STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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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
CONFRONTING HOMOPHOBIA: (L) FCB Cadell, The Boxer, c.1924; (R) Duncan Grant, Study for Composition, Self-portrait in a Turban, 1910
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
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.
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