“A full restoration of the Mack can and must be done – and within years not decades. It will take political will. If leadership is there, the money can be found. Restoring the Mack is a chance to put money and commitment behind a project involving skilled work and training opportunities for the people of greater Glasgow and beyond.”
art
Back to the National Gallery of Scotland after 30 years
Jackie Kemp revisits a once favourite haunt: ” I felt that what would be better was just to hang Scottish paintings among the European and world artists who influenced them. They should be enjoyed for themselves, I felt, instead of being forced into the template of a national story.”
Gulliver’s foot and art’s redemptive power
“One by one aspects of what the CFS did were closed down or were taken back under the aegis of the council. The times changed. Austerity, unemployment, and drugs bit hard here. The Festival Society gradually declined, and so did the sense of community.”
Memeification of the Metro
“It’s the kind of elitist statement that rescues failed experimentation from the paper bin (or “recently deleted” folder) and forces the viewer to deny the evidence of their own eyes and join the art world and its enablers in nodding approvingly over the emperors’ new clothes.” In her first post here a young artist comments on a Tube makeover…
Optimism of the will in Future Library
Camus speaks for our era: ‘The time of the irresponsible artists is over… The freedom of art is not worth much when its only purpose is to assure the artists comfort‘. Katie Paterson’s work (Future Library) takes that observation and invocation to heart. Go see it however you can…
Who’s it for – yon McMenace?
“So they come and see what the McManus has to offer and then the museum changes from something ‘we can do’ with our kids to ‘this is something we NEED to do with our kids.’”
GSA fire: lessons from the exclusion zone
The second Glasgow School of Art fire has become a case study in how not to help neighbouring residents after a disaster. Everyone from the owners of the damaged building to the local authorities need to learn the lessons to make sure we don’t see the likes of this again.
Oscar Marzaroli: Scottish snapper
‘This must surely be one of the most extraordinary collections of photos of 20th century Scotland, and Glasgow in particular.’
England’s southern North
‘Clearly, there are significant variations in economic and cultural output within the north of England. Before our very eyes, a new north-south divide is emerging, within what was previously understood as “the north” itself.’
Rudolph von Ripper: artist eyewitness to Nazi terror
Eyewitness artists’ accounts of brutality in Nazi concentration camps are extremely rare. Sian Mackay describes her discovery of Rudolph von Ripper’s forgotten portfolio, work that deserves to stand alongside the art of his contemporaries Otto Dix, George Grosz and Käthe Kollwitz.