Scottish Alphabet


Book Description

An illustrated A to Z children's book that celebrates the heritage and history of Scotland.










Art and Enlightenment


Book Description

During the intellectual and cultural flowering of Scotland in the 18th century few subjects attracted as much interest among men of letters as aesthetics - the study of art from the subjective perspective of human experience. All of the great philosophers of the age - Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Reid - addressed themselves to aesthetic questions. Their inquiries revolved around a cluster of issues - the nature of taste, beauty and the sublime, how qualitative differences operate upon the mind through the faculty of taste, and how aesthetic sensibility can be improved through education. This volume brings together and provides contextual introductions to the most significant 18th century writing on the philosophy of art. From the pioneering study of beauty by Francis Hutcheson, through Hume's seminal essays on the standard of taste and tragedy, to the end of the tradition in Dugald Stewart, we are swept up in the debate about art and its value that fascinated the philosophers of enlightenment Scotland - and continues to do so to this day.




The Modern Scot


Book Description

This title was first published in 2000: An investigation of Scottish art between 1928 and 1955 to bring into focus the multifaceted project that was Scottish modernism. At the core of this work lies the contention that Scottish modernism was underpinned by a desire to express a national consciousness. It was this ambition which became the defining feature of radical Scottish art, setting the parameters of its relationship with the idea of a coherent and international modern movement. With the foundation of the National Party of Scotland in 1928, Scottish intellectuals began to consider the nature of national identity and the characteristics of a national art. The "Scottish Renaissance Movement", under the voluble leadership of Hugh MacDiarmid, set out to articulate these interests, developing a vernacular poetry and literature. For Scottish artists, the way forward was harder to identify, as they fought to reconcile the demands for a Scottish national art with the stylistic revolution of international modernism. Tom Normand examines the competing claims of nationalism and modernism as they affected Scottish art. This in-depth analysis of a dynamic episode in Scottish visual culture looks at the work of, among others, William Johnstone, William McCance and John Duncan Fergusson.




Scottish Art since 1960


Book Description

Craig Richardson here addresses key areas of cultural politics and identity in a way that not only illuminates the development of Scottish art, but teases out another strand of the plurality of developments which led to the success of artists throughout the UK in the 1990s. It is of the highest relevance whether one's perspective is that of the development of the Scottish art, British art or European art of this period. The book adds significantly to our knowledge of the art of this period in a way that will aid not only our historical understanding but our understanding of the dynamics of art practice today. Providing an analysis and including discussion (interviewing artists, curators and critics and accessing non-catalogued personal archives) towards a new chronology, Richardson here examines and proposes a sequence of precisely denoted 'exemplary' works which outlines a self-conscious definition of the interrogative term 'Scottish art.' Among the artists whose work is discussed are John Latham, Simon Starling, Alan Johnston, Roderick Buchanan, Glen Onwin, Christine Borland, William Johnstone, Joan Eardley, Alexander Moffat, Douglas Gordon, Alan Smith, Graeme Fagen, Ross Sinclair and many others. The discussion culminates in a critically original demonstration of the scope for further research and practice within the subject, facilitating national cultural debate on the character of Scottish-national visual art.




Modern Spiritualism and Scottish Art


Book Description

This pioneering account of Modern Spiritualism in late 19th and early 20th-century Scotland is a compelling history of the international movement's cultural impact on Scottish art. From spirit-mediums creating séance art to mainstream artists of the Royal Scottish Academy, this exposition reveals for the first time the extent of Spiritualist interest in Scotland. With its interdisciplinary scope, Modern Spiritualism and Scottish Art combines cultural and art history to explore the ways in which Scottish art reflected Spiritualist beliefs at the turn of the 20th century. More than simply a history of the Spiritualist cause and its visual manifestations, this book also provides a detailed account of scepticism, psychical research, and occulture in modern Scotland, and the role that these aspects played in informing responses to Spiritualist ideology. Utilising extensive archival research, together with in-depth analyses of overlooked paintings, drawings and sculpture, Michelle Foot demonstrates the vital importance of Spiritualist art to the development of Spiritualism in Scotland during the 19th century. In doing so, the book highlights the contribution of Scottish visual artists alongside better-known Spiritualists such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Daniel Dunglas Home.




Scottish Art (Second) (World of Art)


Book Description

Accessible, extensively researched, and beautifully illustrated, this updated volume by renowned scholar and author Murdo Macdonald sheds light on the history and cultural significance of Scottish art. At a time when issues of Scottish identity are the subject of fierce debate, Murdo Macdonald illuminates Scotland’s artistic past and present in this classic text in the World of Art series. Ranging from Neolithic standing stones and the art of the Picts and Gaels to Reformation and Enlightenment art and major figures in the contemporary art scene, Scottish Art explores the distinctive characteristics of Scottish art through the centuries. It examines the cultural heritage and intricate patterns of Celtic design, the importance of Highland and coastal landscapes, long-standing connections between French and Scottish artists, and how each of these factors influenced the development of art in Scotland. This new edition includes more than 200 full-color images of Scottish art from prehistoric times to the present. With masterpieces from artists such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Joan Eardley, this book is a thorough, authoritative, and accessible introduction to Scottish art.




Modern Scottish Painting


Book Description

In 1939, Scottish artist and sculptor J.D. Fergusson was commissioned to write a fully illustrated book on modern Scottish painting. The Second World War made this difficult and the first edition of Modern Scottish Painting was published in 1943 without illustrations. This new edition – edited, introduced and annotated by Alexander Moffat and Alan Riach – finally brings Fergusson's project to fruition, illustrating the argument with colour reproductions of Fergusson's own work. Moffat and Riach frame Fergusson's important art manifesto for the 21st-century reader, illuminating his views on modern art as he explores questions of technique, education, form and what it means for a painting to be truly modern. Fergusson relates these aspects of modern painting to Scottishness, showing what they mean for Scottish identity, nationalism, independence and the legacy that puritanical Calvinism has left on Scottish art – a particular concern for Fergusson given his recurring subject matter of the female nude.




Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918-1959


Book Description

This innovative book proposes the expansion of the existing idea of an interwar Scottish Renaissance movement to include its international significance as a Scottish literary modernism interacting with the intellectual and artistic ideas of European modernism as well as responding to the challenges of the Scottish cultural and political context. Topics range from the revitalisation of the Scots vernacular as an avant-garde literary language in the 1920s and the interaction of literature and politics in the 1930s to the fictional re-imagining of the Highlands, the response of women writers to a changing modern world and the manifestations of a late modernism in the 1940s and 1950s. Writers featured include Hugh MacDiarmid, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil M. Gunn, Edwin and Willa Muir, Catherine Carswell, Sydney Goodsir Smith and Sorley MacLean.