SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In the ring with the Colourists
While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives
Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh
THIS is a very surprising and subversive show.
It presents itself as a celebration of “the Colourists” who are regularly held up as doyens of Scottish Modernism. These were JD Fergusson (1874-1961), SJ Peploe (1871-1935) and FCB Cadell (1883-1937), the upper-middle-class painters wealthy enough to visit pre WWI Paris and who adopted the high key palette of the French “Fauves” (the Wild Ones).
Previously they had painted posh still lives in muted colours — silver jugs, fans and jonquils — and after Paris they painted them again, but in thick blocks of primary colour, before retreating to Iona to render its empty beaches in ethereal pinks, blues and whites. So far, so familiar.
Similar stories
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
From van Gogh to Sonia Boyce, from Hew Locke to Patrick Carpenter and... Pablo Picasso
JOE JACKSON explores how growing up black amid ‘the quiet racism of Scotland’ shaped the art and politics of Maud Sulter
ANGUS REID celebrates the achievement of Frank Auerbach, and the decisive influence of his teacher, David Bomberg



