The neo-avant-garde in modern Scottish art, and why it matters

• Main Author: Richardson, Craig
• Published: Glasgow School of Art 2017
• Subjects: 709.411
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.724060

The submitted publications are concerned with the historicisation of late-modern Scottish visual art. The underpinning research draws upon archives and site visits, the development of Scottish art chronologies in extant publications and exhibitions, and builds on research which bridges academic and professional fields, including Oliver 1979, Hartley 1989, Patrizio 1999, and Lowndes 2003. However, the methodology recognises the limits of available knowledge of this period in this national field. Some of the submitted publications are centred on major works and exhibitions excised from earlier work in Gage 1977, and Macmillan 1994. This new research is discussed in a new iteration, Scottish art since 1960, and in eight other publications. The primary objective is the critical recovery of little-known artworks which were formed in Scotland or by Scottish artists and which formed a significant period in Scottish art’s development, with legacies and implications for contemporary Scottish art and artists. This further serves as an analysis of critical practices and discourses in late-modern Scottish art and culture. The central contention is that a Scottish neo-avant-garde, particularly from the 1970s, is missing from the literature of post-war Scottish art. This was due to a lack of advocacy, which continues, and a dispersal of knowledge. Therefore, while the publications share with extant publications a consideration of important themes such as landscape, it reprioritises these through a problematisation of the art object. This approach distinguishes itself from Scotland’s later twentiethcentury art histories, including Macdonald 2000. The secondary concern is the reception of late-modernist Scottish art in relation to Scotland’s independent national development. Particular attention is paid to the discourses within Scottish art which relate to political developments up to the 1979 devolution referendum in relation to the imaginative practices which develop in the 1980s and beyond. The publications explore how such political and cultural contexts contributed to models of self-determination and collective agency during this period, within which artistic and curatorial identities are formed through association, affiliation and belonging.