ARTS
If August is an arid month for art reviewers, September is one when the sluice-gates reopen, each day bringing a tidal rush of invitations to new openings. Gallery owners have reappeared in Lon- don sporting magnificent suntans and light- coloured clothes, many resembling nothing so much as photographic negatives of their winter selves. The serious business of art is upon us afresh after the summer's frivoli- ties. The Pimms can be banished to the back of the cupboard until next July.
In the five-year aftermath of the so- called demise of Modernism, several new adjectives have emerged to help ambitious artists know what to call themselves. Post- Modernist, Neo-Expressionist, Trans- avantgardist and the like have all had a good innings already, and many of those so described by others have certainly pros- pered. However, in the past three years or so a new imperative has emerged beside which the other descriptions have paled. To be a Post-Modernist or Neo- Expressionist is no longer enough; today's genuinely aspiring artist, above all things, must be Scottish. Those with their eyes on success are advised to find or invent at least one Scottish parent. The McHanics of success can rarely have been spelt out so clearly. But is there really anything in the water that makes Scottish artists so diffe- rent? Is it too late to ask how this strange new partiality of the art market came into being?
My first significant acquaintance with the rumoured happenings in Scottish art took place in 1985 when I learned about the exhibition taking place that August at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow. This same show arrived in London two months later. The participants were Stephen Barc- lay, Steven Campbell, Ken Currie, Peter Howson, Mario Rossi and Adrian Wisz- niewski. Hardly a week seems to have gone by since then without at least one of this number exhibiting one or more paintings somewhere in London. In 1985 Campbell had made a mark already in America. By now, Currie, Howson and Wiszniewski have become hardly less famous, at least in this country. Museum directors throng to exhibit them and buy their work. Not surprisingly, scores of Scottish artists have drawn new-found confidence from the successes of these and others. To be born north of the border has become a new and important selling point, even for those without styles similar to those of the first wave. At Edinburgh this year some real attempt was made, in the exhibition The Vigorous Imagination, to encapsulate the meaning of Scottishness in a contemporary artistic context. Vigour, vision and a cer-
Exhibitions
David Hosie (Raab Gallery, till 10 October) Eleven Scottish Artists (Christopher Hull, till 26 September) Scottish Students (Sue Rankin, till 25 September)
Broth or froth?
Giles Auty
'Urban dog', by David Hosie tain irreverence seemed the primary char- acteristics that were claimed. If part of the moving spirit has been to cock a snook at the London world of museum men mumb- ling on about Minimal paintings and Con- ceptual texts, the impetus was welcome and overdue. But are not the same museum people droning on now about the subtle complexities (if any) of Steven Campbell's symbolism? This particular whale's appetite is inexhaustible. Scottish artists should beware now of self-parody and playing to the gallery. Those who clap loudest are not always their best advisers.
The major substance behind the myth is that certain Scottish art schools encour- aged life drawing and independence of artistic spirit when both practices were in regrettably short supply south of the bor- der. Glasgow School of Art can claim a major part of this credit. All the artists in the New Image Glasgow exhibition atten- ded that city's art school. They and others have benefited also from the tireless sup- port of locally based critics, historians and gallery directors. Clare Henry, art critic of the Glasgow Herald, who has selected the current exhibition at Christopher Hull's gallery, Sylvia Stevenson and Andrew Brown of the 369 Gallery in Edinburgh are some of the major protagonists.
David Hosie, whose work is being shown now at Raab Gallery (29 Chapel Street, SW1), was born in Glasgow but studied in Edinburgh. His predominantly doll-like figures do not take wild swings at supposed government oppressors or simply at each other as do the fiercer dramatis personae of Ken Currie's and Peter Howson's paint- ings. They seem more passive victims of events taking place around them: nuclear threat, international terrorism, urban de- cay. In style, Hosie's more obvious sources are artists such as Magritte and Schlem- mer. The painter is still young and re- moved only shortly from state-supported studentship. As such, his moralising tone strikes me as slightly premature. In many years in the business I have yet to hear of an artist refusing a sale because he does not like the make-up of a potential purchaser's share portfolio. Hosie's paintings are essentially illustrations of symbolic ideas to which factors such as paint quality become secondary. Occasionally, the shallow Sur- realist space he uses refuses to work, as when the sky declines to recede behind a curtain. This said, the works are not without genuine merit and should have particularly strong appeal to concerned socialists working at the BBC.
The exhibition of 11 Scottish artists at Christopher Hull (17 Motcomb Street, SW1) is similarly worth visiting, but I question how representatively Scottish the whole thing may be. It is true John Cunningham continues the Scottish Col- ourist traditions with great verve and com- petence. Claire Harrigan, who is a genera- tion younger, does likewise and adds an additional touch of feminine mystery, while James Spence, a native of Glasgow, contributes woodcuts of that city's arche- typal son: the macho pugilist. I enjoyed Anne Anderson's atmospheric evocations also but note, in passing, that she was born in Trinidad. On the other hand, Brenda Lenaghan, who was born in Galashiels, has apparently forsaken Scotland to travel the world, taking her inspiration from its
varied people, colours and mythologies. The ground rules seem elastic.
To make up this week's Scottish quota, Sue Rankin has arranged yet another of her enterprising shows of the works of promising young artists (670 Fulham Road, SW6). As members of the up-and-coming Scottish generation, Anna Davis and Evelyn Birrell make brave tries in their respective media, oil and watercolour. The former's 'Silent Room' and the latter's 'Alisdair and Gillian' tingle with the kind of melancholy only age and increasing responsibilities can cure. Gino Ballantyne handles assemblages with sensitivity, as does Dorothy Stirling, maker of charming objects from things she has found while beachcombing. Bleached wood, rusting metal, a gannet's skull and the like owe their real origin to the elements, but with deft handling and a lick of grey-green paint the artist transforms them. Looking at her constructions, I could almost hear the sea.
I first encountered Peter McLaren's attractive cyclists earlier this year in Edin- burgh. His series of works on this theme, like the cyclists themselves, seems inex- haustible. Wiry young men and delightfully décolleté damsels have taken permanently to a life of the saddle. Future paintings which include following tricycles would seem an inevitable result.
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