galleries Scotland.

The definitive criterion of Scottishness is the presence and influence of Scotland itself – the land, its spaces, places, locations and peoples. This influences what anybody does here in this place, irrespective of where they were born or who their parents were.

20th-century, 20th-century

Scottishness

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William Crosbie. 1944. Cessnock in Summer. Watercolour. 47.6 x 66 cm. Private owner.

Cessnock in Summer depicts an industrial landscape in the burgh of Govan. Big ships were built there, goods traded across the Atlantic. The colours are pale, bright enough but hemmed in by upright shapes and blocks of black. The human figures cluster at the bottom right, their space invaded by the sea. This is a painting with social and political meanings, related specifically to a Scottish place.

When Scotland’s society and/or politics is noticeably distinctive then it causes friction with other British people. Murray Pittock tracked this by analysing the perception of Scottishness by media in England, post-1707. His article is fascinating (link below). He concluded that negative stereotyping waxed when the Scots were noticeably different, waned when they were not. Any Scottish behaviour thought to challenge or take advantage of existing arrangements was met with an outbreak of complaint that contrasted English virtues with Scottish vices. This perhaps explains why modern British red-top newspapers and right-wing politicians are so forthright about characterising anti-Brexit Scots as parasites and subsidy junkies. At the election in December 2019, 74.9% Scots voters did not support the current UK government.

Murray Pittock (2009) To See Ourselves as Others See Us  European Journal of English Studies, 13:3, 293-304.

20th-century, Artwork, Light thoughts, Place and Space, post 2000

The importance of Scottish sea(s) in sculpting consciousness

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The sea has been conceptualised in the western psyche, through myth, literature and art, as formless, wild and dangerous, romantically sublime. Yet this featureless void doesn’t resonate with people who live near the sea, as many people in Scotland do.

Our experiences of the sea are much more nuanced. I know how the little cold waves on Ayr’s flat sandy beach feel to a 4 year-old boy. I can still match my teenage fear of balancing up high with the thump of cold murky water on my chest after I’d jumped into a harbour from the pier.  There are sharp sensory memories of being on the sea in a sailing dingy: sounds heard- the slap-slap of water against the hull, the deep creaking flap of sails, a tiller that thrums; odours smelled and movements felt. There are other memories of being ejected from the boat, flying and falling into cold deep water. Such experiences shape our consciousness and influence future behaviours.

I remember how the light winds of summer and the arctic blow of a winter storm felt decades ago on the West sands at St. Andrew’s, where I stood many times and faced the tide. Those experiences resurface whenever I hear the opening soundtrack of ‘Chariots of Fire‘.

Here are seven paintings of those West sands, ostensibly of the ‘same place’ (found through Google images). The last two though communicate more to me than the first five. Interesting that none of the artists has depicted a human being, and only some have included the town.

20th-century

Place, belonging, identity (& Joan Eardley)

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Imagine, if you will, what kind of day Joan Eardley had as she stood on the foreshore painting this picture of the sea-foam at Catterline, a coastal village on the North Sea in Scotland.

Eardley, Joan Kathleen Harding; Flood Tide; East Dunbartonshire Council.

An artist’s sensory experiences (of the sound of the water, the touch of the wind, the smell of seaweed and brine, the grind of sand on the skin) must surely, like everyone else’s sensory experiences, be incorporated into what they feel and do, into their way of being in the world. The resultant painting then comes full circle, because it in turn influences everyone who looks at the picture. Each viewer thinks about this portrait of the sea, incorporates something of what the artist has left there and carries around a new perspective, even when they themselves go to the sea in the future.

It is no surprise that many visit Catterline to ‘see’ what Eardley saw, to compare the painted place with the ‘real’ place. This small thought experiment begs the question: how do people experience the Scottish sea and what has it added to their sense of self?

Eardley at Catterline.  Photograph by Audrey Walker, 1950s

 

 

20th-century, 20th-century, Place and Space

Lilian Strang Neilson, 1938–1998.

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Lil Neilson was from Fife and trained at Dundee Art School. She lived for a period in Catterline, spending much time with her friend and mentor Joan Eardley.

Rough Seas, Todhead Lighthouse; Maggie’s Dundee.

The subject of this painting, Todhead Lighthouse, is a specific place south of Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire. The lighthouse was designed by David Stephenson. The brushwork is a swirling churning movement in blue, a contrast to her later works which with an extended lighter palette require the viewer to do more thinking.

This one, for example, has the intriguing title of ‘Woman Unknown to Herself‘. It seems to echo the sea but what else is hidden in there?

Woman Unknown to Herself; Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums;
19th-century, 19th-century, Art-historical analysis of painting

Joseph Henderson, 1832-1908

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Henderson was a close friend, and eventually father-in-law, of artist William McTaggart. He painted many seascapes, depicting the Scottish seas in different conditions and with particular attention in later work to the atmosphere and lighting of specific places.

This sequence of images (from 1stdibs website) show how he  used many pigments and complex brushwork to craft a moving breaking wave.

post 2000

California waves

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This painting is by an artist who is based in Southern California on the San Diego coast. Though her comments (below) could be spoken by an artist on the Fife coast, would Scotland’s seas ever be depicted in a painting like “Incoming Tides”?

Sherry Krulle-Beaton: “I have always lived within a relatively short distance from the sea. What captivates me as an artist is the sea presents me with all the examples and principles of design. At the same time doing so with a mood changing spectrum such as crashing of thunderous waves to the soft roll of sand pebbles rushing back toward the sea. Living in a coastal community has made me more aware of how the ebb and flow, motion and moods of the ocean can influence my art.”

From Sparks Gallery

Light thoughts

Northern coasts and seas

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What’s up North?

This is a photograph of the Galloway coast, a favourite haunt of seascape artists. It’s ‘up north’ for many U.K. residents, but not for those who paint here.

Northerly places are usually assumed to be tougher to live in. They languish in colder weather and there are fewer people around. The imagined harshness and loneliness is accentuated because the North has mountains whilst other parts of Britain have hills. The Northern seas are part of the stereotypical Scottish landscape of the mind, which has in turn been portrayed as bleak and/or mystical, empty and/or abandoned, romantic or post-industrial wasteland. Any artist might build the clichéd elements into their world view. However, those who have lived in Scotland for an appreciable length of time might also have incorporated the actuality, what they could sense of the environment and absorb from the country’s culture.

 

21st-century, Complex thoughts

Scottishness?

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This is a poem by Don Paterson that was commissioned in 2005 to mark the publication of Scotland’s Cultural Commission.

We, the Scottish people, undertake
To find within our culture a true measure
Of the mind’s vitality and spirit’s health;
To see that what is best in us is treasured,
And what is treasured, held as common wealth;
To guarantee all Scots folk, of whatever
Age or origin, estate or creed,
The means and the occasion to discover
Their unique gift, and let it flower and seed;
To act as democratic overseer
Of our whole culture: wise conservator
Of its tradition, its future’s engineer,
The only engine of its living hour;
To take just pride in all our diverse tongues,
Folks and customs – and also what is yet
Most distinct in us: our infinite songs,
Our profligate invention and thrawn debate;
To honour our best artists, and respect
Not just the plain cost of their undertaking
But the worth of what they make, and every act
Of service and midwifery to that making;
And to discover, through our artistry
And fine appreciation of our art,
What we are not – so know ourselves to be
The world, both in microcosm and part,
And recognise in this our charge of care
To friend and stranger, bird and beast and tree,
To the planetary and local space we share.
We will do this wakefully, and imaginatively.

Janette Kerr

What, if anything, is distinctively Scottish about art from Scotland?

Is there a ‘unique‘ gift or are we ‘the world, both in microcosm and in part‘.

‘What is yet most distinct in us’?