Edinburgh Art Festival - Modern Art Gallery

What you see is where you’re at—Part 3
(Modern Art Gallery, until 12th December and after)

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was fifty years old on Friday, and to celebrate, it gave away free cake and balloons all day. This populist, feel-good moment fits perfectly with the mood of the Gallery in its anniversary year, with its defining commission from Turner Prize winner Martin Creed—a bright neon inscription that transforms the strict classical pediment of the entrance, Everything Is Going To Be Alright.

The collection inside is also a lot of fun—the third phase of the year-long What you see is where you’re at project that has taken over the entire SNGMA for its jubilee year, showing off the gallery space and displaying diverse elements of the collection with real wit and intelligence. The central hall opposite the entrance has been given over to a set of dramatically oversized kitchen furniture – a towering table and chairs, paradoxically childlike in their robust proportions.

At once ubiquitously ordinary and monumentally sculptural, this work by American artist Robert Therrien fits unexpectedly well into the distinctly Scottish space of the gallery, juxtaposed dramatically with the dining-room formality of the tall windows, high ceiling, and grey stone fireplace.

This is the latest of the Artists Rooms, showpieces from the seminal collection sold to the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate by London gallery owner Anthony d’Offay. The simple shapes and their glossy black finish also reflect one of the key themes that recurs in this year’s Art Festival—an emphasis on flat, bright shiny surfaces, a visual simplicity this work emphasises by being ironically named No Title.

In the south wing, you can find something even better, arguably the best of the current displays—a room full of Russian abstract art from a century ago, centred on a series of Kandinsky prints. These have a modernism that is still fresh and exciting—the freshness of a brand-new visual language, its lines not yet fixed into predictable patterns by familiarity. The Gallery is worth a visit for these alone.

Juxtaposed with them in the corridor is a series of small paintings by the Scottish Colourists. These date from the same era as the Kandinskys, and they are pretty in their way, but distinctly conservative in contrast with what was going on in Czarist Russia at the time—although I was nicely surprised by a subtly surrealist early offering from Alberto Morrocco, sneaked in among them. The south wing is rounded off by a small room devoted to the still life, combining realist works with some abstract pieces to provide an engaging narrative; conceptual art done well, by actually building it around real content, and showing that content in a new way—this sums up the sense of fun and lightly-held knowledge that pervades the revamped gallery.

The north wing is showing important new work by the Boyle family, based on detailed surveys of the landscape and the elements on a beach on the isle of Barra, planned since the 1970s and created over a span of eighteen years. It’s all very professional and conceptual, but for me, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Nonetheless, precisely beause there seemed to be something missing, I found this reproduction of reality unexpectedly exciting. I couldn’t see anything here beyond critical theory and scientific reproduction, and that made me intimately aware of the necessity of expressing something else, making this an inspiring – unintended? – statement of What Art Is Really All About.

Next door, it’s great to see Duane Hanson’s Tourists back where they belong—long-term fans will known them as the loud American couple who used to stand in the corner of the main gallery space. They’re offset by John de Andrea’s Model in Repose, a superrealist nude that was intended to embody timeless beauty, and has also become a subtle—unintended?—meditation on the passage of time.

Upstairs, the themes repeat. An Artists Rooms exhibtion by Gilbert and George is a riot of glossy colour – I found it unoffensive rather than inspiring, reprising the fashions of this year’s Festival, and also comparable to the safe prettiness of the Colourists; but it’s something the media and tourists up from London for the Festival will recognize. Elsewhere on this floor, you can find an iconic Ray Liechenstein, a superb Bonnard, and two more conceptual rooms, like the still life gallery downstairs—one explores the use of texture, while the other investigates the deceptive simplicity of white paint.

Also upstairs, there is an exhibition of paintings chosen by Elizabeth Blackadder—continuing a season in which major figures in Scottish art make personal selections of work from the Gallery collection. Essentially, this is a homage by an artist to her mentors and heroes, a biographical retrospective of her own artistic influences—a “who’s who” of Scottish and European painting over the past century.

On a purely visual level, I found this less exciting than the earlier selection by Callum Innes, but it hints at the quiet emotions of unspoken memories, and the visual narrative is enlivened by unexpected choices – such as a youthful Futurist foray by Stanley Cursiter, better known to me as an artist of watercolour landscapes and Establishment portraits.

Compared with the “greatest hits” collection of surrealism in the Dean Gallery across the road, the SNGMA’s latest exhibits are more varied—for my taste, there are even a few genuine duds here; but that diversity represents Art in Scotland, and the wide audience that this exhibition is open to. The sheer variety on offer here demands a visit.

The cake in the cafe is also excellent—along with the Douglas Gordon in the stairwell.