Exhibitions
Russian Painting of the Avant-Garde 1906-1934 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, till 5 September) The Line of Tradition: Watercolours, Drawings and Prints by Scottish Artists 1700-1990 (Royal Scottish Academy, till 12 Septem- ber)
Holbein and the Court of Henry VIII (National Gallery of Scotland, till 26 September)
Gerald Laing 1963-1993: a Retrospective (Fruitmarket Gallery, till 18 September)
Edifying city
Giles Auty
For me, a trip to Edinburgh uplifts the spirit in ways which are hard to define. Beyond the obvious charms of the city, there are others which provide a most mys- terious balm to the soul. One pleasure which I cannot explain altogether is to sit at the front of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and gaze out over five acres or so of well-mown grass at the grey houses and greyish skies beyond. When I do this, I find myself transported to another time — the 1930s, perhaps — when the building was a school still and the greensward its playing field — or so I imag- ine. Inside the building, the evidence of intelligence behind the displays and the ample daylight which floods certain gal- leries reinforce my feelings of well-being.
This is one of my favourite galleries in Britain and, for once, I feel faith in the vision of those in charge. This is why I was not surprised to see a thoroughly interest- ing exhibition there of Russian avant-garde art, much of it unseen not just in Western countries but in the USSR itself almost from the time it was made. The show has travelled to Edinburgh from Nantes and reflects the collecting between 1918 and 1920 of nearly 2,000 works of art on behalf of the state by a committee headed by Kandinsky. Many works were dispersed to provincial museums in such far-flung cor- ners of the USSR as Tula, Astrakhan and Samara but later, under Lenin and then Stalin, artistic experiment was discouraged and the dead hand of official Soviet art proliferated. What we see is a slice of buried history, of the efforts of artists who could travel still and absorb the exciting developments of the West and fuse these with their own traditions and conscious-
ness. There is not a profusion of great art in the show but works by such as Gon- charova, Kuprin, Filonov, Lentulov and Klyun are often at least as fascinating as those by names much better known in the West: Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich.
The huge exhibition at the Royal Scot- tish Academy, The Line of Tradition, is altogether more unwieldy and less clear in its aims than the admirable Russian exhibi- tion described already but is full of wonder- ful treasurers nonetheless. I think the point of the show is to emphasise the primacy of good drawing — a conjunction of words no one would dare to use now in an art school — in the production of significant works of art. The scope of the show reminds us of what excellent artists Scotland has boasted for nearly three centuries, including some I like especially such as James Cowie, Charles Hodge and Muirhead Bone. One work in particular which seemed to stop visitors in their tracks was D.Y. Cameron's The Waning Light', a Whistleresque noc- turne which is packed to the brim with feel- ing. Anyone doubting that landscape can be a suitable vehicle for force of expression should park themselves for some minutes before this painting.
At the National Gallery of Scotland, drawings and miniatures by Hans Holbein the Younger provide a serious stumbling- block for believers in inevitable progress: Holbein was this country's first royal por-
traitist and still remains the best. Drawings by him in coloured chalks bring to life fig- ures from more than four and a half cen- turies ago. I feel I understand Thomas More, his father and Jane Seymour far bet- ter now through the psychological insights Holbein provides via his incomparable skills of observation. I suspect the coming of Holbein to England may well be the sole indisputable benefit the Reformation brought to this country. In conclusion, the reopening of the refurbished Fruitmarket Gallery under the aegis of Graeme Murray adds a new dimension to the circuit of Britain's funded galleries which may all otherwise become in time mere provincial outposts of the Tate Gallery in London. The show to cele- brate the reopening is a retrospective of work by the former Pop artist and mod- ernist apostate Gerald Laing. The phe- nomenon of Pop irritates me in the main, but Laing engineered his productions with great skill and brings similar application and intelligence to subsequent brushes with neo-Futurist and neo-Classical sculpture. The show is presented superbly and makes an extremely welcome relief to all the right-on installations one bumps into so often elsewhere. Laing is articulate and thinks deeply about his art. Today no two factors are more likely to make an artist unpopular or to add him to the list of endangered species.
'Landscape with a Red House', 1917, by Aristarkh Lentulov (1882-1943)
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