goudie’s glasgow

Goudie and Glasgow

In 1960, five years out of Glasgow School of Art and with a studio in a tenement above a pub in Paisley, Alexander Goudie knew who and what he was and what he thought about that identity. ‘I like artists to look like artists; bankers like bankers; journalists like journalists’ he told a reporter from Glasgow Herald. We can see in this exhibition how the painter thought artists should look. There are seven self-portraits in the show and three other works in which the painter is present. Alexander Goudie certainly looks like an artist but an artist of a particular kind. These are self-portraits in the vein of the 34-year-old Rembrandt. That is they are depictions of the artist as a success. A man who knows he is good at what he does and knows he is valued for it. It is only viable if you are very good at what you do and Goudie was. Whether he’s posing with a cast of the Venus de Milo in Self Portrait at The Glasgow School of Art (cat. 27), hand on hip, weight on one leg evoking the pose of the figure that accompanies him, or seen twice in At Work in the Studio (cat. 28), he looks very confident. On first look the latter painting seems to almost deny this assertion and abnegate the centrality of the artist. The painter is seen virtually silhouetted against the light from the window and freely painted with little definition. At the extreme right however he is seen again, effortlessly cool in manicured, pointed beard. He is irresistibly reminiscent of Courbet’s self-portrait in Bonjour M. Courbet where a rich and successful businessman pays homage to Courbet the master. The same raised chin and elegant near profile view to the fore. That confidence however was in the face of a cultural climate in late 1950s and early 1960s Scotland which was bleak. Unemployment was rising rapidly, Scottish per capita spending in general was ten percent lower than the UK average and income from business and commerce was less than three quarters UK levels. In recent accounts of mid-20th century art in Scotland, the early 1960s are made to appear as the end of that and the rebirth of possibilities for painters and painting. In hindsight this is certainly the case but the development took place mainly, or at least initially in Edinburgh and tended to be jealously guarded by the established hierarchy in Scottish painting. Where access for younger painters was possible it tended to be for those who came up through the well-established route of Edinburgh College of Art, the Royal Scottish Academy and compliance with the prevailing beaux-arts manner of Redpath and Gillies. For younger west coast painters it was necessary to manufacture opportunities for themselves. And remember that in January 1959 Hugh MacDiarmid called Scotland ‘the most antiaesthetic country in Europe’.

Into the 60s there were significant voices with grave doubts. Douglas Hall, Keeper of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art writing in 1963 said, ‘It is forgotten how few are the outlets for modern painters even in Edinburgh, and non-existent over most of the country. It is forgotten that even the most esteemed painters have scarcely dented public indifference’.

Artist and Son in Kelvingrove, c.1985 Private collection

Glasgow was not remotely in the vanguard of such opportunities as did exist. Hall again said ‘The image of Scottish painting which has been projected in recent years is predominantly formed in Edinburgh. It is forgotten that there are young modern painters in Glasgow whose work is as alien to Edinburgh as anything in London.’

Given all that, it is not surprising that there was considerable dissatisfaction in Glasgow in the 1950s and early 60s.

In this apparently bleak climate the work of Scottish artists was understood to be particularly disparaged by their fellow country men and women. ‘It is, indeed, rash nowadays’ a critic in the Saltire Review remarked, ‘to attempt to make a living in Scotland by writing, painting or sculpture… In a society brimming with cheap comforts and luxuries there is actually less money to spare for the work of artists than there was a century ago.’ Scottish patrons, one commentator asserted, would support any non-Scottish work before indigenous art. He explained, patrons are so ‘scared of being thought parochial they fall over backwards in order to show how international they are – although most of them couldn’t tell [Béla] Bartók from Bela Lugosi.’

There were signs of life in Glasgow however. Robert MacGowan, Carlo Rossi, Margot Sandeman, Angus Neil, Bet Low, Archie Graham and Dorothy Steel were all working in Glasgow. All painters of a slightly older generation than

Alexander Goudie, most had attended Glasgow School of Art in the 1940s under Hugh Adam Crawford. All were what a contemporary of Goudie’s characterised as ‘serious painters’ and people to respect. None were producing the staple Glasgow Institute fair of sunny landscapes and bowls of flowers, and, as a result, all were to a certain extent marginalised from the comfortable world of Glasgow’s ‘official’ art. They had all been working as painters for some years and though in a disenfranchised position, this generation that came to the fore before 1950 must have provided encouragement for the emerging artists of the late 50s.

With this generation as evidence that serious work could be undertaken in the city, the next generation, that of Goudie and the Glasgow Group, had all passed through, or were then passing through GSA under William Armour. They had been taught in first and second year by John Miller and Alix Dick, studied still life under Mary Armour and in third and fourth year had joined the studio of either David Donaldson or Jeffrey Squire. Goudie was taught by Donaldson. The painters this produced, though individuals and reflecting their artistic education in a variety of ways, possessed a strong and shared interest in muscular paint handling in a tradition that included the Glasgow Boys, Manet, Velázquez and Titian.

Emerging from art school in the late 1950s into a city with no galleries at all selling contemporary art, Alexander Goudie made his own success. Goudie had been supported by his family to go to GSA where he had won the Somerville Shanks Prize and been granted a post-diploma year. The paintings we see here speak of success and a real belief in the power of his art from the very beginning. They are uncompromising in their optimism. With tremendous displays of dexterity, bravura brushwork and strong colour they deny the bleak reality of contemporary Paisley and Glasgow. Goudie had high ambitions for his art. He felt his job was to enlighten people, most of whom he asserted ‘walk about with their eyes open just enough to avoid falling under a bus’. For him art ought to open eyes. The apparently easy assurance of the paint handling and the sheer aesthetic pleasure to be derived from the works can generate the impression that it all came rather easily to the painter. There was no silver spoon here however. Goudie was given five years to become self-sufficient post art-school. His Paisley studio was paid for during that time by his plumber father – a manifestation of pride in his talented son and of the strong working class belief in education and self-improvement. As he worked to establish himself as a painter in Glasgow, Goudie appears to almost deny his everyday reality of life in a satellite town still recovering from the war and still deeply locked in an identity rooted in 19th century heavy industry. In an environment where the painter’s Paisley base could proudly proclaim ‘in quite a few years there should be a bathroom in every house in the town,’ the paintings are a triumph of optimism and light in an often dark environment. There are few early images of the city and the later paintings of Glasgow such as Autumn Morning, Cleveden Road Atelier (cat. 29), celebrate painting and life as a painter as much as they offer an image of the city. The large scale 1963 drawing The Bathers (cat. 11) is a good example of the work created by Goudie at a time when his contemporaries often painted the bleakness of the environment that surrounded them. There are echoes of old masters everywhere in Goudie’s work and they are here. The obvious reference is to Cézanne and his bather compositions of the 1890s but the sense of hedonism is emotionally more in keeping with Matisse’s sensibilities on the Mediterranean coast in the early 20th century. The beautifully drawn individual figures and the complex but entirely believable interlocking composition attest to the fact that the prize he won at GSA was for composition. In the Garden of Love (cat. 12)

from 1970 evokes Titian’s Concert Champêtre in its transparent joy of life and its juxtaposition of a clothed male musician with nude female figures. Interestingly Titian’s work was painted at a bleak time in Venetian history. The painting is sometimes read as the creation of a world of harmony and love as a retreat from the real world. The physicality of the lovers on the ground, and the contemporary symbol of the dove of peace, give Goudie’s work a passionate intensity that makes it wholly modern, but it too offers an idyllic counterpart to everyday realities. The paintings very often step beyond Glasgow. The works in this exhibition, with their understated but repeated evocations of great masters of the western tradition from Classical Greece and Velázquez to Gauguin and Picasso, celebrate the broad authority of painting and claim a place in its canon. They are a part, a distinctive one, of the rebirth of Glasgow and the West as a power in Scottish painting.

professor john morrison

22. Kelvinbridge, c.1990 chalk on paper, 52 x 64 cm

Glasgow

Alexander Goudie lived in the West End of Glasgow for most of his career. From the windows of his home at Arnewood House he regularly admired the sweeping panoramas of Glasgow’s skyline; a cloudscape sometimes heavy with rain or shot with sun. This painting depicts the view from the upstairs bathroom. I like to think that over the years, as he was brushing his teeth, he studied the architecture of chimney pots, television aerials, skylights and gradually the everyday beauty of this scene compelled him to create a painting.

lachlan goudie

* 23. Glasgow Rooftops, c.2002 oil on board, 61 x 75 cm

* 24. Clouston Street, c.2000 oil on canvas, 198 x 96.5 cm

25. At the Easel, c.2000 oil and charcoal on canvas, 152.5 x 152.5 cm

At Home with Alexander Goudie

Our days at Arnewood House revolved around my father’s studio. This room had three huge windows giving onto a tree-lined Cleveden Road and it was situated at the far end of the house – sufficiently distant from the kitchen, so that we children could avoid disturbing the man at work.

Arnewood House was a kind of Secret Garden for my brother Budoc and myself, two years younger than me, and with whom I shared the beginnings of our father’s career as an artist. One of the first things I would do when I got home from school, would be to go the studio and look at what my father was working on. Each visit was defined by the subject of the day, from a still life, to the development of a new project or the finishing off of a portrait. My father was always paintbrush in hand. Entering this world was a formidable and unique experience but there were days when my mother would tell us that the studio was off limits. From an early age, hearing shouting and swearing eminating from that room, warned us that, today, inspiration was not forthcoming!

The studio was a place where, as we grew up, conversation and exchange of opinions, became ever more intense. Topics of discussion ranged from Michelangelo’s sonnets, to Bach’s variations played by Glenn Gould, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes to Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, from Simone de Beauvoir to John Wayne or Jimmy Connors playing tennis at Wimbledon. The approach to debate was eclectic and demanding. There is no doubt that our father was an artist inspired by intense emotions. But he was also driven by discipline, tradition and an awareness of the great schools of artistic thought. He often worked to contextualise himself in a modern Scottish art world with which he did not always see eye to eye, but with which he undeniably shared strong roots and a sense of heritage. From use of colour, to the importance of line drawing, from Giorgione to Michelangelo, our father was always studying, doing his own research and learning continuously. In the evenings, whisky in hand, the books from his vast library would be brought out and laid on the hall floor alongside the paintings he was working on.

gwen goudie

26. Kelvingrove Park, c.2000 oil and chalk on board, 115 x 114 cm

Since childhood I have been preoccupied with drawing and painting. Everything which excited my imagination had to be set down in pictorial terms. A magic world where a different language helps explore human experience and makes permanent those transient encounters with the visually stimulating. The development of this language is for me what art is all about. To be articulate is vital and much of the joy I derive from my work is finding the most expressive and potent equivalent in line, paint, or clay for what I feel about life. The challenge is to cultivate a personal vision and see life freshly, extracting from it what is paintable and by dint of one’s skills compose images which will not only illuminate one’s experience but will, by their aesthetic merits alone, communicate this to others.

Alexander Goudie’s Festival Exhibition, 1977, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Alexander Goudie preparing an exhibition, c.1983

Alexander Goudie in the studios of Glasgow School of Art, c.1970 In the late 1990s Alexander Goudie began to draw on all his memories of living and working in Glasgow for almost 40 years. He distilled his experiences into a body of work entitled ‘Goudie’s Glasgow’. The painting opposite was inspired by the studios of the Glasgow School of Art and the portrait photo which was taken of him there in 1970.

lachlan goudie

27. Self Portrait at The Glasgow School of Art, c.2000 oil and chalk on board, 112 x 81 cm

From left: Alexander Goudie, Leon Morrocco, David Donaldson, James D. Robertson, Duncan Shanks pictured together for the exhibition Five Glasgow Artists, c.1970

The Glasgow School of Art was a hugely important part of my father’s life, he studied and taught there in the 1950s and early 1960s. The ‘Mac’ was a ferociously macho environment where tutors taught by example, demonstrating their creative bravado at the easel and tolerating little dissent. Life-long friendships between my father and colleagues David Donaldson and Jimmy Robertson were laced with rivalry, bitter feuds and passionately held grudges. But notwithstanding these tensions, this swaggering gang of artists, here including Duncan Shanks and Leon Morrocco, knew how to handle paint. This was something they recognised and respected in one another.

lachlan goudie

Alexander Goudie in his London studio, Tite Street, c.1983

28. At Work in the Studio, c.2002 oil on board, 91 x 158 cm

Sandy Goudie’s work has always stood out for me, partly because I knew him, and partly because of his skilful technique. Paint was applied with gusto and supreme confidence. You felt that he knew exactly what he was going to do before one brush stroke was applied to canvas. In this I feel he is very much in the tradition of Singer Sargent, de László and the Colourist Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell. The paintings sing because of his magnificent technique and a clear vision right from the start.

robert ferguson, president, glasgow art club

29. Autumn Morning, Cleveden Road Atelier, c.2000 oil and charcoal on canvas, 183 x 153 cm

30. At Work in the Studio, c.1995 charcoal on paper, 52 x 64 cm

31. Self Portrait in the Studio, c.1995 pencil drawing, 52 x 64 cm

I first met Sandy and Maïnée at Sandy’s Edinburgh Festival Exhibition in 1977 at The Scottish Gallery. It was a memorable and very busy event and my husband John bought me a gift of an exquisite drawing of Maïnée in a red dressing gown. In the future, should the house burst into flames… I would choose my dogs and this drawing. As something of a country bumpkin, I loved the social life in Glasgow; frequently attending exhibitions and events at the Glasgow Arts Club. The Gallery was a perfect space for hanging the latest works by Donaldson, Goudie, Cunningham, Robertson and the work of artist members. The opening of an exhibition was an important event for both the artist and potential buyer. I was duly dazzled by my first visit to Goudie’s home, Arnewood, in the West End of Glasgow. The bravura of colour – black dining room walls, electric green in the drawing room; a pervading smell of turpentine from the studio; a large wicker cage containing an ever-cooing pair of white doves at the top of the entrance staircase. Radio 3 booming away; a tiny kitchen resplendent with the original exposed, copper pipework, from which Maïnée produced endless delicious delicacies for fortunate friends.

tessa thomson

32. Rooftops from the Bedroom, c.2002 oil on board, 80 x 59 cm

Exhibitions were the apex of months of preparation in our father’s studio. No matter the theme, from Robert Burns to Salome, the procedure was always the same. Arnewood House became the exhibition per se, with paintings strewn out over our immense hall, taking up every nook and cranny. Hours of debating and deliberation would go into the selection of the entries. The choice of the frames, the hanging, the pricing would all dominate our family life. I have vivid memories of my father, fuelled with whisky, BBC Radio 3 blaring in the background, our doves cooing in their aviary and my mother coming out from the kitchen, apron on, to add her comments.

Such experiences as a child, helped to mould my understanding of what creativity and the life of an artist really was. No romanticism, no facile path, but an idea – and a determination to achieve it.

gwen goudie

Alexander at Arnewood House preparing an exhibition, c.1983

Throughout history artists have portrayed themselves holding the tools of their trade. The romantic image of the painter with his palette and brushes has been reinterpreted across the centuries, from Velázquez to Rembrandt, Gauguin to Picasso. By 1985, when my father painted this self-portrait, the visual shorthand of brushes and smock were certainly outdated and even he himself did not paint using a wooden palette. But my dad loved being an artist and everything it represented. In this image he paints himself into the role of the painter across history with a commitment and theatrical conviction that confirms how little he cared for fashion or, in many ways, the contemporary art world.

lachlan goudie

33. Self Portrait with Palette and Black Smock, c.1985 oil on canvas, 117 x 96 cm

LA MER ET LA TERRE Goudie’s First Rencontre with Brittany