Press releases 2016
The bad boy of seventeenth-century Italian art, who revolutionized painting overnight, the untold story of a remarkable generation of British realist painters working in the 1920s and ’30s, and the pioneering Scottish photographers who created one of the most astonishing bodies of work in the history of the medium, are among the subjects to be explored in the National Galleries of Scotland’s programme of major exhibitions for 2017, it was announced today.
Other highlights of the year will include an exploration of the male image, identity and appearance from the 16th century to the present day and an alternative survey of avant-garde work made by leading and lesser-known Scottish artists in the period from 1900 to 1950.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was a radical and revolutionary artist whose work had a transformative impact on art in Italy and beyond during his lifetime and in the decades following his premature death. He is one of very few ‘old master’ painters who enjoy genuine, broad popular appeal today, remembered not only for his brilliance, but also his challenging, argumentative and violent nature. Our image of Caravaggio’s work is inseparable from his tumultuous personal life; in 1606 he murdered a man after a quarrel over a game of tennis and spent the last four years of his life as a fugitive, producing his most profound and moving works during this time.
Beyond Caravaggio, which opens at the Scottish National Gallery on 17 June, will be the first exhibition of works by Caravaggio and his followers – the so-called Caravaggesque painters – ever to be shown in Scotland. Caravaggio’s dramatic lighting and compositions, and his radically new approach to subject matter, exerted a huge influence on a host of contemporary artists from all over Europe, many of them painters of the very highest calibre, such as Gentileschi, Ribera, Valentin and Ter Brugghen. Arranged thematically and centred on four major paintings by Caravaggio himself, the exhibition will feature an impressive range of works by his Italian, French and Dutch followers from British and Irish collections, public and private, including three pictures belonging to the Scottish National Gallery. The exhibition has been organised in partnership with the National Gallery, London and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
True to Life:British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s will be the main summer exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s Modern Two site. The first ever survey of this fascinating subject, the exhibition will demonstrate the breadth and depth of the art of the period, bringing together some 70 paintings by a generation of hugely talented artists whom art history has tended to sideline, as the figurative tradition they represent has been overshadowed by the more dominant abstraction of Modernism. As a result many of the 50 artists represented are now largely unknown; familiar names such as Stanley Spencer will be shown alongside artists such as Thomas Monnington, Colin Gill, James Bateman and Mark Lancelot Symons, whose work is represented in public and private collections across the UK, but whose names are all but forgotten.
Realist art of the period is easier to identify than to explain or categorize. It had no generic name, no coherent artistic group to promote its practice, and it embraced a number of different styles. Its chief characteristics are fine drawing, a tendency towards classicism and an aversion to Impressionist brushwork and movement. True to Lifewill focus in particular on the hard-edged style of artists such as Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, Meredith Frampton, Harold Harvey, Bernard Fleetwood Walker and Dod Procter, who were major figures in the 1920s and ’30s. In the last decade these artists have begun to re-emerge from the shadows, and their extraordinary work is now ripe for rediscovery.
Only four years after the invention of photography was announced to the world in 1839, two Scots had mastered the new medium and were producing works of breathtaking skill, in extraordinary quantities. A Perfect Chemistry: Photographs by Hill & Adamson will explore the uniquely productive and influential partnership of David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848), which lasted a few short years from 1843 until early 1848. The two men – Hill, an artist and academician; and Adamson, an engineer – started out making highly skilled portraits of church ministers and key members of Edinburgh society, before expanding their practice to include landscapes, architectural views, tableaux vivants from Scottish literature, and photographic reproductions of notable works of art. One of the most significant aspects of their work was their exploration of the life of the fishing community at Newhaven on the Firth of Forth. These stunning images, which belie the almost unimaginable technical challenges faced by the duo, are arguably among the first examples of social documentary in the history of photography. The National Galleries of Scotland has the largest collection of Hill and Adamson works in the world. This exhibition will feature a selection of around 100 photographs (consisting of original paper negatives and salted paper prints) which will demonstrate the profound significance of their achievement.
Another significant collaboration will be centred upon Sir Anthony van Dyck’s magnificent, final self-portrait, which was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2014. Looking Good: The Male Gaze from Van Dyck to Lucian Freud, which opens at theScottish National Portrait Gallery on 24 June, will bring together key works from both collections to explore the male image in art. Around 30 paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and miniatures will be on show, reflecting the evolution of male fashion styles, and men’s self-image, through the centuries.
2017 will come to a close at the National Galleries of Scotland with Scottish Avant-Garde Art 1900-1950, a major exhibition which will offer an alternative version of the history of modern Scottish art, challenging the accepted view of the dominance of the Scottish Colourists and the influence of France, by examining the most progressive work made by leading and lesser-known Scottish artists. Over 80 works by some 50 artists will be on show, drawn from the National Galleries’ holdings and other public collections throughout the UK, as well as from private collections. Surprising creations by some of Scotland’s artistic giants, including F C B Cadell and William McCance, will feature alongside rarely displayed works by more unfamiliar artists, such as Margaret Mellis and Benjamin Creme. The exhibition and accompanying book will explore Scottish artists’ contribution to the great movements of Modern art, from Fauvism and Expressionism, to Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism.
Speaking at the launch today, Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: ‘A world-class exhibition programme has become one of the hallmarks of the National Galleries in recent years. We intend to build on this success next year with a suite of superb shows that will offer our public a combination of great Scottish and international subjects across the entire range of our collection. We are especially pleased to be working with our sister National Galleries in London and Dublin to bring a major show of Caravaggio and his followers to Scotland which will be the most important Old Master exhibition here for many years.’
For further details of the exhibition programme at the National Galleries of Scotland, please click this link.
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A PERFECT CHEMISTRY: PHOTOGRAPHS BY HILL & ADAMSON
27 May - 1 October 2017
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
BEYOND CARAVAGGIO
17 June - 24 September 2016
Scottish National Gallery
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
LOOKING GOOD: THE MALE GAZE FROM VAN DYCK TO LUCIAN FREUD
24 June - 1 October 2017
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
TRUE TO LIFE: BRITISH REALIST PAINTING IN THE 1920s AND 1930s
1 July - 29 October 2017
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One)
75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR
SCOTTISH AVANT-GARDE ART: 1900-1950
2 December 2017 – 10 June 2018
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)
75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR
THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND AND DIAGEO FORM PARTNERSHIP TO HELP SECURE ICONIC PAINTING FOR THE NATION
It was announced today that the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) has entered into a partnership agreement with Diageo with the aim of securing The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer for permanent public display in Scotland.
Under the arrangement Diageo has agreed to gift half the estimated market value of the painting to allow NGS the opportunity to acquire the work. NGS will now embark on a fundraising campaign to secure £4 million to bring the painting into its collection and allow the painting to pass from private to public hands for the first time in its history.
Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland welcomed Diageo’s partnership approach.
He said: “We are delighted with this grand gesture by Diageo which offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for this major work to be acquired for the nation. The Monarch of the Glen is an iconic image which is famous across the world. The ideal home for such an important and resonant picture is the Scottish National Gallery where it can be enjoyed and admired by millions of visitors in the context of the nation’s unrivalled collection of Scottish, British and European art. We look forward to working with Diageo and our partners to ensure we achieve our ambition.”
David Cutter, Diageo’s senior director in Scotland and President of Global Supply & Procurement, also welcomed the partnership.
He said: “We are delighted to partner with the National Galleries of Scotland, to create the opportunity for The Monarch of the Glen to remain on public display in Scotland on a permanent basis.
“We look forward to working with the National Galleries of Scotland.”
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs commented: “I am pleased to welcome this plan to keep the iconic Monarch of the Glen on public display in Scotland for all to enjoy.
“Recent reaction to news of its auction underlined the importance of this painting and I’m pleased the National Galleries and Diageo have agreed a plan to ensure its long association with Scotland can continue.”
The Monarch of the Glen is one of the most famous paintings of the nineteenth century. It has taken on many different meanings and can be considered a work of great technical accomplishment, a celebration of natural wonders, a romantic evocation of Scotland, a powerful marketing image and a potent symbol of changing and sometimes conflicting interpretations of Scottish culture and history. It has been in private and corporate collections since it was painted in 1851.
The painting had been on exhibition in London as part of the celebration of Christie’s 250th anniversary. Christie’s were responsible for selling the painting exactly 100 years ago and have assisted in ensuring it now finds a permanent home in the Galleries, with an arrangement which reflects that the painting’s popular appeal surpasses its genre.
Jussi Pylkkanen, Global President, Christie’s, said: “This superb painting was purchased from Christie’s in 1916, and it is fitting exactly 100 years later in our 250th year it has the opportunity to find its permanent home in the National Galleries of Scotland.”
For images and interview requests with Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, please contact:
Patricia Convery, Acting Director, Audience Engagement
Tel: 0131 624 6325; 07967 088313
Email: [email protected].
Enquires to Diageo, please contact:
Ian Smith, Head of Corporate Relations, Diageo Scotland
Tel: 0131 519 2133; 07736 786 888
Email: [email protected]
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Notes to Editors:
The Monarch of the Glen and the NGS
The Monarch of the Glen is one of the most famous paintings of the nineteenth century and an iconic image which for many encapsulates the grandeur and majesty of Scotland’s Highlands and wildlife. It is an outstanding example of animal painting by the greatest Victorian artist to produce such work, but has also taken on a symbolic status in the popular imagination as a romantic emblem of Scotland and the natural wonders the country encapsulates. The ideal home for such an important and resonant picture is the Scottish National Gallery in the heart of Edinburgh, where it can be enjoyed and admired by millions of visitors in the context of the nation’s unrivalled collection of Scottish, British and European art.
The painting
The Monarch of the Glen was painted c.1851 by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, who was then at the height of his powers as an artist. Its impact is considerably enhanced by its fine condition and large size: it is painted in oil on canvas and is 163.8 x 169 cm. A monumental stag imperiously surveys the rugged landscape; gorse and bracken are in the foreground and dramatic cliff faces and escarpments form the backdrop. The composition is unified by swirling mist which rises up from the glen and merges with the billowing clouds that mask the mountain tops. The stag is superbly defined, with every detail precisely established, from the texture of its fur to the moisture around its nostrils. He is a so-called ‘royal’ or twelve point stag – a reference to the number of tines on his antlers.
The painting was initially conceived as part of a series of three works which would have been displayed in the House of Lords, but this was deemed to be inappropriate and so it was soon sold to a private collector. From the moment it was first exhibited in 1851 at the Royal Academy it proved immensely popular. In the Royal Academy catalogue it was associated with a poem called Legends of Glenorchy. There is debate over whether this helps identify the site; Glen Quoich has also been proposed.
The artist
Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–73) was among the most highly regarded painters of the nineteenth century; he was particularly renowned for the technical skill and empathy with which he depicted animals. His father taught him to etch and he studied at the Royal Academy Schools (being elected an Academician in 1831). In 1824 he first visited Scotland and was overwhelmed and inspired by the experience of the landscape and the people; he returned annually in late summer and the autumn on sketching exhibitions, developing a particular affinity with Sir Walter Scott and his work. The resulting paintings range from intimate and remarkably fresh plein air landscape studies, to his most famous large-scale picture, The Monarch of the Glen. They played a key role in formulating the deeply attractive and romantic image of the Highlands, which has in many respects perpetuated.
He loved the splendour of the landscape, the sense of space and solitude that could be experienced and the spectacle of animals in the wild (especially deer, which he had studied from the 1830s). Landseer enjoyed aristocratic patronage and worked extensively for Queen Victoria; consequently a number of his works remain in the Royal Collection (he was knighted in 1850). In 1865 he refused to become president of the Royal Academy due to ill health. He was a very refined technician, who excelled at creating meticulous drawings and bravura oil sketches which informed his larger, highly finished and publically exhibited paintings.
Global recognition
The Monarch of the Glen has taken on a life and reputation which transcends the original circumstances of its creation. It was widely reproduced in the nineteenth century, especially through steel engravings. In 1916 it was purchased by Sir Thomas Dewar. From that point it was regularly employed as a marketing image, first by Pears Soap and then by John Dewar & Sons Distillery and Glenfiddich. Subsequently it was also appropriated by Nestlé and Baxter’s Soup. The title was employed for the comic drama series set in the Highlands TheMonarch of the Glen (2000–2005). In the artistic sphere it was also used by Sir Peter Blake and more recently in 2012 by Peter Saville and the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh for the large tapestry After, After, After Monarch of the Glen.
The Monarch of the Glen: exhibitions at NGS
The painting has been a key loan to two important exhibitions organised by the National Galleries of Scotland: The Discovery of Scotland (1978) and The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands (2005). It was the cover image for the catalogue of the latter show, which was guest-curated by the distinguished Landseer scholar Richard Ormond. He wrote ‘The image of the The Monarch of the Glen is so iconic that it is difficult to look at the painting with a fresh eye but it is, in fact, a work of wonderful accomplishment.’
REMARKABLE INSTALLATION BY THE LATE STEVEN CAMPBELL JOINTLY ACQUIRED BY GLASGOW LIFE AND NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
An historically important work by one of Scotland’s most remarkable twentieth-century artists has been jointly acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland and Glasgow Life, with generous support from the Art Fund and Creative Scotland, it was announced today.
On Form and Fiction by Steven Campbell (1953-2007) is an extraordinary installation, which marks a pivotal moment in the story of contemporary art in Scotland. First shown in 1990 at Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre (now the Centre for Contemporary Art), the work consists of 9 large, framed paintings hung on walls papered from floor to ceiling with 105 unframed ink drawings, and combined with a number of other elements (including museum-style benches and a reel-to-reel tape player) to create an overwhelming, immersive and carefully staged environment.
Campbell was one of the ‘New Glasgow Boys’, a group of Glasgow School of Art graduates, renowned for their figurative and narrative approach to painting, who first achieved international prominence in the mid-1980s. In its dizzying array of images, On Form and Fiction combines many of the themes that recur in Campbell’s work and encapsulates much of his thinking; in its scale, ambition and impact it also inspired and prefigured the work of younger artists in Scotland who emerged in the 1990s.
Underlining its significance, On Form and Fiction, was, in 2014, re-staged for the first time at the Scottish National Gallery, where it was a highlight of the GENERATION project, a nationwide celebration of 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland.
Campbell was born in Glasgow, and worked as an engineer in a steelworks before studying fine art at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) from 1978 to 1982. In his graduating year he won a Fulbright scholarship and moved to New York, where he had a number of highly successful shows which quickly established his international career. He returned to Scotland permanently in 1986, where his continued success was seen by younger artists as a blueprint for what they themselves might achieve.
Though his approach to painting, like that of his GSA contemporaries Adrian Wiszniewski, Peter Howson and Ken Currie, the other ‘New Glasgow Boys’ with whom he is often associated, aligned with a broader resurgence in figurative painting in Europe in the 1980s, Campbell insisted that the roots of his art lay in 1970s British Conceptualism and the performance art of figures such as Bruce McLean and Gilbert & George. Indeed, his paintings retain many of the features of the performances that Campbell made as a student at GSA: exaggerated gestures, a strong narrative structure and the use of historical events and characters (often from the 1920s and ’30s) to create a claustrophobic, fictional world of bizarre happenings.
In Campbell’s paintings of the 1980s, solidly built, tweed-clad young men – scientists, philosophers, architects and artists – engage in a quest to find meaning and order in an Alice-in-Wonderland universe. Devoid of rational sense, Campbell’s paintings are nevertheless underpinned by a perverse logic, similar to that found in the surrealist paintings of René Magritte.
On Form and Fiction projected Campbell’s restless, complex vision on a grand scale, and gave it an immersive physicality. For the first installation at Third Eye Centre, he created a museum-like setting, using benches borrowed from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and dramatic lighting. In addition, a tape recorder played, amongst other things, the infamous 1969 love song by Serge Gainsbourg with Jane Birkin, Je t’aime … moi non plus, together with some words spoken by the artist.
Rich in allusive detail, the paintings and drawings reflect Campbell’s fascination with a huge range of art forms, from film, literature and architecture to music and dance, as well as his keen understanding of art history, and his determination to grapple in his own way with many of the paradoxes and problems that have preoccupied artists in the rapidly changing twentieth century.
On Form and Fiction is only the second work to be jointly acquired by Glasgow Life and NGS (the first being In the Orchard, a major work by Sir James Guthrie, which was purchased by the two institutions in 2012).
Commenting on the acquisition, Simon Groom, Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “On Form and Fiction is one of the most important and significant works made by one of Scotland’s greatest artists of the last 50 years. Although Steven made a number of installations and tableaux during his career, this is the only one that survives, and it stands out as his most ambitious. I’m utterly delighted that we have been able to secure it for the nation through this joint acquisition with Glasgow Life, with support from Creative Scotland, and am extremely grateful to Carol Campbell, Steven’s widow, for her help in making this happen.”
Chair of Glasgow Life, Councillor Archie Graham, added: “On Form and Fiction was first presented in Glasgow in 1990, as part of the celebrations for the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. This pivotal year shone a light on artistic practice in the city at a time of huge regeneration. Many of the young artists who were coming of age in Scotland at this time have reflected on the significant impact Campbell’s work had on them. His innovative approach towards creating a completely immersive piece, unique in its scale and ambition, proved to be a link between the work being produced at that time and the more conceptual focus that followed. We are extremely pleased that our continued partnership approach with NGS, Art Fund and Creative Scotland ensures this incredible piece remains complete and will be enjoyed for generations to come.”
Stephen Deuchar, Art Fund director, said: “We are immensely pleased to support the acquisition of the first installation by Steven Campbell to be acquired by a public collection, and we applaud this innovative partnership between NGS and Glasgow Life.”
Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts at Creative Scotland said: “This remarkable work reflects a pivotal moment in the story of contemporary art in Scotland and we are delighted to support this important acquisition as a legacy from GENERATION – 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland. This is an influential work that holds the power to inspire and inform future generations of artists and audiences and this joint purchase is extremely welcome.”
Carol Campbell said: “Steven always said, ‘I was one of art’s handmaidens’. Really, that was a polite way of saying ‘gofer’ but since his passing it has given me so much joy every time his name and work were out in the world. It would make him seem alive again. So when Simon called to tell me the work had been acquired for the nation I felt the pride and joy that would have been his. He was a passionate Scot; it is an astonishing work by an artist working with international vision and a level of creativity that places it in a unique position, inspirational to generations to come. He would be immensely proud”.
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For further information please contact:
Suzanne Rough, Communications Officer – Museums and Collections
Glasgow Life
[email protected]
0141 287 3575
www.glasgowlife.org.uk
Adeline Amar or Michael Gormley
National Galleries of Scotland press office
[email protected]; [email protected]
0131 624 6314; 0131 624 6247
Notes to Editors
Glasgow Life
Glasgow Life is the charity which runs services and facilities on behalf of Glasgow City Council. We work in every area of the city and with every community to try and inspire Glasgow’s citizens and visitors to lead richer and more active lives through culture, sport and learning. More than 18 million attendances were recorded to the facilities that we run across the city between 2015 and 2016.
Glasgow Museums is the largest museum service in the UK outside London and operates nine easy to reach, accessible and family friendly venues across the city. We are open year-round and entry is free. Glasgow Museums house an extraordinary permanent collection of fine art, historic objects and natural history exhibited in some of Glasgow’s most stunning public buildings. glasgowlife.org.uk
Art Fund
Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. In the past five years alone Art Fund has given £34 million to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. It also helps museums share their collections with wider audiences by supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including ARTIST ROOMS and the 2013-18 Aspire tour of Tate's Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable, and makes additional grants to support the training and professional development of curators.
Find out more about Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org
Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland is the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland on behalf of everyone who lives, works or visits here. We enable people and organisations to work in and experience the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland by helping others to develop great ideas and bring them to life. We distribute funding provided by the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. For further information about Creative Scotland please visit www.creativescotland.com. Follow us @creativescots and www.facebook.com/CreativeScotland
JOAN EARDLEY:
A SENSE OF PLACE
3 December 2016 – 21 May 2017
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)
73 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DS
Admission: £9/7 | Free for our Friends
#JoanEardley
An extraordinary new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) this winter will give visitors an unprecedented opportunity to trace the life and work of one of Scotland’s most admired artists.
Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place will chart – through previously unpublished archival material and loans from private collections – the exact movements and unique working methods of the artist Joan Eardley (1921-1963).
For the first ever time, visitors will be able to closely follow the many developments of Eardley’s brief but remarkable career as she captured her two main subjects, the slums of Glasgow’s Townhead district and the fishing village of Catterline on the north-east coast of Scotland.
Paintings borrowed from both private and public collections will accompany those from the Gallery’s own collection and the raft of material from an unpublished and largely unknown archive of sketches and photographs gifted to the Gallery by Eardley’s sister Pat Black in 1987. These incredible yet fragile testaments of her working procedure, which demonstrate the transition of Eardley’s art from initial conception to finished article, have been specially conserved and presented exclusively for this new exhibition.
New research has pinpointed the exact locations of many of the paintings, and detailed maps of Townhead and Catterline will feature in the exhibition and in the lavishly illustrated 132–page catalogue, allowing readers to place themselves in Eardley’s footsteps like never before.
Patrick Elliott, Chief Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “We have tried to recreate Eardley’s working process, to show how she made the work, from sketch to finished painting, and attempted to track her movements as precisely as possible: in many of the Catterline paintings, you can say exactly where she was standing, almost down to the nearest inch. Visitors to the exhibition will, as it were, be looking over her shoulder, in what will be the most detailed and personal insight into Eardley’s life and art to date”.
Born in Sussex in 1921, Joan Eardley moved to Glasgow in 1940 and studied at the Glasgow School of Art. Her paintings of children playing in rundown tenements and her Catterline landscapes are among the most celebrated works in Scottish art, and are consistently the most popular in the Gallery’s collection, with public requests to display them eclipsing even that of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).
Tragically, her career was cut short at the age of 42 by cancer, but the exceptional quality of the art produced in a career lasting barely 15 years leaves the lingering thought of what Eardley may have achieved, had she lived longer.
Eardley moved regularly between Townhead and Catterline, two locations which on the surface contrast but were at heart not much different; both were tightknit communities under pressure, possessing a peculiar and, to Eardley, alluring ‘sense of place’.
Townhead, where Eardley produced her works most faithful to realism, was bulldozed in the 1960s and no longer exists, whilst Catterline, host for her highly expressive, near-abstract art, remains almost perfectly preserved, the accuracy of her landscapes still evident to this day.
While many of her Scottish contemporaries, including Alan Davie and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, headed to London, Eardley opted to rent a studio in the overcrowded, dilapidated surroundings of Townhead. A Sense of Place will display many photographs made by Eardley and her friend Audrey Walker during this time – of children, corner shops and tenement rows – alongside the resulting artworks. These photographs have a haunting quality: childhood and poverty are explored in a factual rather than sentimental manner.
Major paintings completed during this period include A Glasgow Lodging (1953), featuring the artist (and her life-long friend) Angus Neil in his studio, and A Carter and his Horse (1952), a large work where bright blues and reds are powerfully contrasted with the muddied browns and concrete greys often found in tenement surroundings. This early demonstration of her immense talent, exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in 1952, earned Eardley major recognition, being subsequently bought by the Ministry of Works (now the Government Art Collection). Normally on show in the British Embassy in Tokyo, it will be shown in public for the first time in decades.
Her interest in painting children dramatically increased with the relocation to a studio on St James’ Road in 1953, where she lived near the Samsons, a family of twelve children. The family were all willing and inquisitive models and are captured within many of the works in A Sense of Place.
Eardley first initiated trips to Catterline in 1952, and soon her circumstances had experienced a complete reversal, with brief trips to Glasgow punctuating the time spent at her new remote home. There, Eardley painted seascapes, stormy skies, salmon nets, beehives, fields and cottages, producing some of her most celebrated art.
Catterline remains much as it was when Eardley depicted it in paintings like Winter Day, Catterline (1957–60), where sunlight the same red glow of burning embers spreads across a row of cottages, or Catterline in Winter (1963), the idiosyncratic and somewhat uncanny snowy landscape, and one of her greatest ever paintings.
Her work by 1957 had become more liberated, more personal and more expressive of her interior life, the process of painting the landscape changing her output. When asked to name artists who interested her, she thought first of Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) and his European counterparts, the Taschists, It is then of little surprise that less than two years later, Eardley was experimenting with near-total abstraction. In her series of pastel works entitled Approaching Storms (1963), the sea and sky occupy the whole picture surface, producing something akin to American Abstract Expressionism, the movement of which Pollock was a front runner.
Many of Eardley’s paintings during this period, predominantly painted on board, were heaving swarms of bold block colour, whilst her pastels teeter on the nonrepresentational, their forceful dark scores vigorously applied upon horizontal slabs of sea-blue.
Eardley’s already-established reputation burgeoned as her health and eyesight deteriorated – in 1963 alone, she was elected as a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, her solo London exhibition opened to great success and her paintings sold well, with two notable purchases by the recently opened Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA).
Sadly it was to be her final year, with the Gallery’s purchase of Children and Chalked Wall (1962-63) coming less than two months before she passed away on 16 August. The setting for the majority of Eardley’s stunning seascapes, the shore near the Makin Green at Catterline, became her final resting place, with her ashes scattered there upon her death.
The exhibition will coincide with considerable interest in Eardley’s work across the arts. Two works in the Galleries’ collection – Snow (1958) and Catterline in Winter (1963) – were the inspiration for composer Helen Grime’s Two Eardley Pictures, which received its world première at the Royal Albert Hall, London as part of the BBC Proms 2016. Snow will receive its Scottish première on 10 December at the City Halls in Glasgow, by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.Eardley’slife and work are also to be explored in a touring theatrical play from the Heroica Theatre Company, in association with Stellar Quines and the National Galleries of Scotland.
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Notes to Editors
* Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place will open at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) on 3 December 2016 and run until 21 May 2017. Tickets are priced a £9 for adults and £7 for concessions.
* The exhibition will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated 132-page catalogue based on new research, with an essay by Patrick Elliott, images and annotated maps of Townhead and Catterline.
* There will be a Private View event of Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place available to all nursery, primary and secondary teachers on Wednesday 18 January 2017 from 5pm. Tickets are free but booking is limited and can be done through EventBrite.
* More information on the upcoming play Joan Eardley: A Private View can be found here.
PRESS RELEASE
Michael Clarke CBE, Director of the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) and Deputy Director of the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), to retire from post later this year
It was announced today that Michael Clarke CBE will be retiring from his post as Director of the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) and Deputy Director of the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) at the end of September this year. Michael joined the Galleries in 1984, having previously worked at Manchester University and the British Museum. He became Keeper in 1987 and then Director of the Scottish National Gallery in 2001. During his tenure, the Gallery has developed an international reputation for the quality of its acquisitions, research and programmes.
Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the NGS said: “Michael Clarke has had a hugely successful career at the Galleries. With his depth of expertise, commitment to excellence and flair for accessible programming he has played a key role extending the national and international reach and reputation of NGS. His contribution will be greatly missed but we all wish him well in his retirement.”
From 1998-2004, Michael led the Playfair Project at NGS which linked the National Gallery with the neighbouring Royal Scottish Academy building, creating a unified complex on The Mound for the first time. The expansion of the offer at The Mound has been a key element in attracting new audiences and the SNG now welcomes nearly 1.4 million visitors every year, making it the third most popular visitor attraction in Scotland. Michael has also been closely involved in the development of the major project to transform the Scottish Galleries at the SNG, which is due to begin on site later this year and to be completed in 2018.
His numerous publications include The Tempting Prospect: a Social History of English Watercolours (1981) and Corot and the Art of Landscape (1991), both published by the British Museum, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms (2001). He has organised many exhibitions for the Scottish National Gallery, including Lighting up the Landscape: French Impressionism and its Origins (1986), Cézanne and Poussin (1991), Monet to Matisse (1994), Monet; the Seine and the Sea (2003), Impressionist Gardens (2010), The Art of Golf (2014) and Inspiring Impressionism (2016), as well as being a guest contributor to exhibitions organised abroad. He has also lectured widely in Europe and America.
Michael’s special interest lies in the French School, of which he has acquired many paintings and drawings for the Scottish National Gallery’s collection. He was also instrumental in acquiring two Titian paintings, Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto from the Bridgewater Collection, in partnership with the National Gallery in 2009 and 2012. In 2004 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French state, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008 and he was awarded a CBE by the Queen in 2009.
-ENDS-
One of the most iconic paintings in the world, which has never before been seen in Scotland, will make a flying visit to Edinburgh as part of an exciting programme of autumn exhibitions at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), it was announced today. The Goldfinch, a beautiful and mysterious masterpiece from the Golden Age of Dutch art, which was painted by Carel Fabritius in 1654, will be on loan to the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) for six weeks only, from 4 November to 18 December. Across town at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA), a unique showing of work by two internationally renowned artists – Scotland’s Karla Black and Kishio Suga from Japan – will be another autumn highlight, occupying the entire ground floor at Modern One, while at Modern Two the year will be brought to a spectacular close with the much-anticipated Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place, a powerfulexploration of the locations that inspired the artist’s remarkable body of work. In addition, the first in a significant new series of annual exhibitions exploring the extraordinary richness of the photography collection at the NGS will open at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG) this October, charting the development of landscape photography over the past 175 years.
Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) is often seen as the link between two giants of Dutch painting: Rembrandt van Rijn (1609-69), in whose workshop he was a star pupil and Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), on whose work he had a considerable influence. An artist of remarkable skill, Fabritius was tragically killed at the age of 32, when a gunpowder store exploded, destroying large parts of the city of Delft and killing hundreds of its residents. It is presumed that much of Fabritius’s work was lost in the explosion, and only around a dozen of his paintings survive. Among these The Goldfinch, which was painted in the year he died, is considered by many to be his masterpiece.
The Goldfinch will travel to the SNG from its home in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, in The Hague. The painting has never before been shown in Scotland, and has only been exhibited in the UK on a handful of occasions. When it was last shown outside the Netherlands, at the Frick Collection in New York in 2014, it was seen by a record-breaking 200,000 people (many of whom happily endured long queues in sub-zero temperatures).
This tiny but mesmerising painting already enjoyed international renown before it inspired a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by the US publishing sensation Donna Tartt. The intense interest surrounding the 2014 book propelled The Goldfinch into the limelight, bringing it to the attention of Holywood producers, who now hope to adapt Tartt's story for the big screen. This will be a very rare opportunity for art and literature lovers alike to come face to face with one of the most compelling paintings in Western art.
Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place will explore the work of one of Scotland’s most admired artists, who died in 1963, aged just 42. In a career that lasted barely 15 years Eardley had two main subjects: the slums of Townhead in Glasgow and the fishing village of Catterline, south of Aberdeen, which she first visited in 1950. She moved regularly between the two places, drawing and painting apparently contrasting imagery – street kids and tenement buildings in the one, stormy landscapes and boiling seas in the other. The two subjects contrast, but are not, at heart, so very different. Both had a peculiar sense of place that attracted her.
The exhibition will plot, as closely as possible, Eardley’s movements in both places and explore her working methods, from rough sketches to detailed pastels; from compositional designs and photographs through to large, resolved oil paintings. It will draw on a remarkable archive of sketches and photographs which remains largely unknown and unpublished, and which was given to the SNGMA by Eardley’s sister, Pat Black, in 1987. Fragile testaments to the artist’s working procedure, they will be specially conserved and presented for this exhibition, where they will be seen for the first time.
Although Karla Black (b.1972) and Kishio Suga (b.1944) work on opposite sides of the world and were unaware of each other’s art until their new exhibition at Modern One was conceived, they are united by their use of everyday materials to create sculptural works of sublime beauty, complexity and originality, which they make in response to specific spaces.
Based in Glasgow, Black is one of the country’s leading contemporary artists, and represented Scotland at the 2011 Venice Biennale. She is renowned for large-scale abstract sculptures, which are often composed of delicate and ephemeral materials, such as cellophane, soap, eye shadow, petroleum jelly, toothpaste, chalk powder and soil. Suga was born in Morioka in Northern Japan, and was a key member of Mono-ha (“School of Things”), a pioneering artistic movement which emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His radical adoption of simple everyday materials, such as stone, wire , iron, zinc and paraffin in temporary, site-specific sculptural arrangements, which he calls ‘situations’, makes Suga one of the most thought-provoking and original artists working anywhere in the world today.
Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order will be Suga’s first major showing in the UK, and has been planned to coincide with his first large-scale retrospective exhibition in Europe, at the Hangar Bicocca, Milan, and a solo show at the DIA Foundation, New York.
Black will make an ambitious and entirely new body of work for A New Order, including a stunning room-sized sculpture made from cotton wool – her largest work to date using this material. Suga will re-create some of his most celebrated works, and will also make an entirely new piece conceived especially for the show.
The View from Here: Landscape Photography from the Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, which opens at the SNPG on 29 October, will bring together 70 key works which chart the history of landscape photography from the earliest days of the medium to the present day.
Stunning images of the Egyptian pyramids, taken when photography was a relatively new artform; intensely beautiful photographs of the Outer Hebrides taken by the legendary American artist Paul Strand (1890-1976); and thought-provoking landscapes by British-American photographer Sze Tsung Leong (b.1970), which address a growing uniformity in our globalized environment, will be among the highlights of this fascinating exhibition.
Many of the works on show have rarely been seen before, and there will also be a number of new acquisitions on display for the first time, including work by one of the foremost contemporary landscape photographers in the world, Thomas Joshua Cooper (b.1946), and Felix Thiollier (1842-1914), a French industrialist who gave up his business at the age of 37 to pursue photography, and whose work was influenced by the landscape painter Camille Corot.
The NGS is home to an outstanding collection of photographic art, running to some 38,000 examples. The View from Here will be first in a series of thematic exhibitions to be held at the SNPG over the next few years. The 70 carefully selected works on show this autumn will explore not only the theme of landscape but also the evolution of photography, from original calotype negatives and salted paper prints of the 1840s to the large-scale digital format prints of today.
For full details of the exhibition programme at the National Galleries of Scotland, please click this LINK.
ENDS
For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6247 / 6314 / 6332 / 6491 or [email protected]
nationalgalleries.org
NOTES TO EDITORS
Press view dates:
Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order
Thursday 20 October 2016, 11:30-13:00h
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One)
75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR
The View from Here: Landscape Photography from the Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland
Thursday 27 October 2016, 11:30-13:00h
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
The Goldfinch
Thursday 3 November 2016, 11:30-13:00h
Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL
Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place
Thursday 1 December 2016, 11:30-13:00h
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)
73 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DS
NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
PUBLIC PROGRAMME –
AUTUMN 2016 ANNOUNCEMENT
Please note: information and dates may be subject to change
DRAWING ATTENTION:
RARE WORKS ON PAPER 1400-1900
24 September 2016 - 3 January 2017
Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission FREE
#ScotNatGallery
Spanning five centuries of superb draughtsmanship, this exhibition will put the spotlight on some exceptional but less well-known treasures from the Gallery’s drawings collection. Selected for their rarity, beauty and in some cases their quirkiness, many of these drawings have never been displayed before. The names may be unfamiliar, but the works will speak for themselves.
KARLA BLACK & KISHIO SUGA: A NEW ORDER
22 October 2016 – 19 February 2017
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR
Admission FREE
#Black&Suga
Although Karla Black (b.1972) and Kishio Suga (b.1944) work on opposite sides of the world and were unaware of each other’s art until this new exhibition at Modern One was conceived, they are united by their use of everyday materials to create sculptural works of sublime beauty, complexity and originality, which they make in response to specific spaces. Black is one of the Scotland’s leading contemporary artists, renowned for her large-scale abstract sculptures which are often composed of delicate and ephemeral materials, such as cellophane, soap, eye shadow, petroleum jelly, toothpaste, chalk powder and soil. Suga was born in Morioka in Northern Japan, and was a key member of Mono-ha (“School of Things”), a pioneering movement which emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, whose experimental and radical approach to everyday materials, both natural and manufactured, continues to have a profound impact today. Black will make an ambitious and entirely new body of work for A New Order, including a stunning room-sized sculpture made from cotton wool – her largest work to date using this material. Suga will re-create some of his most celebrated works, and will also make an entirely new piece conceived especially for the show.
THE VIEW FROM HERE
29 October 2016 – 30 April 2017
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission FREE
#ViewFromHere
This will be the first in a significant new series of annual exhibitions exploring the extraordinary richness of the photography collection at the NGS, which runs to some 38,000 items. This selection of 70 key works will chart the history of landscape photography from the earliest days of the medium to the present day. Stunning images of the Egyptian pyramids, taken when photography was a relatively new artform; intensely beautiful photographs of the Outer Hebrides taken by the legendary American artist Paul Strand (1890-1976); and thought-provoking landscapes by British-American photographer Sze Tsung Leong (b.1970), which address a growing uniformity in our globalized environment, will be among the highlights of this fascinating exhibition. Many of the works on show have rarely been seen before, and there will also be a number of new acquisitions on display for the first time, including work by one of the foremost contemporary landscape photographers in the world, Thomas Joshua Cooper (b.1946), and Felix Thiollier (1842-1914), a French industrialist who gave up his business at the age of 37 to pursue photography, and whose work was influenced by the landscape painter Camille Corot.
THE GOLDFINCH
4 November – 18 December 2016
Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission FREE
#TheGoldfinch
Sponsored by Aegon
One of the most iconic paintings in the world, which has never before been seen in Scotland, will make a flying visit to Edinburgh this autumn. The Goldfinch, a beautiful and mysterious masterpiece from the Golden Age of Dutch art, which was painted by Carel Fabritius in 1654, will be on loan to the SNG from its home in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, for six weeks only. Fabritius (1622-1654) is often seen as the link between two giants of Dutch painting: Rembrandt van Rijn (1609-69), in whose workshop he was a star pupil and Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), on whose work he had a considerable influence. An artist of remarkable skill, Fabritius was tragically killed at the age of 32, when a gunpowder store exploded, destroying large parts of the city of Delft and killing hundreds of its residents. It is presumed that much of his work was lost in the explosion, and only around a dozen paintings survive. Among these The Goldfinch, which was painted in the year he died, is considered by many to be his masterpiece. This tiny, but mesmerising painting already enjoyed international renown before it inspired a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by the US author Donna Tartt, which was published to huge acclaim in 2014 and is now due to be adapted for the screen. This will be a very rare opportunity for art and literature lovers alike to come face to face with one of the most compelling paintings in Western art.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
CARDS FROM THE IAN FLEMING COLLECTION
5 November 2016 – 29 January 2017
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two), 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR
Admission FREE
#ScotModern
Scottish artist, printmaker and teacher Ian Fleming (1906-94), studied and taught at Glasgow School of Art and Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, establishing long relationships with artists over the course of his career. This intimate display of Christmas cards from the Fleming archive will showcase original designs by a range of his Scottish artist friends, including Frances Walker, Anne Redpath, William MacTaggart and Bel and Malcolm McCoig.
BP PORTRAIT PRIZE 2016
26 November 2016 – 26 March 2017
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission FREE
#BPPortrait
Organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London
This selection of 53 entries from the BP Portrait Award 2016 represents the very best in contemporary portrait painting. From parents to poseurs, figurative nudes to famous faces and expressive sketches to piercing photo-realism, the variety and vitality in the exhibition continues to make it an unmissable highlight of the annual art calendar. Now in its 37th year and 27th year of sponsorship by BP, the Award is firmly established as one of the most prestigious international portrait competitions in the world and has a first prize of £30,000 – one of the largest for any global art competition. This year there were 2,557 entries by artists from 80 countries around the world, and some 15 nationalities are represented in the exhibition. All of the prize-winning works will be on show, including the Girl in a Liberty Dress (2016), a subtle and enigmatic portrait by Edinburgh-born artist Clare Drummond, which took this year’s First Prize.
THE MODERN PORTRAIT
26 November 2016 – 26 March 2017
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission FREE
#ScotPortrait
This fresh presentation of outstanding 20th- and 21st-century portraits from the Gallery’s collection will feature familiar faces and new discoveries. It will include paintings, sculptures and photographs, demonstrating the vitality and invention of modern Scottish portraiture. The celebrated Scots on show will include Sir Sean Connery, Susan Boyle, Gordon Brown, Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Andy Murray and Alan Cumming.
JOAN EARDLEY: A SENSE OF PLACE
3 December 2016 – 21 May 2017
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two), 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DS
Admission £9/£7
#JoanEardley
This much-anticpated exhibition will explore the work of one of Scotland’s most admired artists, who died in 1963, aged just 42. In a career that lasted barely 15 years Eardley was drawn by two locations, which provided the focus and inspiration for a remarkable body of work: the slums of Townhead in Glasgow and the fishing village of Catterline, south of Aberdeen, which she first visited in 1950. Eardley moved regularly between the two places, drawing and painting apparently contrasting imagery – street kids and tenement buildings in the one, stormy landscapes and boiling seas in the other. The two subjects contrast, but are not, at heart, so very different. Both had a peculiar sense of place that attracted and fascinated her. The exhibition will plot, as closely as possible, Eardley’s movements in both places and explore her working methods, from rough sketches to detailed pastels; from compositional designs and photographs through to large, resolved oil paintings. It will draw on a remarkable archive of sketches and photographs which remains largely unknown and unpublished, and which was given to the SNGMA by Eardley’s sister, Pat Black, in 1987. Fragile testaments to the artist’s working procedure, they will be specially conserved and presented for this exhibition, where they will be seen for the first time.
TURNER IN JANUARY 2017
1 January – 31 January 2017
Scottish National Gallery
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission FREE
The New Year begins at the Scottish National Gallery with the celebrated annual display of Turner watercolours. The 48 works, bequeathed to the Gallery in 1900 by the distinguished collector Henry Vaughan, span Turner’s career, from his early topographical wash drawings to his atmospheric sketches of continental Europe from the 1830s and ‘40s. Vaughan stipulated in his bequest that these delicate watercolours should be ‘exhibited to the public all at one time, free of charge, during the month of January’ and his wishes have been faithfully observed for over 100 years. This limited exposure has resulted in the works retaining their luminous colours and pristine condition.
ENDS
For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6247 / 6314 / 6332 / 6491 or [email protected]
Press view: Thursday 27 October, 11:30 – 13:00
THE VIEW FROM HERE: LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
29 October 2016 to 30 April 2017
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
0131 624 6200 | Admission FREE
#ViewFromHere
Part of the IPS Season of Photography 2016
The extraordinary richness of the photography collection at the National Galleries of Scotland will be showcased in a fascinating new exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG) this autumn. The View from Here, which opens on 29 October, will bring together 70 key works which chart the history of landscape photography over the course of 175 years, from the earliest days of the medium to the present day.
Stunning images of the Egyptian pyramids, taken when photography was a relatively new artform; intensely beautiful photographs of the Outer Hebrides taken by the legendary American artist Paul Strand (1890-1976); and thought-provoking landscapes by British-American photographer Sze Tsung Leong (b.1970), which address a growing uniformity in our globalized environment, will be among the highlights of this exhibition. Many of the works on show have rarely been seen before, and there will also be a number of new acquisitions on display for the first time, including work by one of the foremost contemporary landscape photographers in the world, Thomas Joshua Cooper (b.1946), and Félix Thiollier (1842-1914), a French industrialist who gave up his business at the age of 37 to pursue photography, and whose work was influenced by the landscape painter Camille Corot.
The National Galleries of Scotland is home to an outstanding collection of photographic art, running to some 38,000 examples. The View from Here will be first in a series of thematic exhibitions to be held at the SNPG over the next few years. The 70 carefully selected works on show this autumn will explore not only the theme of landscape but also the evolution of photography—from original calotype negatives and salted paper prints of the 1840s to the large-scale digital format prints of today.
The exhibition will begin with a rarely-seen daguerreotype of the Niagara Falls, taken in around 1855 by Platt D. Babbitt (d.1879), which records a group of tourists on the cliffs surrounding the famous North American spectacle. Many early landscape photographs such as this spoke to a growing audience of tourists—or armchair travelers—who were eager to see different sights and locations around the world. The early section of The View from Here will also include some remarkable views of the monuments of Ancient Egypt captured by Francis Frith (1822-98), Victorian Britain’s most prolific photographer working in the Middle East.
Closer to home, Scotland’s landscape was also celebrated in the nineteenth century by photographers such as James Valentine (1815-79) and George Washington Wilson (1823-93), whose prints of Highland landscapes and Scottish towns and villages were sold all over the world. Evoking and illustrating many of the settings described in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, these images were universal in their appeal.
Over time many international photographers came to record the Scottish landscape, including the American artist, Paul Strand, who first travelled to the Outer Hebrides in the mid-1950s to record the people and places of South Uist. Although struck by the vastness of the island views at the periphery of the North Atlantic Ocean, Strand realised his photographs as small format prints—seemingly intensifying the potency of the scene by attempting to fit the magnitude of the landscape into a small composition.
Another outstanding photographer whose work features in the exhibition, Fay Godwin (1931-2005) began working in portraiture before focusing on landscape. Like Strand, Godwin often collaborated with writers to explore the subject of the land more fully. The photographs of Scotland’s rural routes were included in a book project on The Whisky Roads of Scotland, with Derek Cooper providing the accompanying text.
Patricia MacDonald (b.1945) has taken to the skies to capture the Scottish scenery, recognizing that the shifts and environmental changes in the landscape were often best seen from above. Her aerial views of hills, glens, forests and rivers are colourful compositions in which the viewer is completely absorbed by the seemingly abstract scene below.
Many of the works in The View from Here explore the concept of landscape from a contemporary perspective that addresses the emergence of a single global landscape. Sze Tsung Leong’s Horizons series, illustrates this tendency perfectly, linking up several distinct places around the world in one seemingly infinite horizon. Other practitioners question the use and alteration of the land by utilising technology to change the photographic image. Michael Reisch, who was born in 1964 in Germany, created an intriguing monumental view of the Scottish highlands in which he digitally removed all signs of the built roads to effectively restore the land to its original state.
From major names to lesser-known characters, views of far-off lands or scenes close to home, The View from Here will provide a visual celebration of the many landscape views represented in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.
Speaking of the exhibition, Christopher Baker, Director, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said, “The photography collection of the National Galleries of Scotland is a wonderfully rich resource which is gradually growing with impressive acquisitions. The wealth of imagery it encompasses will be made accessible in an exciting way through the new series of thematic exhibitions of which ‘The View from Here’ is the first. They will combine iconic images with less well known works and Scottish and international practice, so inspiring a fresh appreciation of this extraordinary art form.”
The View from Here is part of the Institute for Photography in Scotland’s Season of Photography 2016, a lively series of exhibitions and events taking place across Scotland from September to November 2016.
ENDS
For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6491 / 6314 / 6247 / 6332 or [email protected]
nationalgalleries.org
NOTES TO EDITORS
About the Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery
The View From Here: Landscape Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland is being shown in the Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery and is part of a continuing series of photographic exhibitions (including Lee Miller & Picasso and Ponte City) in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery, named after the renowned American photographer, is supported by a very generous donation from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. The Gallery is the first purpose-built photography space of its kind in a major museum in Scotland.
Press view: Thursday 20 October 2016, 11:30-13:00h
KARLA BLACK AND KISHIO SUGA:
A NEW ORDER
22 October 2016 – 19 February 2017
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One)
75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR
Admission FREE | 0131 624 6200
#BlackandSuga
The work of two internationally renowned prominent artists – one Scottish and one from Japan – will be brought together for the first time in a new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art this autumn. Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order will showcase one of Scotland’s leading contemporary artists, Karla Black, and one of the most highly regarded artists to emerge in Japan in the last 50 years, Kishio Suga.
Glasgow-based Black (b.1972), who is known for her large-scale abstract sculptures, represented Scotland at the 2011 Venice Biennale, the world’s largest and most prestigious showcase for contemporary visual art. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in the same year, and her work was a highlight of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s GENERATION exhibition in 2014, a nationwide celebration of 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland.
Kishio Suga was born in Morioka in Northern Japan in 1944, and first came to notice as part of the Mono-ha group in the late 1960s. Part of a group of artists whose work has had a profound impact on art in Japan and beyond, he represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 1978, and is increasingly recognised internationally as being one of the most innovative and original artists of his generation. Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order is his first major showing in the UK, and has been planned to coincide with Suga’s first large-scale retrospective exhibition in Europe, at the Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, and a solo show at the Dia Foundation, New York.
While these two artists work on opposite sides of the world and were unaware of each other’s art until this exhibition was conceived, they are united by their use of everyday materials to create sculptural works of sublime beauty, complexity and originality, which they make in response to specific spaces. For this exhibition, Black will make an entirely new body of work in the Gallery, and Suga will re-create some of his most celebrated works, as well as an entirely new piece conceived especially for the show.
Karla Black’s works are often composed of ephemeral materials, and range from delicate cellophane, paper and polythene hanging pieces suspended with ribbon or tape, to large-scale floor-based sculptures made from plaster, chalk powder and soil. At times her sculptures appear as though on the point of breakdown, or conversely, as if they are floating unaided. Her great skill is in drawing out and playing with the physical properties of the everyday materials she chooses – which in previous works have included soap, eye shadow, cotton wool, petroleum jelly, toothpaste and lip gloss – and altering our usual understanding of them.
Black’s ambitious new body of work for A New Order will include a stunning room-sized sculpture made from cotton wool – her largest work to date using this material. Alongside this, she will be making a range of works with sugar paper, cellophane, balsa wood, PVA glue and polythene. Black selects her materials based on their physical qualities – their texture, colour and feel – rather than any cultural connotations or associations. Similarly, her regular use of pale pastel colours, in particular baby blues and pinks, is not intended as a comment on gender.
Kishio Suga was a key member of Mono-ha (“School of Things”), a pioneering artistic movement which emerged in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and whose work continues to have a profound impact on Japanese art today. Though they were never a formal group, they shared an experimental and radical approach to materials, adopting simple, ‘everyday’ things, both natural and manufactured, such as stone, glass, iron, wire and earth. Rejecting representation, they explored instead the relationship between these materials and their impact on the space they occupied. Suga’s use of rocks, timber, sand, zinc and paraffin in temporary, site-specific sculptural arrangements, which he calls ‘situations’, places him as one of the most thought-provoking and original artists working today, anticipating many of the concerns that are being addressed in contemporary sculpture.
Amongst the works that will be recreated for this exhibition is the spectacular Left-Behind Situation (1972) which consists of a single steel wire criss-crossing a room at two levels, upon which blocks of wood or stone are placed in precarious balance where the wire intersects. The work occupies the entire room, with the walls serving as the frame of the installation, and is a superb example of the way Suga brings diverse materials together in often apparently arbitrary configurations, and of the artist's ability to make manifest, in the most elemental form, often contradictory and intangible qualities.
Although Suga enjoys a growing international reputation and is a pivotal figure in contemporary Japanese art, he is little known in the UK. A New Order will be a unique opportunity for British audiences to discover his work, alongside that of one of the most ground-breaking artists of her generation, Karla Black. The title of the exhibition is taken from a 2005 essay by Suga, Between ‘being’ and ‘nothingness’, in which he says, “…my final point in making artworks is to introduce ways to see and learn about things, to perceive an existing space differently so that viewers can experience a new kind of order. If they can apply their experience with art into their daily life, the new order may find settlement there. I would like to introduce a new way of reacting (to situations) in all viewers.”
This will be the first in a proposed series of free exhibitions that will seek to place a contemporary Scottish artist in a wider context, and bring the very best international art to Scotland.
Simon Groom, Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, commented: “The bringing together of these two highly distinctive artists, like their practice of bringing together very different materials, promises to result in something utterly surprising, original and thought-provoking. Their works push at the limits of what sculpture can be and consistently challenge the qualities of their chosen materials, inspiring the viewer to see things afresh.”
ENDS
For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6314 / 6247 / 6332 / 6491 or [email protected]
nationalgalleries.org
Notes to editors:
Two exhibitions of Kishio Suga’s work will coincide with A New Order:
Situations will be at the Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan from 30 September 2016 to 29 January 2017.
Kishio Suga will be at the Dia Foundation, Dia Chelsea, New York from 5 November 2016 to 30 July 2017.
Press view: Thursday 3 November, 11:30 – 13:00
THE GOLDFINCH
4 November - 18 December 2016
Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL
Telephone. 0131 624 6200 | Admission FREE
#TheGoldfinch
Sponsored by AEGON
A beautiful and mysterious masterpiece from the Golden Age of Dutch painting, which inspired a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by the US publishing sensation Donna Tartt, will make a flying visit to the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) in Edinburgh this autumn. The Goldfinch, which was painted in 1654 by Carel Fabritius, already enjoyed international renown before the intense interest surrounding Tartt’s 2014 novel of the same name propelled this mesmerising painting into the limelight, bringing it to the attention of Holywood producers, who now hope to adapt Tartt's book for the big screen.
One of only a handful of works by Fabritius known to exist, The Goldfinch will travel to the SNG from its home in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, in The Hague, for six weeks only, from 4 November to 18 December this year. The painting has never before been shown in Scotland, and has only been exhibited in the UK on a handful of occasions. When it was last shown outside the Netherlands, at the Frick Collection in New York in 2014, it was seen by a record-breaking 200,000 people (many of whom happily endured long queues in sub-zero temperatures).
Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) is often seen as the link between two giants of Dutch painting: Rembrandt van Rijn (1609-69), in whose workshop he was a star pupil and Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), on whose work he had a considerable influence. An artist of remarkable skill, Fabritius was tragically killed at the age of 32, when a gunpowder store exploded, destroying large parts of the city of Delft and killing hundreds of its residents. It is presumed that much of Fabritius’s work was lost in the explosion, and only around a dozen of his paintings survive. Among these The Goldfinch, which was painted in the year he died, is considered by many to be his masterpiece.
At the time that Fabritius painted this tiny ‘portrait’ of a goldfinch (the painting measures a mere 33.5 x 22.8 cm), these little birds were popular pets, renowned for their ability to learn tricks, such as pulling up their drinking water in a tiny thimble-sized pail from a hidden glass below. In Dutch paintings of the period, they might be read as a symbol of resourcefulness and dexterity, or perhaps of captive love, but Fabritius's Goldfinch seems to fall outside such traditions, and its meaning is more elusive. Here there are no props or tricks, just a single bird, painted with extraordinary realism, perched on its feeding-box, its leg attached to a wooden hoop by a slender metal chain.
If the image itself is unique in the art of the period, the original function of The Goldfinch, which was painted in oil on wooden panel, is also shrouded in mystery. There have been various speculations that it might have been intended as a shop sign, part of a piece of furniture or a cover for a box containing another painting. What seems certain however is that Fabritius intended to create a vivid illusion – one that might literally 'fool the eye' into reading the image as a living bird rather than a representation (an effect often referred to as 'trompe l'oeuil').
Fabritius's goldfinch is life-sized, and the shallow box on which it sits is portrayed against a small patch of flat wall, viewed head-on and artfully painted to suggest areas of flaking plaster. The shadows cast by the box and by the bird itself are consistent with a low view point and it may be that the painting was intended to hang high on a wall, helping to create the conditions under which an observer might be wholly taken in by it.
Yet this perfect illusionism is undermined by the way in which Fabritius has painted the little bird itself – with swift and clearly distinguishable brushstrokes. Whatever pains he took to create a convincingly lifelike image, the artist did nothing to disguise the fact that he has somehow conjured the essence of a living, breathing creature merely by the skilful placement of a series of abstract marks comprised of pigment and oil.
Perhaps it is this paradox that has given The Goldfinch its power to fascinate and to inspire. Donna Tartt’s 800-page novel is an epic story of love, loss and obsession. In her fictionalised account The Goldfinch is removed from the debris of a terrorist explosion in New York’s Metropolitan Museum by a survivor, a teenage boy who loses his devoted mother in the blast. Over the course of the novel, his secret and illicit possession of this humble, but singularly beautiful painting gives the main character his only anchor in a chaotic, dislocated and grief-haunted life.
Speaking of the display, Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery said, “We are delighted to present Carel Fabritius’s iconic The Goldfinch in Scotland for the first time. Hugely popular since it inspired Donna Tartt’s bestselling novel, this is a very rare opportunity for art and literature lovers alike to come face to face with one of the most compelling paintings in Western art.”
Aegon UK Chief Executive, Adrian Grace, added, “It’s wonderful to have an opportunity to bring this iconic painting to Scotland. The painting’s small size is in sharp contrast to its large influence both in the history of art and contemporary literature. Aegon’s Dutch heritage and support for the arts meant we were delighted to sponsor this landmark exhibition and bring the painting to a wider audience.”
ENDS
For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland’s press office on 0131 624 6247 / 6314 / 6332 / 6491
nationalgalleries.org
Notes to Editors
About Aegon
In the UK, Aegon offers retirement, workplace savings and protection solutions to around two million customers and employs approximately 2,100 staff. Aegon UK’s revenue generating investments totalled £59 billion as at 31 December 2015.
As an international life insurance, pensions and asset management company based in The Hague, Aegon has businesses in over twenty five markets in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Aegon companies employ over 28,000 people and have millions of customers across the globe as at February 2015. Further information: www.aegon.com
Aegon is the Lead Partner of British Tennis.
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) is delighted to announce that the major project Celebrating Scotland’s Art has begun this week after the City of Edinburgh Council formally approved the planning applications.
The £16.8 million extension will radically improve access to the National Galleries of Scotland’s world-class collection of Scottish art. The Scottish rooms, Print Room and Library in the Lower Level of the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) closed this week to allow for the preparation of the building. Actual construction work will commence on site in spring 2017 and will continue until autumn 2018. The new spaces will open to the public in early 2019. During the renovation, the SNG will remain open to the public with access to rooms at the ground and upper levels.
Michael Clarke, Director of the SNG and Project Director commented: “We are delighted that we can now move forward with this exciting development. I would like to thank the City of Edinburgh Council for their support of this project which will truly transform this site at the heart of Edinburgh and enable new audiences to enjoy the magnificent Scottish art collection.”
The planned redevelopment of the Scottish National Gallery, will triple the exhibition space available to the Scottish collection from 440 m to 1320 m, vastly improve visitor access and circulation throughout the SNG complex, and create a more sympathetic setting and entrance for the SNG within East Princes St Gardens.
One of Scotland’s leading architectural practices, Hoskins Architects, which has been widely praised for a number of high-profile designs in the arts and cultural sector, was appointed to the project in 2014. Before his untimely death earlier this year, the firm’s founder, Gareth Hoskins OBE, created an outstanding design, which is being taken forward by the practice team, led by Director Chris Coleman-Smith.
Designed by the celebrated Scottish architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) and situated right in the heart of Edinburgh, the SNG is the most popular UK art gallery outside of London, attracting over 1.4 million visitors in 2015/16. It is home to the world’s finest collection of historic Scottish art, rich in the works of incomparable artists such as Allan Ramsay, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir David Wilkie, as well as many, many others.
The completion of this project will give this wonderful resource the prominence it deserves, and enable the NGS to engage visitors and highlight the history, significance and impact of Scottish art, both nationally and internationally, to a much wider audience.
During the redevelopment and on opening, there will be an extensive programme of activity, which will give the National Galleries a chance to involve the community in the project and dramatically improve learning opportunities, especially for schools and families.
The Heritage Lottery Fund announced a £4.94 million grant towards the project earlier this year.
ENDS
For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland’s press office on 0131 624 6247 / 6314 / 6332 / 6491 or [email protected]
nationalgalleries.org
Notes to Editors:
Project Overview
The new displays will tell the story of Scottish art from the 17th to the mid-20th century (including the Scottish Colourists), within a clear chronological framework, while also exploring themes of wider cultural relevance. The presentation will be regularly refreshed with the addition of dynamic and changing displays drawn from the riches of the collection, including the outstanding holding of Scottish graphic art.
The design will open up a suite of new rooms which, for the first time, will be directly accessible from East Princes St Gardens, and will utilise former office, print room and storage space to maximise the area given to the new displays. The area will be enhanced by natural light, and will also offer stunning views into the Gardens and the city beyond. Circulation throughout the entire SNG complex will be rationalised and radically improved, and sympathetic landscaping will integrate the SNG with the Gardens, significantly enhancing this important part of Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site. The terrace outside the Gallery will be substantially expanded and a new pathway created. Access to the Gardens as a whole will be much improved, with major enhancements to disabled access.
In January of this year, the National Galleries of Scotland Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament to allow the transfer of a narrow strip of common good land in East Princes St Gardens to the NGS. Incorporating this strip – a steep, grassy bank between the pedestrian walkway and the windows of the Gallery’s office accommodation – will create a new elevation which aligns with that of the existing visitor facilities at Gardens level. As well as contributing to the increase in exhibition space within the Gallery it will also create a wider footpath at the level above, which is a busy and often congested pedestrian thoroughfare. The increased connectivity between Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns, from Princes Street and the Royal Mile, at both the Gardens and street level, will be of great benefit to the city as a whole.
Hoskins Architects
The practice has worked with a wide range of cultural organisations including: the Victoria & Albert Museum, National Museums Scotland and the National Theatre of Scotland. They are currently working with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Strawberry Fields in Liverpool and a handful of reference health centres throughout Scotland. Further afield the practice designed Scotland’s pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2008 and won the international competition for the Landesmuseum in Schleswig Holstein. They have recently completed the redevelopment of the Berlin State Library, and are currently onsite for the World Museum in Vienna.
http://www.hoskinsarchitects.com/
[email protected]
@Hoskins_Arch
Brief history of the Scottish National Gallery
Designed by the architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), the Scottish National Gallery and the adjacent Royal Scottish Academy building stand in the heart of Edinburgh. Although originally built as separate structures, their histories have long been intertwined, and since the completion of the Playfair Project in 2004, they have been physically joined by the underground link, which contains a number of important visitor facilities and is entered via East Princes St Gardens.
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) cares for, develops, researches and displays the national collection of Scottish and international fine art and, with a lively and innovative programme of exhibitions, education and publications, aims to engage, inform and inspire the broadest possible public.
Architecture
Playfair was Scotland’s leading architect of his era and was responsible for a number of Edinburgh buildings, although his two galleries on The Mound are generally regarded as his finest. These two classical temples to the arts achieve a picturesque harmony with the dramatic backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.
The most recent phase in The Mound’s history saw the completion of the underground link between the Royal Scottish Academy building (RSA) and the Scottish National Gallery. Award-winning architects John Miller and Partners rose to the challenge of developing the site for modern use, and refurbishing the RSA. This is now a world-class exhibition space, while the underground facilities created include the Clore Education Centre, a 200-seat lecture theatre and cinema, an IT Gallery and a 120-seat restaurant.
ARTIST ROOMS On Tour 2017 – A year of twentieth-century giants
New programme begins with ROY LICHTENSTEIN at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, ANDY WARHOL at Whitworth Art Gallery and Dunoon Burgh Hall,
JOSEPH BEUYS for reopening of Leeds Art Gallery, GERHARD RICHTER in Southampton
RON MUECK exhibition at Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery
The National Galleries of Scotland and Tate are delighted to announce plans for the eighth year of ARTIST ROOMS on Tour. Autumn 2016 marks the start of a new programme of exhibitions that will run until spring 2019, developed in collaboration with over thirty museum and gallery partners, giving audiences around the UK the opportunity to see some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries in their home towns.
As Hull approaches its 2017 year as UK City of Culture, lead Associate partner Ferens Art Gallery will present an exhibition of work by Ron Mueck in their newly refurbished building. Developed with Future Ferens, the gallery’s 18-25 year old volunteers who shaped the venue’s three previous highly engaging ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions, the chance to experience Mueck’s work in Hull will be a highlight of the UK City of Culture celebrations.
2017 will be a stand-out year for artists of the 20th century, shown in venues large and small, the length and breadth of the UK. The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester - a new ARTIST ROOMS partner, will present a major exhibition of Andy Warhol. Audiences in the West of Scotland will also see the work of this American icon at Dunoon Burgh Hall, when the listed Victorian building reopens in spring 2017 as a cultural hub for the community, marking the fifth anniversary of their first ARTIST ROOMS collaboration, a highly successful exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Home to one of the most important Pop Art collections in the UK, Wolverhampton Art Gallery will show works by Roy Lichtenstein, a first opportunity for visitors to see this new ARTIST ROOMS collection on long loan from The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation since the exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2015, shown to great critical and popular acclaim. Leeds Art Gallery will reopen their building in 2017 with a major exhibition of work by Joseph Beuys, while the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton will present a significant show of Gerhard Richter in its new city centre gallery.
The total number of artists in the collection now numbers 40, as Phyllida Barlow’s work entered the collection earlier this year with the sculpture, untitled: upturnedhouse, 2, currently on show at Tate Modern. The artist will represent Great Britain at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
In addition to Dunoon, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Southampton and Wolverhampton, the 2017 ARTIST ROOMS programme of exhibitions will be seen in Birmingham, Derby, Dumfries, Liverpool, Perth, Preston and Thurso, alongside new exhibitions in London and Edinburgh. Since ARTIST ROOMS On Tour began in 2009, its exhibitions have attracted over 40 million visitors across the UK, with 147 displays and exhibitions at 77 museums and galleries, from Penzance to the Hebrides, from Kilmarnock to Hull, from Belfast to Llandudno.
The new programme of ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is a partnership between National Galleries of Scotland, Tate and Ferens Art Gallery, and is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, by Art Fund and by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland. Thanks to this support and alongside ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions taking place around the UK, a wider network of Associate museums and galleries will also be invited to take part in a professional development programme for organisations and their staff. Through skill-sharing workshops, training bursaries, mentoring and peer learning, the programme will help build relationships between venues, create a strong touring network and support better access and learning opportunities for audiences.
The ARTIST ROOMS collection is owned jointly by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland and was established through the generosity of Anthony d’Offay, through the d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, and the Scottish and British Governments in 2008.
The ARTIST ROOMS On Tour programme from autumn 2016 -17 is as follows:
Wolverhampton Art Gallery
22 October 2016 - 26 February 2017
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
The Whitworth, Manchester
19 November 2016 – 16 April 2017
ANDY WARHOL
Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library, Preston
27 January 2017 – 3 June 2017
MARTIN CREED
Caithness Horizons Museum, Thurso
10 March - 4 June 2017
JOHAN GRIMONPREZ
Dunoon Burgh Hall
26 March - 17 June 2017
ANDY WARHOL
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
22 April - 13 August 2017
RON MUECK
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
29 April 2017 – 29 April 2018
ED RUSCHA
mac Birmingham
27 May - 10 September 2017
JENNY HOLZER
Perth Museum and Art Gallery
12 August – 5 November 2017
Artist to be announced
Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries
26 August - 19 November 2017
DON MCCULLIN
Tate Liverpool
22 September 2017 – 10 June 2018
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Leeds Art Gallery
6 October 2017 - 21 January 2018
JOSEPH BEUYS
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
11 November 2017 – 3 February 2018
GERHARD RICHTER
Derby Museum and Art Gallery
2 December 2017 - 4 March 2018
RICHARD LONG
Current exhibitions:
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
30 July - 30 October 2016
JOSEPH BEUYS A Language of Drawing
Tate Modern
23 November 2015 – ongoing
JOSEPH BEUYS
Tate Modern
14 January 2016 - spring 2017
PHYLLIDA BARLOW
Tate Modern
17 June 2016 - spring 2017
LOUISE BOURGEOIS
The next artist in the dedicated ARTIST ROOMS gallery at Tate Modern will go on display in spring 2017, following the inaugural exhibition of LOUISE BOURGEOIS. The artist will be announced in due course.
For further information
Ruth Findlay, Corporate Communications Manager, Tate
Tel: 020 7887 4940 Email: [email protected]
Michael Gormley, National Galleries of Scotland
Tel: 0131 624 6247 Email: mgormley@nationalgalleries.org
Madeline Adeane at Art Fund
Tel: 020 7225 4804 Email: [email protected]
For 2017 tour announcement images, contact [email protected] or visit the dropbox at the following link
To find out more about ARTIST ROOMS please visit www.artistrooms.org
www.tate.org.uk/artistrooms and www.nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms.
Further information about ARTIST ROOMS on Tour can be found at www.artfund.org/artistrooms.
NOTES TO EDITORS
ARTIST ROOMS
The ARTIST ROOMS collection of international modern and contemporary and art was acquired jointly by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland by the generosity of Anthony d’Offay, through the d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments.
Since 2009, ARTIST ROOMS on Tour has shared the collection with over 40 million visitors to 77 museums and galleries around the UK including National Galleries of Scotland and Tate, and through exhibitions and creative projects, it gives young people the chance to explore and enjoy important works by leading artists. The new programme of ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is a partnership between National Galleries of Scotland, Tate and Ferens Art Gallery, and is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, by Art Fund and by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
Arts Council England
Arts Council England champions, develops and invests in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2015 and 2018, we plan to invest £1.1 billion of public money from government and an estimated £700 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk
Art Fund
Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. In the past five years alone Art Fund has given £34 million to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. It also helps museums share their collections with wider audiences by supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including ARTIST ROOMS and the 2013-18 Aspire tour of Tate's Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable, and makes additional grants to support the training and professional development of curators.
Find out more about Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org
Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland is the national organisation that funds and supports the development of Scotland’s arts, screen and creative industries. Creative Scotland has four objectives: to develop and sustain a thriving environment for the arts, screen and creative industries; to support excellence in artistic and creative practice; to improve access to and participation in, arts and creative activity; and to deliver our services efficiently and effectively. In 2013/14 we will distribute over £100m in funding provided by the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. For further information on Creative Scotland please visit www.creativescotland.com. Follow us @creativescots and www.facebook.com/CreativeScotland
Ferens Art Gallery
The Ferens is one of the UK’s finest regional galleries. It is currently undergoing a £4.5 million refurbishment and will reopen in early 2017. As well as hosting the gallery’s fourth ARTIST ROOMS exhibition when it reopens, the Ferens is the Lead Associate Partner for ARTIST ROOMS on Tour during 2017-19, and will chair a newly established ARTIST ROOMS Advisory Group of Associate partners and provide mentoring support for the UK network of museums and galleries through a professional development programme. Ferens Art Gallery is operated by Hull Culture and Leisure Limited on behalf of Hull City Council www.hcandl.co.uk/ferens.
RICHARD DEMARCO & JOSEPH BEUYS: A UNIQUE PARTNERSHIP
30 July − 16 October 2016
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)
73 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DS
Admission free | 0131 624 6200
#ScotModern
New display to explore the extraordinary relationship between Richard Demarco and influential German artist Joseph Beuys
The extraordinary collaboration between avant-garde gallerist Richard Demarco (b. 1930) and the innovative and inspirational German post-war artist Joseph Beuys (1921-86) will be explored in an unprecedented and comprehensive new display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA).
Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys: A Unique Partnership will examine the works, lectures and the unique styles of performances called ‘actions’ (which the artist invented) that Demarco commissioned from Beuys, from 1970 until the latter’s death in 1986.
Photography, film and original correspondence drawn from the Demarco Archive, acquired by the Gallery in the mid-1990s, will illuminate how Beuys’ relationships with both Scotland and Demarco proved to be a huge influence on the German artist’s work.
Film footage of Beuys’ performances on Rannoch Moor and in Edinburgh’s Forresthill Poorhouse will bring an important aspect of Scotland’s art history back to life. The display will also focus on the ground-breaking Strategy: Get Arts exhibition that Demarco organised at the Edinburgh College of Art in 1970.
Richard Demarco recognized the visionary quality of Beuys’ work and visited him in the Oberkassel district of Düsseldorf in January 1970. Determined to focus Beuys’ attention on Scotland, he presented him with a set of postcards. Beuys responded with the Shakespearean line, “I see the land of Macbeth, so when shall we two meet again, in thunder, lightning or in rain?”
Later that year, they reunited in Edinburgh and Demarco led him northwards along the ancient track he calls ‘The Road to Meikle Seggie’, Demarco’s invented description of a physical or metaphysical journey. This initial experience of the Scottish landscape inspired Beuys and laid the foundation for their remarkable sixteen year-long artistic relationship.
In 1970, Beuys exhibited three works in the Strategy: Get Arts exhibition. The show also included exciting new work from artists with links with the Düsseldorf Art Academy, including pieces by Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo and Günther Uecker.
However, it was Beuys’ works which stood out and captured the public’s imagination, namely his now-iconic sculpture The Pack (1969). The work consisted of a VW bus, out of the back of which poured rows of sledges, each equipped with a survivor pack of a roll of felt, a torch and a lump of fat. Beuys’ sculpture Sled (1969), which recreates one of the sledges used in the original piece, will be on display.
After Beuys had worked with neo-dada Fluxus artists in the Rhineland, Beuys developed his unique style of performance which he called ‘actions’ in the early 1960s. The Fluxus artists had attempted to break down the barriers between the arts and between art and life, by mixing together visual art, with music, acting, sound and installations of real objects. Beuys took this a step further and created a sort of performance dominated by his mesmeric personality and ability to make the spaces he performed in sacred.
The 1970 show also included one of the ‘actions’, Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, created with the composer Henning Christiansen. Filmed footage and a striking display of photographs taken of the event will be on show alongside a replica of Christiansen’s instrument, Green Violin (1974).
The Keiller Library’s supplementary display contains an assortment of photographs, news cuttings, scrapbooks, ephemera and original correspondence, all pertaining to the 1970 art college exhibition. Original correspondence between Demarco and Beuys, as well as artists featuring in the 1970 exhibit such as Richter and Uecker, will illuminate the type of relationship Demarco had with these artists, and the respect they held for him.
Beuys was invited back by Demarco on numerous occasions to perform ‘actions’ including Three Pots for the Poorhouse (1974), captured on film and through photographic images in a dilapidated Edinburgh Poorhouse. Both media are shown alongside the ’action-object’ made at the time, comprised of two blackboards with chalk drawings and three cast-iron pots linked by a cord.
Thanks to Demarco’s invitations, Beuys also taught, gave lectures, and made works in Edinburgh, most notably A New Beginning is in the Offing (1981). A powerful image of Beuys emerging from the old Poorhouse doors during the Black and White Oil Conference in 1974 shows the significance of the doors which became the work. This work was later installed at Inverleith House in 1981, at which point Beuys added a red light bulb under the doors.
This example is one of the many ways in which Demarco’s influence impacted on Beuys’ work, and encouraged him to explore the importance of the Celtic world, not only in Scotland but in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe.
A Unique Partnership coincides with Modern Two’s new major summer exhibition ARTIST ROOMS: Joseph Beuys – A Language of Drawing, which for the first time brings together the extraordinary group of over 110 Beuys drawings held in the ARTIST ROOMS collection.
Part of the Edinburgh Art Festival (28 July—28 August 2016)
Simon Groom, Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “This comprehensive display is a wonderful complement to the Gallery’s exhibition of extraordinary drawings by Joseph Beuys, “ARTIST ROOMS: A Language of Drawing”. On the 30th anniversary of Beuys’ death, the original photographs, letters, and unique documentation shed new light on Beuys’s activity in Scotland, the significance of his relationship with Demarco, and the artworks it directly inspired.”
–ENDS–
NOTES TO EDITORS
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Celebrating Scotland’s Art:
Transformation of Scottish National Gallery given £5 m funding boost by Heritage Lottery Fund
#CelebrateArt
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have today announced the confirmation of a £4.94 m award to support an ambitious major redevelopment of the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) in Edinburgh.
A HLF Stage One pass was announced in March 2015, and following a recent meeting of the HLF trustees, full support for the award has now been confirmed.
The £16.8 m extension will radically improve access to the SNG’s world-class collection of Scottish art. Preparation is due to begin in September 2016, with construction work commencing on site in January 2017 and continuing until summer 2018. The new space will be open to the public in autumn of that year.
The planned redevelopment of the SNG, entitled Celebrating Scotland’s Art, will triple the exhibition space available to the Scottish collection from 440 m to 1320 m, vastly improve visitor access and circulation throughout the SNG complex, and create a more sympathetic setting and entrance for the SNG within the East Princes St Gardens.
Designed by the celebrated Scottish architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) and situated right in the heart of Edinburgh, the SNG is the most popular UK art gallery outside of London, attracting over 1.4 million visitors in 2015/16. It is home to the world’s finest collection of historic Scottish art, rich in the works of incomparable artists such as Allan Ramsay, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir David Wilkie, as well as many, many others. The completion of this project will give this wonderful resource the prominence it deserves, and enable the NGS to engage visitors and highlight the history, significance and impact of Scottish art, both nationally and internationally, to a much wider audience.
The new displays will tell the story of Scottish art from the 17th to the mid-20th century (including the Scottish Colourists), within a clear chronological framework, while also exploring themes of wider cultural relevance. The presentation will be regularly refreshed with the addition of dynamic and changing displays drawn from the riches of the collection, including the outstanding holding of Scottish graphic art.
This project will mark a fundamental change in the way the Gallery presents historical Scottish art. Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery and the Project’s Director, said: “We are absolutely delighted that the Project has received the full and generous support of the Heritage Lottery Fund. Scotland’s historic art will at last be displayed in a space that will do it justice and enable our visitors from home and abroad to appreciate fully its many and distinctive qualities. Our world-famous collections, displayed in our historic and sympathetically remodelled Gallery, will reinforce our position as one of Scotland’s ‘must see’ attractions.”
Lucy Casot, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland, said:“We are delighted that thanks to the National Lottery playing public, the most important collection of Scottish Art in the world will have a home worthy of its impressive heritage. This project will breathe new life into the collection so that it can bring joy and inspiration to national and international visitors. Importantly, it will also reach out to schools and community groups across the country so that they too can learn from and enjoy these national treasures.”
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, added: “The Scottish National Gallery is one of Scotland’s top visitor attractions, welcoming approximately 1.4 million visitors through its doors each year. The generous support shown by the Heritage Lottery Fund recognises the importance of the National Galleries of Scotland’s Celebrating Scotland’s Art project. It presents a fantastic opportunity to promote the enduring influence and legacy that Scottish Art and artists have had on the world and to help engage new audiences, who are certain to be inspired and enriched by the new facilities and activities that will be on offer.”
One of Scotland’s leading architectural practices, Hoskins Architects (HA), which has been widely praised for a number of high-profile designs in the arts and cultural sector, including the award-winning redevelopment of the National Museum of Scotland, was appointed to the SNG project in 2014. Before his untimely death earlier this year, the firm’s founder, Gareth Hoskins OBE, created an outstanding design for the project, which is being taken forward by Director Chris Coleman-Smith. The plans will stand, as will other major projects designed by Gareth Hoskins, both in this country and abroad, as a memorial to his exceptional talent.
The design will open up a suite of new gallery spaces which, for the first time, will be directly accessible from East Princes St Gardens, and will utilise former office, print room and storage space to maximise the area given to the new displays. The space will be enhanced by natural light, and will also offer stunning views into the Gardens and the city beyond. Circulation throughout the entire SNG complex will be rationalised and radically improved, and sympathetic landscaping will integrate the SNG with the Gardens, significantly enhancing this important part of Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site. The terrace outside the Gallery will be substantially expanded and a new pathway created. Access to the Gardens as a whole will be much improved, with major enhancements to disabled access. These ambitious plans are currently with City of Edinburgh Council for consideration.
In January of this year, the National Galleries of Scotland Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament to allow the transfer of a narrow strip of common good land in East Princes St Gardens to the NGS. Incorporating this strip – a steep, grassy bank between the pedestrian walkway and the windows of the Gallery’s office accommodation – will create a new elevation which aligns with that of the existing visitor facilities at Gardens level. As well as contributing to the increase in exhibition space within the Gallery it will also create a wider footpath at the level above, which is a busy and often congested pedestrian thoroughfare. The increased connectivity between Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns, from Princes Street and the Royal Mile, at both the Gardens and street level, will be of great benefit to the city as a whole.
During the renovation, the SNG will remain open to the public with access to the main floor rooms, which will be largely unaffected by the redevelopment plans. The Scottish collection spaces, Library and Print Room will be closed from Tuesday 30 August 2016. During the redevelopment and on opening, there will be an extensive programme of activity, which will give the National Galleries a chance to involve the community in the project and dramatically improve learning opportunities, especially for schools and families.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Heritage Lottery Fund
From the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife, we use National Lottery players' money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about. www.hlf.org.uk. @heritagelottery
Further information
For the Heritage Lottery Fund, please contact Jon Williams on tel: 0207 591 6035, [email protected] or Simon Oliver on tel: 0207 591 6032, [email protected]
Hoskins Architects
The practice has worked with a wide range of cultural organisations including: the Victoria & Albert Museum, National Museums Scotland and the National Theatre of Scotland. They are currently working with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Strawberry Fields in Liverpool and a handful of reference health centres throughout Scotland. Further afield the practice designed Scotland’s pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2008 and won the international competition for the Landesmuseum in Schleswig Holstein. They have recently completed the redevelopment of the Berlin State Library, and are currently onsite for the World Museum in Vienna.
http://www.hoskinsarchitects.com/
@Hoskins_Arch
Brief history of the Scottish National Gallery
Designed by the architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), the Scottish National Gallery and the adjacent Royal Scottish Academy building stand in the heart of Edinburgh. Although originally built as separate structures, their histories have long been intertwined, and since the completion of the Playfair Project in 2004, they have been physically joined by the underground link, which contains a number of important visitor facilities and is entered via East Princes St Gardens.
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) cares for, develops, researches and displays the national collection of Scottish and international fine art and, with a lively and innovative programme of exhibitions, education and publications, aims to engage, inform and inspire the broadest possible public.
Architecture
Playfair was Scotland’s leading architect of his era and was responsible for a number of Edinburgh buildings, although his two galleries on The Mound are generally regarded as his finest. These two classical temples to the arts achieved a picturesque harmony with the dramatic backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.
The most recent phase in The Mound’s history saw the completion of the underground link between the Royal Scottish Academy building (RSA) and the Scottish National Gallery. Award-winning architects John Miller and Partners rose to the challenge of developing the site for modern use, and refurbishing the RSA. This is now a world-class exhibition space, while the underground facilities created include the Clore Education Centre, a 200-seat lecture theatre and cinema, an IT Gallery and a 120-seat restaurant.
CELEBRATING SCOTLAND’S ART: TRANSFORMATION OF SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY GIVEN £5 M FUNDING BOOST BY HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND
#CelebrateArt
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have today announced the confirmation of a £4.94 m award to support an ambitious major redevelopment of the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) in Edinburgh.
A HLF Stage One pass was announced in March 2015, and following a recent meeting of the HLF trustees, full support for the award has now been confirmed.
The £16.8 m extension will radically improve access to the SNG’s world-class collection of Scottish art. Preparation is due to begin in September 2016, with construction work commencing on site in January 2017 and continuing until summer 2018. The new space will be open to the public in autumn of that year.
The planned redevelopment of the SNG, entitled Celebrating Scotland’s Art, will triple the exhibition space available to the Scottish collection from 440 m to 1320 m, vastly improve visitor access and circulation throughout the SNG complex, and create a more sympathetic setting and entrance for the SNG within the East Princes St Gardens.
Designed by the celebrated Scottish architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) and situated right in the heart of Edinburgh, the SNG is the most popular UK art gallery outside of London, attracting over 1.4 million visitors in 2015/16. It is home to the world’s finest collection of historic Scottish art, rich in the works of incomparable artists such as Allan Ramsay, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir David Wilkie, as well as many, many others. The completion of this project will give this wonderful resource the prominence it deserves, and enable the NGS to engage visitors and highlight the history, significance and impact of Scottish art, both nationally and internationally, to a much wider audience.
The new displays will tell the story of Scottish art from the 17th to the mid-20th century (including the Scottish Colourists), within a clear chronological framework, while also exploring themes of wider cultural relevance. The presentation will be regularly refreshed with the addition of dynamic and changing displays drawn from the riches of the collection, including the outstanding holding of Scottish graphic art.
This project will mark a fundamental change in the way the Gallery presents historical Scottish art. Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery and the Project’s Director, said: “We are absolutely delighted that the Project has received the full and generous support of the Heritage Lottery Fund. Scotland’s historic art will at last be displayed in a space that will do it justice and enable our visitors from home and abroad to appreciate fully its many and distinctive qualities. Our world-famous collections, displayed in our historic and sympathetically remodelled Gallery, will reinforce our position as one of Scotland’s ‘must see’ attractions.”
Lucy Casot, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland, said: “We are delighted that thanks to the National Lottery playing public, the most important collection of Scottish Art in the world will have a home worthy of its impressive heritage. This project will breathe new life into the collection so that it can bring joy and inspiration to national and international visitors. Importantly, it will also reach out to schools and community groups across the country so that they too can learn from and enjoy these national treasures.”
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, added: “The Scottish National Gallery is one of Scotland’s top visitor attractions, welcoming approximately 1.4 million visitors through its doors each year. The generous support shown by the Heritage Lottery Fund recognises the importance of the National Galleries of Scotland’s Celebrating Scotland’s Art project. It presents a fantastic opportunity to promote the enduring influence and legacy that Scottish Art and artists have had on the world and to help engage new audiences, who are certain to be inspired and enriched by the new facilities and activities that will be on offer.”
One of Scotland’s leading architectural practices, Hoskins Architects (HA), which has been widely praised for a number of high-profile designs in the arts and cultural sector, including the award-winning redevelopment of the National Museum of Scotland, was appointed to the SNG project in 2014. Before his untimely death earlier this year, the firm’s founder, Gareth Hoskins OBE, created an outstanding design for the project, which is being taken forward by Director Chris Coleman-Smith. The plans will stand, as will other major projects designed by Gareth Hoskins, both in this country and abroad, as a memorial to his exceptional talent.
The design will open up a suite of new gallery spaces which, for the first time, will be directly accessible from East Princes St Gardens, and will utilise former office, print room and storage space to maximise the area given to the new displays. The space will be enhanced by natural light, and will also offer stunning views into the Gardens and the city beyond. Circulation throughout the entire SNG complex will be rationalised and radically improved, and sympathetic landscaping will integrate the SNG with the Gardens, significantly enhancing this important part of Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site. The terrace outside the Gallery will be substantially expanded and a new pathway created. Access to the Gardens as a whole will be much improved, with major enhancements to disabled access. These ambitious plans are currently with City of Edinburgh Council for consideration.
In January of this year, the National Galleries of Scotland Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament to allow the transfer of a narrow strip of common good land in East Princes St Gardens to the NGS. Incorporating this strip – a steep, grassy bank between the pedestrian walkway and the windows of the Gallery’s office accommodation – will create a new elevation which aligns with that of the existing visitor facilities at Gardens level. As well as contributing to the increase in exhibition space within the Gallery it will also create a wider footpath at the level above, which is a busy and often congested pedestrian thoroughfare. The increased connectivity between Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns, from Princes Street and the Royal Mile, at both the Gardens and street level, will be of great benefit to the city as a whole.
During the renovation, the SNG will remain open to the public with access to the main floor rooms, which will be largely unaffected by the redevelopment plans. The Scottish collection spaces, Library and Print Room will be closed from Tuesday 30 August 2016. During the redevelopment and on opening, there will be an extensive programme of activity, which will give the National Galleries a chance to involve the community in the project and dramatically improve learning opportunities, especially for schools and families.
For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6247 / 6314 / 6332 / 6491
nationalgalleries.org
[email protected]
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Heritage Lottery Fund
From the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife, we use National Lottery players' money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about. www.hlf.org.uk. @heritagelottery
Further information
For the Heritage Lottery Fund, please contact Jon Williams on tel: 0207 591 6035, [email protected] or Simon Oliver on tel: 0207 591 6032, [email protected]
Hoskins Architects
The practice has worked with a wide range of cultural organisations including: the Victoria & Albert Museum, National Museums Scotland and the National Theatre of Scotland. They are currently working with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Strawberry Fields in Liverpool and a handful of reference health centres throughout Scotland. Further afield the practice designed Scotland’s pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2008 and won the international competition for the Landesmuseum in Schleswig Holstein. They have recently completed the redevelopment of the Berlin State Library, and are currently onsite for the World Museum in Vienna.
http://www.hoskinsarchitects.com/
[email protected]
@Hoskins_Arch
Brief history of the Scottish National Gallery
Designed by the architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), the Scottish National Gallery and the adjacent Royal Scottish Academy building stand in the heart of Edinburgh. Although originally built as separate structures, their histories have long been intertwined, and since the completion of the Playfair Project in 2004, they have been physically joined by the underground link, which contains a number of important visitor facilities and is entered via East Princes St Gardens.
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) cares for, develops, researches and displays the national collection of Scottish and international fine art and, with a lively and innovative programme of exhibitions, education and publications, aims to engage, inform and inspire the broadest possible public.
Architecture
Playfair was Scotland’s leading architect of his era and was responsible for a number of Edinburgh buildings, although his two galleries on The Mound are generally regarded as his finest. These two classical temples to the arts achieved a picturesque harmony with the dramatic backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.
The most recent phase in The Mound’s history saw the completion of the underground link between the Royal Scottish Academy building (RSA) and the Scottish National Gallery. Award-winning architects John Miller and Partners rose to the challenge of developing the site for modern use, and refurbishing the RSA. This is now a world-class exhibition space, while the underground facilities created include the Clore Education Centre, a 200-seat lecture theatre and cinema, an IT Gallery and a 120-seat restaurant.
INSPIRING IMPRESSIONISM:
DAUBIGNY, MONET, VAN GOGH
25 June – 2 October 2016
Scottish National Gallery
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission: £11/9
#InspiringImpressionism
Scottish National Gallery to be UK’s exclusive host of the first major international exhibition of the work of pioneering French landscape painter Charles-François Daubigny and his influence on the Impressionists
This summer the National Galleries of Scotland will stage the first ever large-scale exhibition to examine the important relationship between the hugely successful landscape painter Charles-François Daubigny (1817-78) and the Impressionists, including two of the most celebrated and popular of all European artists, Claude Monet (1840–1926) and Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90).
Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh will be one of the highlights of the Galleries’ summer exhibition programme.
The exhibitionwill bring together95 works from across the world in an unprecedented collaboration between the Scottish National Gallery, the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, USA and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The Scottish National Gallery will exclusively host the UK’s only showing of this exceptional display.
Inspiring Impressionism will feature major paintings by all three artists, on loan from many of the greatest art collections in the world, including the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and many other American museums; from London the British Museum, the National Gallery and Tate; and the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Re-evaluating the origins of the Impressionist movement, the exhibition will not only demonstrate the profound influence Daubigny had upon the Impressionists, but will also examine their reciprocal impact on his later style, with the full range of his output represented, from his finished ‘official’ paintings to his smaller oil sketches painted directly from nature.
A series of fascinating and often surprising juxtapositions will be put together for the very first time, offering visitors the unprecedented chance to compare the show’s three featured artists’ varied treatments of a selection of motifs which held a common attraction for them – orchards, sunsets, poppy fields and river scenes.
Other significant comparisons will be made with important works by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899).
Daubigny was a prolific and successful artist who played a leading role in making landscape a major subject for painting in France in the nineteenth century. He also anticipated and influenced many of the practices associated with Impressionism through unusual and innovative compositions, his radically ‘unfinished’ style and the practice of regularly painting out-of-doors. In 1865, almost a decade before the 1874 group exhibition that first elicited the label ‘Impressionism’, Daubigny was referred to as the “leader” of the “school of the impression”.
He pioneered many techniques considered unusual at the time, such as painting from the middle rather than the banks of a river. In order to achieve this he had a studio boat specially constructed in 1857 and would make annual voyages in it down the great rivers of France such as the Oise, the Marne and the Seine. From the early 1870s onward Monet would follow suit and in turn depicted the Seine in many unforgettable canvases painted from his own studio boat in emulation of Daubigny. Daubigny made great use of ‘double-square’ canvases (double the width of their height) and Van Gogh would replicate this practice in his last series of paintings at Auvers-sur-Oise.
Daubigny’s influence on the young Monet is readily evident in the latter’s large and early painting, shown at the official Paris Salon in 1865, Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide, a major loan to our exhibition from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. This shows the younger artist respondingtoDaubigny’s Cliffs near Villerville, another of our star exhibits,which also depicts the Normandy coast and had been shown at the Salon the previous year(1864). Both paintings are dramatic landscapes with brooding storm clouds and a sea turned to a milky jade by breaking sunlight. In both pictures formal composition is combined with fresh observation of nature. They demonstrate a similarity of intention between the two artists at this stage and this artistic dialogue would continue in the following decades.
Daubigny was influential in other ways, for he was an important supporter of the young Impressionists and in 1871 he introduced Monet and Pissarro to Paul Durand-Ruel, who went on to become the leading dealer in Impressionism and a key source of financial support.
Van Gogh, who was half a generation younger than most of the Impressionists, revered Daubigny, considering him one of “the great forerunners” of modern landscape whose paintings were sincere expressions of nature, imbued with emotion. In the last two months of his life (he shot himself in 1890), Van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, where Daubigny, who died in 1878, had settled.
Van Gogh was granted permission by Daubigny’s widow to paint the Daubigny family home and garden and many of the works he painted there can be considered as a direct homage to his distinguished predecessor, for example his Poppy Field, Auvers-sur-Oise (1890). The brooding and dramatic depictions of cornfields, a reflection of the profound sadness and anxiety Van Gogh was experiencing at this time, drew their ultimate inspiration from the rural scenes that Daubigny had painted many years earlier, testament yet again to his enduring influence.
Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, said: “This is a ground-breaking exhibition. If you want to understand how Impressionism came about you have to look at Daubigny. In his own time he was recognised, together with his close friend Camille Corot, as one of the great landscape painters. This show rescues him from long and unjustified neglect and reveals for the first time the inspiration and support he provided to the young Impressionists and to the ultimately tragic figure of Vincent van Gogh.”
George Reid, EY’s Head of Financial Services, Scotland: “At EY we are delighted to support the National Galleries of Scotland host this unique collection of masterpieces in Edinburgh from such influential artists. Daubigny, Monet and Van Gogh were legacy builders and we are proud to sponsor this celebration and appreciation of their work. Inspiring Impressionism is a fantastic example of international collaboration and draws parallels with our commitment to building a better working world. We understand the important role that a thriving artistic and cultural environment plays in creating a healthy community and a strong economy. This exhibition is set to delight gallery visitors from around the world.”
– ENDS –
For further information please contact the Press Office at the National Galleries of Scotland on [email protected] or 0131 624 6247 / 6332 / 6314 www.nationalgalleries.org
Notes to Editors
* Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh will open at the Scottish National Gallery on 25 June 2016 and will run until 2 October 2016. Tickets will be priced at £11 for adults and £9 for concessions.
* The exhibition has been in display at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati from 20 February 2016 and ends on 29 May 2016. After its tenure at the Scottish National Gallery, it will be situated at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from 21 October 2016 – 29 January 2017.
* A fully illustrated 176-page catalogue presenting significant new research about early Impressionism, Daubigny and Van Gogh by leading scholars in the field will accompany the exhibition. The catalogue will be published by the National Galleries of Scotland and distributed by ACC Distribution, USA and UK.
* In addition to numerous works taken from the National Galleries of Scotland’s collection, Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh will feature fantastic loans from numerous North American and European museums, including Tate, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the British Museum, London; the National Gallery, London; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Musée d'Orsay. Paris; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, as well as from private collections.
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Press view and photo-call: 11:30-13:00h, Friday 17 June 2016 RUBENS AND COMPANY: FLEMISH DRAWINGS FROM THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY 18 June – 28 August 2016 Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL Admission free | 0131 624 6200 The greatest Flemish artist of the seventeenth century, Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), will be at the centre of the exciting new display of master drawings at the Scottish National Gallery this summer. Rubens and Company will celebrate the Gallery’s outstanding selection of Flemish drawings and prints, with masterpieces by Rubens, Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) and Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), shown alongside rarely-seen works by Flemish contemporaries such as Cornelis Schut (1597-1655) and Frans Wouters (1612-1659). Rubens is considered the towering figure of the Flemish Baroque – the period between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries – and one of the greatest artists of all time. In the seventeenth century Flanders, together with Brabant, was the most prominent province of the Southern Netherlands, which were then under Spanish control; today it marks the northern, Dutch-speaking part of modern Belgium. The display includes Rubens’s beautiful sketch Hero and Leander, c.1600-3, and Eight Women Harvesting, c.1635, which was probably drawn outdoors and from life. Rubens’s work shows the strong influence of classical sculpture, and of Italian Renaissance artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo. As a painter of religious pictures, mythological scenes, classical and modern history and portraits, Rubens was a prominent figure on an international stage and had a broad impact on other artists, including Van Dyck and Jordaens. Van Dyck’s Study for the Portrait of Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666), a delicate black chalk drawing from 1628, will be displayed in the exhibition, as well as Jordaens’s beautiful Female Nude (1641) and The Adoration of the Magi (1644). Among the highlights of the display will be some new discoveries made during research for the exhibition, including a rare drawing for one of the most important commissions Rubens ever received. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus Subduing Heresy, which dates from 1620, was previously regarded as a copy after a lost painting by Rubens; new research, however, suggests this drawing was made in the artist’s studio, under the master’s supervision. An oil sketch after Titian’s world-famous Diana and Actaeon, which is part of the Scottish National Gallery collection, was previously attributed to David Teniers the Younger and is now considered to be by Frans Wouters, a member of Rubens’s extensive studio. This oil sketch was acquired in 2015 through the Art Fund. Rubens and Company will comprise 28 works in total. Many of these are preparatory drawings or studies which offer a fascinating insight into the function of drawings as well as studio practice; some of them have rarely, in some cases never, been displayed before. The exhibition will be accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue, which provides a lively panorama of Flemish draughtsmanship in the seventeenth century, its subjects and techniques. The publication has been supported by the General Representation of the Government of Flanders in the UK. This catalogue includes an in-depth discussion of the twenty-eight works in the exhibition as well as an introductory essay highlighting the paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery. £14.95 paperback. -ENDS- For more information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6314 / 6247 / 6332 / 6491 or at [email protected].
SURREAL ENCOUNTERS: COLLECTING THE MARVELLOUS Works from the Collections of Roland Penrose, Edward James, Gabrielle Keiller and Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch 4 June – 11 September 2016 SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART (Modern One) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR Telephone. 0131 624 6200 | Admission £10/£8 #SurrealEncounters Supported by Dunard Fund Masterpieces from four of the finest collections of Dada and Surrealist art ever assembled will be brought together in this summer's major exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA). Surreal Encounters: Collecting the Marvellous will explore the passions and obsessions that led to the creation of four very different collections, which are bound together by a web of fascinating links and connections, and united by the extraordinary quality of the works they comprise. Surrealism was one of the most radical movements of the twentieth century, which challenged conventions through the exploration of the subconscious mind, the world of dreams and the laws of chance. Emerging from the chaotic creativity of Dada (itself a powerful rejection of traditional values triggered by the horrors of the First World War) its influence on our wider culture remains potent almost a century after it first appeared in Paris in the 1920s. World-famous works by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Leonora Carrington, Giorgio de Chirico, André Breton, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Yves Tanguy, Leonor Fini, Marcel Duchamp and Paul Delvaux will be among the 400 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, artist books and archival materials, to feature in Surreal Encounters. The exhibition has been jointly organised by the SNGMA, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, where it will be shown following its only UK showing in Edinburgh. Dalí's The Great Paranoiac (1936), Lobster Telephone (1938) and Impressions of Africa (1938); de Chirico’s Two Sisters (1915); Ernst's Pietà or Revolution by Night (1923) and Dark Forest and Bird (1927), and Magritte’s The Magician’s Accomplice (1926) and Not to be Reproduced (1937) will be among the highlights of this exceptional overview of Surrealist art. The exhibition will also tell the personal stories of the fascinating individuals who pursued these works with such dedication and discernment. The first of these - the poet, publisher and patron of the arts, Edward James (1907-84) and the artist, biographer and exhibition organiser, Roland Penrose (1900-84) - acquired the majority of the works in their collections while the Surrealist movement was at its height in the interwar years, their choices informed by close associations and friendships with many of the artists. James was an important supporter of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte in particular, while Penrose was first introduced to Surrealism through a friendship with Max Ernst. The stories behind James’s commissioning of works such as Dalí’s famous Mae West Lips Sofa (1938) and Magritte’s The Red Model III (1937) and the role of Penrose in the production of Ernst’s seminal collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté (1934) will demonstrate how significant these relationships were for both the artists and the collectors. Other celebrated works on show that formed part of these two profoundly important collections include Tanning’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943); Magritte’s On the Threshold of Liberty (1937); Miró’s Head of a Catalan Peasant (1925); and The House Opposite (c.1945) by Leonora Carrington. While the Penrose and James collections are now largely dispersed, the extraordinary collection of Dada and Surrealist art put together by Gabrielle Keiller (1908-95), was bequeathed in its entirety to the SNGMAon her death in 1995, the largest benefaction in the institution’s history. Keiller devoted herself to this area following a visit to the Venice home of the celebrated American art lover Peggy Guggenheim in 1960, which proved to be a pivotal moment in her life. She went on to acquire outstanding works such as Marcel Duchamp’s La Boîte-en-Valise (1935-41), Alberto Giacometti’s Disagreeable Object, to be Thrown Away (1931) and Girl Born without a Mother (c.1916-17) by Francis Picabia. Recognizing the fundamental significance of Surrealism’s literary aspect, Keiller also worked assiduously to create a magnificent library and archive, full of rare books, periodicals, manifestos and manuscripts, which makes the SNGMA one of the world’s foremost centres for the study of the movement. The exhibition will be brought up to date by the inclusion of works from the collection of Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch, who have spent more than 40 years in their quest to build up an historically balanced collection of Surrealism, which they have recently presented to the city of Berlin, where they still live. The collection features many outstanding paintings by Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, André Masson, Leonor Fini, Ernst, Tanguy, Magritte and Miró; sculptures by Hans Arp and Hans Bellmer; and works by André Breton, the leader of the Surrealists. Highlights include Masson’s Massacre (1931), Ernst’s Head of ‘The Fireside Angel’ (c.1937), Picasso’s Arabesques Woman (1931) and Arp’s sculpture Assis (Seated) (1937). The exhibition’s curator in Edinburgh, Keith Hartley, who is Deputy Director of the SNGMA, has said, “Surrealist art has captured the public imagination like perhaps no other movement of modern art. The very word ‘surreal’ has become a by-word to describe anything that is wonderfully strange, akin to what André Breton, the chief theorist of Surrealism, called ‘the marvellous’. This exhibition offers an exceptional opportunity to enjoy art that is full of ‘the marvellous’. It brings together many important works which have rarely been seen in public, by a wide range of Surrealist artists, and creates some very exciting new juxtapositions.” “The four collections represented here have different origins and trajectories, different historical contexts and come out of different creative urges. But what they all display is a high level of quality, aesthetic discernment, dedication and commitment, and the collectors themselves, while passionate about their private visions, were and are always mindful of contributing something to the public good. It is therefore not surprising that the ways in which Surrealist art has been collected display many of the idiosyncratic passions of Surrealism itself.” Surreal Encounters will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue, with contributions from Dawn Ades, Richard Calvocoressi, Désirée de Chair, Elizabeth Cowling, Hubertus Gaβner, Annabelle Görgen, Keith Hartley, Saskia van Kampen-Prein and Antony Penrose. 240 pp, 200 colour illustrations, £30 (paperback). For families Following the success of the M C Escher themed maze at the SNGMA in 2015, the lawn in front of Modern One will become home this summer to Surreal Adventures, a play area designed to be enjoyed by children and families, inspired by many of the motifs found in the work of Surrealist artists such as Magritte. At the centre of the enclosed park includes a slide based on Magritte’s painting The Magic Mirror, an undulating, distorted picnic area, a mysterious empty fireplace and cast concrete Chesterfield sofa, and enigmatically framed doorways. There will be two family days during the exhibition run, on 2 July and 6 August (1-4pm both days), with a range of free activities for children and grown-ups, including surreal games, storytelling and circus performers. Ice cream in a number of Surrealist-inspired flavours will also be on sale at the Pig Rock Bothy in the grounds of Modern One from 19 July. ENDS
Press view: 11:30-13:30h, Thursday 16 June 2016 THE TAYLOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PRIZE 2015 18 June – 2 October 2016 SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD Admission Free | 0131 624 6200 #PhotoPrize The best contemporary portrait photography from around the world will be celebrated in a stunning exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh this summer. The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize will bring together 56 astonishing entries from the 2015 competition, which attracted 4,929 submissions from some of the most talented photographers working today. Established in 1993, this prestigious prize is organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London and has been sponsored by international law firm Taylor Wessing for the last eight years. The £12,000 first prize was awarded this year to David Stewart, for his fascinating group portrait of his daughter and her four friends. Five Girls 2014 mirrors a photograph he took of the young women seven years ago when they were about to start their GCSEs, and which featured in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008 exhibition. Born in Lancaster, England, Stewart began his career photographing punk bands, including The Clash and The Ramones. After graduating at Blackpool and The Fylde College, Stewart moved to London in 1981 and works on a mix of personal projects and commissions. This year is the sixteenth time Stewart has had a photograph in the exhibition. Speaking of his winning portrait, David Stewart said: ‘I have always had a fascination with the way people interact – or, in this case, fail to interact, which inspired the photograph of this group of girls. While the girls are physically very close and their style and clothing highlight their membership of the same peer group, there is an element of distance between them.’ Second prize was taken by Anoush Abrar for Hector, his photograph of a friend’s child, inspired by Caravaggio’s painting Sleeping Cupid from 1608. Iranian-born Abrar explained: ‘I found my portrait of Hector so powerful and iconic that it inspired me to continue this project as a series called ‘Cherubs’.’ Abrar studied at the University of Arts in Lausanne, and has taught photography there since 2005. His work was previously selected for the Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize 2013, where he took third prize for his powerful portrait of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Third prize has gone to Peter Zelewski’s photograph of a woman he spotted on Oxford Street whilst working on his series Beautiful Strangers, and fourth prize was awarded to Ivor Prickett’s photograph of a displaced Iraqi family who had fled their village near Mosul after Isis took control of the area. The John Kobal New Work Award, worth £5,000, was won by Tereza Červeňová for her portrait of her friend Yngvild. Among the diverse range of sitters and subjects featured in the show are a number of engaging portraits of well-known figures such as the President of the United States Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama; actor Benedict Cumberbatch; artists Gilbert and George; actor Peter Capaldi; and artist and writer Yayoi Kusama. Recent work by the award-winning South African photographer Pieter Hugo will also be included within the exhibition as part of the new In Focus display. The In Focus feature is an annual showcase for new work by an internationally renowned photographer, which is exhibited alongside the photographs selected for the competition. Judged anonymously, the diversity of styles in the exhibition reflects the international mix of entries as well as photographers’ individual and varied approaches to the genre of portraiture. For the first time, photographers were encouraged to submit works as a series in addition to stand-alone portraits. The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is one of the most prestigious photography awards in the world; it is a hugely important platform for portrait photographers and offers an unparalleled opportunity for celebrated professionals, emerging artists and amateurs alike. Speaking of the exhibition, Anne Lyden, International Photography Curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and competition judge, said: “It is exciting to welcome back the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize to Scotland. The diversity of images and issues represented in this year’s competition make for a strong and provocative display; visitors will be able to see some of the best in portraiture today.” Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery London and competition judge, added: “The strength of the four shortlisted works reflects the outstanding level that photographers across the world are working at today. The exhibition will be especially exciting this year as we will be displaying a number of photographs that were submitted as a series of portraits, as well as new and unseen work by acclaimed photographer Pieter Hugo.” Tim Eyles, UK Managing Partner at international law firm Taylor Wessing and competition judge, commented: “Yet again the excitement and anticipation of seeing this year's submissions was fulfilled by their striking diversity and fascinating array of styles, settings and subject matter. Although there was much lively debate amongst the judges, it was noteworthy how the final selection had endured powerful analysis but ultimately reflected a commonality of view. The process is intense, emotional and elevating. I felt privileged to be witness to such a myriad of exciting images and talent, and learned much from the inspired approach of my fellow judges.” Ends Notes to Editors: A fully illustrated catalogue including all photographs from this year’s exhibition features an interview with the In Focus photographer Pieter Hugo and interviews with the prize-winners by Richard McClure. £15 paperback. The competition was judged from original prints by Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery; Dr Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs, National Portrait Gallery; Hannah Starkey, Photographer; Anne Lyden, International Photography Curator, Scottish National Portrait Gallery; David Drake, Director, Ffotogallery, Cardiff; and Tim Eyles, Managing Partner, Taylor Wessing LLP.
Press view and photo-call: 11:30-13:30h, Wednesday 13 July 2016 FACING THE WORLD: SELF-PORTRAITS FROM REMBRANDT TO AI WEIWEI 16 July – 16 October 2016 SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD Admission £9/£7 | 0131 624 6200 #FacingTheWorld The many extraordinary ways that artists have created works using their own image will be explored in a major international exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this summer. From Rembrandt’s famously unflinching treatment of his ageing reflection to Ai Weiwei’s politically charged use of social media, artists have chosen a multitude of strategies to portray themselves, for reasons ranging from self-promotion to the questioning of the self. Facing the World will draw on the strengths of three outstanding European collections, and is a collaboration between the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, Lyon’s Musée des Beaux-Arts in France and Karlsruhe’s Staatliche Kunsthalle in Germany. The exhibition brings together many stunning images, some of which will be unfamiliar to British audiences, and includes works by a wide range of European artists like, Jan Lievens, Antoine Watteau, Allan Ramsay, Henry Raeburn, Franz Winterhalter, Gustave Courbet, Éva Gonzalès, James Ensor, Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Gino Severini, Oskar Kokoschka, Joseph Beuys, John Bellany, Douglas Gordon and Sarah Lucas. Though the genre of self-portraiture is centuries old, in the age of the hugely popular selfie it continues to be one of the most powerful forms of self-expression. The exhibition will span six centuries, with the earliest work included being a black chalk drawing by the Renaissance artist Palma Vecchio (1480-1528) in which the artist turns his head to observe himself in a mirror, attracting the viewer with his direct gaze. This was a typical procedure for self-portraits, and was also employed by Rembrandt in his arresting Self-Portrait, aged 51 (1657), which conveys a strong sense of the physical presence of the artist. Rembrandt famously recorded his appearance throughout his career, leaving more than 80 paintings, etchings and drawings of himself. Key themes emerge throughout the history of self-portraiture, including artists choosing to show themselves at work and their exploration of their rising status in society. The French painter Joseph Vivien (1657-1735), a celebrated portraitist dubbed the ‘Van Dyck of pastel’, conveys his status in his Self-Portrait with Palette (1715) which is dominated by the shimmering fabric of his garb and majestic pose, and highlights his drawing portfolio and paint brushes. Sir David Wilkie’s (1785-1841) remarkable Self-Portrait, of 1804-5, made when the artist was only 20 and on the cusp of securing recognition in the London art world, depicts him with fashionable tousled hair, elegantly clothed, and holding a portfolio and pencil. Other artists have chosen to explore more disguised and less obvious forms of self-representation. In his Vanitas Still Life (1637), the German artist Jacob Marrell (1613-1681) hid his portrait in a reflection on a glass vase this painting is primarily a vanitas image which encourages contemplation of the transience of life. Hans Thoma (1839-1924), one of the most successful painters in late 19th-century Germany, explored similar themes in his Self-Portrait with Love and Death (1875), but included a skull far more prominently in the skeletal figure of Death who is trying to hiss something into the painter’s ear. In the 20th century, artists moved away from traditional modes of representation, or appropriated them with critical intent, and used new media like the internationally renowned performance artist Marina Abramović (b.1946) has used herself in her work to explore challenging and politicised themes. Abramović became known in the 1970s for her theatrical performances where she deliberately tested the limits of her physical and mental resilience. In her performance-for-video Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975) she brushes her hair with her right hand and combs it with her left hand, while continuously repeating “Art must be beautiful. Artist must be beautiful.” At the end of the increasingly dynamic action she tears whole clumps of hair out of her head as her face contorts in pain, using the static video camera as a mirror. Provocatively and playfully the American artists Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) used their series of self-portraits to alter their identities and take on various roles, making use of costumes, wigs and makeup to alter their image. Mapplethorpe’s 1980 Self-Portrait and Warhol’s Self-Portrait with Platinum Bouffant Wig (1981) were taken in the last decades of both artists’ lives and are striking examples of how role-playing became a central aspect of their creativity. In more recent years, the high profile Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (b.1957) pioneered the use of selfies among artists. In 2009 he was arrested by the Chinese government and injured in the process, and by posting selfies on Instagram during his arrest immediately informed a global audience about his fate. A month later he posted another set of images from a hospital bed, where he underwent an operation to treat the cerebral haemorrhage he had suffered as a result of his arrest – the photos show him with a dressing on his head and a blood bag lying on his chest. In addition to the wide range of media represented in the exhibition - paintings, drawings, photographs, time-based media and sculpture - the show will feature two interactive installations: FLICK_EU and FLICK_EU MIRROR. As part of FLICK_EU, visitors will be encouraged to make portraits of themselves inside a photo booth; the resulting images will be broadcast in the exhibition and online at www.i-am-here.eu. In FLICK_EU MIRROR visitors are filmed and their faces emerge on a large projection made up of the combined images generated of other visitors who have also participated in FLICK_EU. Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, commented: “The incredible quality and range of works in this major European exhibition will be a revelation. It addresses the fundamental issue of how artists have chosen to present themselves to the world from the seventeenth century to today, through a staggering array of imagery, which displays prodigious technical and expressive achievements. Intimate, impressive and provocative, the works selected for the show provide insights to the lives, skills and preoccupations of many major artists and illustrate the enduring power of self-portraiture.” The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue Facing the World: Self-portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei, compiled by curators from the three participating institutions (288 pages, 180 colour illustrations, price £29.95). Facing the World is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. ENDS Notes to editors: Facing the World is a major collaboration between the National Galleries of Scotland, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and the Musée des Baux-Arts de Lyon and has been made possible with the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
THE TWEEDDALES: POWER, POLITICS AND PORTRAITS 23 April 2016 – 28 May 2017 SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD Admission Free | 0131 624 6200 #ScotPortrait An extraordinary seventeenth century group portrait will be the focus of a new display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this spring. The oil painting by Sir John Baptiste de Medina (1659-1710) depicts John Hay, 1st Marquess Tweeddale (1626-1697), and his wealthy and influential family, who were at the heart of Scottish society and are now the subject of The Tweeddales: Power, Politics and Portraits. This astonishing, congested and sumptuous painting is very unusual in that the artist copied existing portraits of the sitters to combine them all on one large canvas: the work shows the Marquess and his wife, Lady Jean, surrounded by their children, sons and daughters-in-laws and grandchildren. The captivating result is a montage of sitters whose ages do not relate to the date of the painting; deceased members of the family were included, such as two cherubs who represent children who tragically died in infancy. Known as the Master of Yester until 1646, Tweeddale was the eldest son of the 1st Earl of Tweeddale and 8th Lord Hay of Yester, and Lady Jean Seton. Tweeddale studied as the University of Edinburgh, and as a young man served Charles I during the Civil Wars, although as with many noblemen in this period he changed his allegiances on several occasions in order to protect his rise to prominence – Tweeddale held many high profile posts at court and in parliament, including Lord High Chancellor of Scotland. His lengthy political career eventually ended because of his involvement with Scotland’s failed attempt to launch a trading company and establish a colony in Panama. It is thought that Tweeddale himself commissioned the unique group portrait around the time he was made Marquess in 1694, as a bold statement to illustrate his successful rise to prominence and the dynastic continuity of his family. Tweeddale and Lady Jean, the second daughter of the Borders landowner the 1st Earl of Buccleuch, had thirteen children and members of the Tweeddale dynasty married into some of the most noble families in Scotland and England. The Tweeddales will also explore the family’s role as patrons of the arts and architecture, which has often been overlooked by contrast with their contribution to politics and military life. The Tweeddale family were enthusiastic art collectors. Several works in the display were originally hung at family homes in East Lothian, Musselburgh and Yester House, near Gifford. Paintings on show will include works by both established and little-known artists such as Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely and Gerard Soest. Tweeddale’s passion for the arts was used to demonstrate his family’s wealth, status and power: the family spent large amounts of money on paintings, architecture and garden and landscape design. Five impressive late seventeenth-century paintings in particular, which depict the family mansion Yester House and its lavish gardens in great detail, illustrate this patronage and will be re-united in the exhibition for the first time in over forty years. These fascinating works, which are the earliest visual records of their type in Scottish art, show Tweeddale’s sophisticated taste and grand vision for his family’s home. Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, commented: “Through sumptuous portraiture the distinguished Tweeddale family were able to project their status and taste and convey a compelling sense of their wealth and social standing. This exhibition, which focuses on one of the most remarkable paintings in the Portrait Gallery’s collection, demonstrates the sophistication of late seventeenth-century Scottish society and its connections with European cultural trends.” ENDS
OUTSTANDING PORTRAIT OF BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE ACQUIRED BY THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY A hugely significant portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie by the greatest Scottish portrait painter of the eighteenth century has been acquired by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery thanks to the AIL (Acceptance in Lieu of Tax) Scheme. Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), later known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, was the Jacobite hero who sought to re-capture the British throne for the House of Stuart during the ill-fated Rising of 1745. He landed in Scotland on the 23rd of July, and marched to Edinburgh, defeating a government army at the Battle of Prestonpans. Charles then travelled south as far as Derbyshire, before returning to Scotland; his army was eventually crushed at the Battle of Culloden on the 16th of April 1746. The Jacobite cause was lost and he fled to exile. This portrait is thought to have been created at Holyrood in Edinburgh during Bonnie Prince Charlie’s short time in the city at the height of the Rising, by the most accomplished Scottish portrait painter of the period, Allan Ramsay (1713-1784). Ramsay was born in Edinburgh, the son of a poet of the same name, and studied in London, Rome and Naples, before returning to Scotland in 1738. He worked for the grandest patrons both north and south of the border, creating a reputation for displaying great sensitivity to the characters of his sitters and masterly renderings of their clothes and poses in his paintings. His portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie is an accomplished early work, created when the sitter was 25 and the artist 32. Charles is depicted in half-length format, turning to confront the viewer directly. He wears a powdered wig, has a velvet robe fringed with ermine, and the blue riband and star of the Order of the Garter. The portrait was used as a prototype for painted and engraved versions, which were employed to promote the Jacobite cause. Since the eighteenth century the painting has formed part of a collection outside Edinburgh; it has come from the Wemyss Heirlooms Trust and was last exhibited in the city in 1946. Recently attention was drawn to its status by a BBC 2 Culture Show Special, presented by Dr. Bendor Grosvenor (22 February 2014). The painting will be displayed in Gallery 4 of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery as a centrepiece to the Gallery’s outstanding collection of Jacobite art which is one of the great strengths of the collection. The National Galleries of Scotland houses an unsurpassed collection of Ramsay’s drawings and paintings. The amount of tax settled by the acceptance of the portrait through the AIL system is £1,122,838.33. Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, commented: “This meticulous and dashing portrait is a work of great historical resonance, which in a real sense has now come home, as it will be celebrated as a key work in the nation’s Jacobite collection and as such become widely accessible. We are immensely grateful to everyone who has made its transference to public ownership, through the AIL scheme, possible.” Edward Harley, the Acceptance in Lieu Panel Chairman, noted: "The Acceptance in Lieu Panel is pleased to have helped this iconic image of Bonnie Prince Charlie return to the city in which it was painted 270 years ago. It now takes its fitting place as one of the highlights of the great collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery where it can be enjoyed by all. This is indeed a unique moment in Scottish history." ENDS Notes to Editors Acceptance in Lieu The Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme allows those who have an inheritance tax bill to gift significant items to the nation and satisfy more tax than by selling items on the open market. This also allows museums and galleries to increase their collections at no cost to them while the donor gets full market value. AIL is a reserved matter but “executive devolution” arrangements are in place to enable Scottish Ministers to deal with cases in which there is a Scottish Interest. AIL is administered across the UK by the Arts Council, which also oversees the Cultural Gifts Scheme. Combined the two Schemes are capped, so can offset a total of £40m per annum. Full details and guidance are available on the Arts Council’s website at http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/supporting-museums/cultural-pro....
Remarkable film by acclaimed artist Rachel Maclean acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art A remarkable film work by one of most exciting young artists to emerge in Scotland over the last few years has been acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, it was announced today (Tuesday 22 March). Rachel Maclean's critically acclaimed film Feed Me (2015) is one of the major hits of British Art Show 8, an extensive survey of recent contemporary art in the UK currently on show at the SNGMA, and other venues in Edinburgh. Commissioned for British Art Show 8 by Film and Video Umbrella and Hayward Touring, and supported by Arts Council England and Creative Scotland, Feed Me is the Rachel Maclean’s most ambitious work to date. It is the first work by the artist to enter the SNGMA collection. Glasgow-based Maclean (b.1987) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009, and has since become known for her fantastical films, which often use satire to comment on a broad range of contemporary issues. The nightmarish, candy-coloured world the artist has produced in Feed Me is inhabited by a cast of grotesque figures, each played by Maclean herself, using an elaborate and beautifully realised wardrobe of costumes and prosthetic aids. For the first time Maclean has also worked with actors to record the dialogue which she lip-syncs on screen, and as with all of her films, green-screen technology and extensive post-production have been used to extraordinary effect. Feed Me draws on an array of sources - from fairy tales and children’s television programmes to advertising and internet memes, reality TV, talent shows, and horror movies. The specially written soundtrack blends a host of styles including pop music and musical theatre. Made with cinematic production values, the hour-long film takes viewers on a roller-coaster ride through the vices of 21st-century culture. In particular, Feed Me explores the commercialisation of childhood and a corresponding tendency to infantilism in adult society, and brings to life the ‘little monsters’ created by consumerist desire. The idea of pretence pervades the film – from the role-play undertaken by Maclean herself, to the blurring of the relationship between imaginary and real worlds. Rachel Maclean’s work has been exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally. In 2013, she received the Margaret Tait Award, which was established by Glasgow Film Theatre to support experimental and innovative artists working with film and the moving image. Feed Me is on display at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) until 8 May 2016 where it is proving to be a huge draw for visitors as part of British Art Show 8. The artist will discuss her work in a free talk on Monday 2 May in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, Scottish National Gallery, The Mound. British Art Show 8 is a touring exhibition organised by Hayward Touring in collaboration with galleries in Leeds, Edinburgh, Norwich and Southampton. The Edinburgh version of the exhibition isshown across three sites; aside from the SNGMA works can be seen at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden; and the Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. ENDS Notes to Editors * Film and Video Umbrella makes moving-image works by artists. For three decades FVU has led the way in championing new creative talent and promoting innovative ideas. During that time the organisation has commissioned many of the foremost figures in the field, working in close collaboration with a diverse range of venues, nationally and internationally.
VISIONARY PALACES: DESIGNS BY KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL 27 February − 12 June 2016 Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL Admission free | 0131 624 6200 Rare prints by the outstanding German architect and artist Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) will go on public display for the first time in nearly 20 years at the Scottish National Gallery this month. Visionary Palaces: Designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel will showcase Schinkel’s grand but unrealised designs for two lavish palaces. Schinkel was one of the most brilliant, accomplished and versatile artistic figures of his generation. In addition to being a celebrated architect, whose grand buildings transformed early nineteenth-century Berlin, he was an exceptional painter and draughtsman, and also designed interiors, furniture and stage sets. Through a series of extraordinary colour lithographs which were published in the 1840s, Visionary Palaces willexplore two of Schinkel’s last and arguably most spectacular projects: his ambitious architectural designs for two utopian royal palaces, on the landmark site of the Acropolis in Athens, and at Orianda on the Crimean coast. Five remarkable, large-scale designs lithographs will illustrate Schinkel’s vision for a palace on the Acropolis, which was commissioned for King Otto von Wittelsbach of Greece. The lithographs designs show how Schinkel intended to transform the hilltop archaeological site into a vital part of the living city, by integrating an extensive classical villa suitable for the King’s court with existing monuments such as the Parthenon. Schinkel’s extraordinarily detailed and technically innovative scheme would include a fantastic colossal bronze statue of the goddess Athena towering over the complex, intricately planned landscaping and jaw-dropping interiors. In one of the prints, a dazzling perspective view of the entire complex reveals the prominent height of the site and demonstrates how Schinkel’s design splendidly fits within this unique setting. Eight of the prints on show will illustrate a palace which Schinkel proposed for a location at Orianda, in the Crimea. The splendid cliff-top complex, interwoven with luscious gardens and elegant water-features, was commissioned for the Russian Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Tsar Nicholas I, who was reportedly fascinated by the rugged coastline and spectacular views of the Black Sea site. The images demonstrate how Schinkel’s palace, perched on its rocky precipice overlooking the coastline, merges into the stunning landscape. Due to the cost and ambition of the plans neither palace was built, remaining, in Schinkel’s own words, “nothing more than a beautiful dream”. The Scottish National Gallery acquired these extremely rare lithographs (one of only three known sets of their kind in the UK) in 1997, with the support of a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Although the projects never became reality, these beautiful prints remain a powerful testament to Schinkel’s unique and expansive vision. Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, commented: “Schinkel’s genius is best appreciated in his surviving buildings in Berlin, but he did visit Edinburgh in 1826 on a fact-finding tour of Britain. His interest then centred on industrial architecture (a newly constructed gasworks in Canonmills). I hope he would appreciate our present-day fascination with his later, and much more glamorous, ‘Visionary Palaces’!“. When the Schinkel prints were shown at the Scottish National Gallery in 1998, the National Galleries of Scotland’s skilled technicians designed and constructed a number of bespoke ornate frames, based upon existing period examples and made using largely traditional methods. To complement the Visionary Palaces exhibition there will be a small display relating to the creation of these frames. -ENDS-
An exceptionally beautiful nineteenth-century sculpture has gone on display at the Scottish National Gallery for the first time since its acquisition last summer. Lorenzo Bartolini’s marble portrait group The Campbell Sisters, carved in Florence around 1821-22, was recently saved for the nation when it was bought jointly by the National Galleries of Scotland and Victoria and Albert Museum, London with generous support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund. The life-size group portrays Emma and Julia, the two youngest daughters of Lady Charlotte Campbell, in the act of dancing a waltz. Unusually for a sculpture of this period, The Campbell Sisters is an action piece as well as a double portrait. The marble piece is remarkable for the energy and vivacity of its portrayal of the elegant dancers. According to notes made in Bartolini’s studio, the group was commissioned by the sitters’ elder brother, Walter (1798-1855). On completion it was shipped to Scotland and apparently soon installed at Inveraray Castle on the West coast, seat of Lady Charlotte’s brother, the 6th Duke of Argyll. The Campbell Sisters was on loan at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh from 1991 to 2014, but was sold at auction to an overseas museum in July 2014. However, following a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, its export was delayed for six months to allow time for a museum in the UK to match the auction price. During this period, the National Galleries of Scotland joined forces with the Victoria and Albert Museum and successfully raised the necessary funds, ensuring that this exceptional piece will remain in the United Kingdom on public display. Following the acquisition, it was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum until mid-January, and has now returned to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, where it will be on display until 2020. Thereafter it will be shown at each institution for a period of seven years, alternating with the display of Antonio Canova’s sculpture The Three Graces (1815-17), which is also jointly owned by the two institutions. Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850) trained in Florence and Paris and became one of the leading European sculptors of his day. The Campbell Sisters is unusual in being a full-length, life-size group by an artist primarily known for his portrait busts, and it breaks away from traditional sculpted portrait conventions of the time. Bartolini was renowned for his outstanding technical accomplishment and gained many influential patrons and supporters, notably Napoleon. Among his eminent sitters were the poet Lord Byron, and the composers Franz Liszt and Gioacchino Rossini. Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, commented, “We are delighted to welcome the Campbell Sisters back to the Scottish National Gallery. This beautiful sculpture by Bartolini holds centre stage in our rooms devoted to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and looks absolutely stunning in this setting.” Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: “It was such a coup for the V&A and the National Galleries of Scotland to acquire this important and beguiling work by Bartolini, and the Art Fund was delighted to lend support. It would have been hugely disappointing to see it disappear from the UK, and it is excellent news that the work may now be enjoyed between its two homes in London and Edinburgh in perpetuity.” For further information, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6314 / 6247 / 6491 or [email protected] www.nationalgalleries.org switchboard: 0131 624 6200 – ENDS – Notes to Editors Purchased jointly by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Victoria and Albert Museum, with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund, and a donation in memory of A. V. B. Norman, 2015. The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) was set up in 1980 to save the most outstanding parts of our national heritage, in memory of those who have given their lives for the UK. It will receive £20m Government grant in aid between 2011-15 allowing for an annual budget of £4m-£5m. www.nhmf.org.uk. The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. In the past five years the Art Fund has given £34 million to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. The Art Fund also helps museums share their collections with wider audiences by supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including ARTIST ROOMS and the 2013-18 Aspire tour of Tate’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable, and makes additional grants to support the training and professional development of curators. The Art Fund is independently funded, with the core its income provided by 117,000 members who receive the National Art Pass and enjoy free entry to over 230 museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibition. In addition to grant-giving, the Art Fund’s support for museums includes the annual Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year, a publications programme and a range of digital platforms. Find out more about the Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org. Please contact Madeline Adeane, the Press Relations Manager, on 020 7225 4804 or email [email protected], for more information. The Victoria and Albert Museum is the world’s greatest museum of art and design with collections unrivalled in their scope and diversity. It was established to make works of art available to all and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. Today, the V&A’s collections, which span over 5000 years of human creativity in virtually every medium and from many parts of the world, continue to intrigue, inspire and inform. Designated the National Collection of Sculpture, the Museum’s collection concentrates on Western European Sculpture from the 4th century to the end of the 19th century. Highlights of the collection include masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance, ivory carvings of all periods, Northern European wood and other sculpture, commemorative medals and plaster casts. The sculpture collection contains approximately 22,000 objects.