The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh presents
JOHN MCLEAN THE BOSTON PICTURES, 1982
12 OCTOBER - 10 NOVEMBER
The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh
6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ +44 (0)131 557 4050 www.fasedinburgh.com art@fasedinburgh.com
JOHN MCLEAN THE BOSTON PICTURES, 1982 12 OCTOBER - 10 NOVEMBER 2018
All works are available for sale View online at www.fasedinburgh.com/exhibitions For sales and enquiries please contact: +44 (0)131 557 4050 art@fasedinburgh.com left: detail from Neponset (pp.10-11)
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In 1982, a teaching job at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School took John McLean to America. Upon arrival, he discovered that his workload was lighter than he had been led to believe, so he filled his time painting. Though it was a productive period, John’s minimal income left him and his wife, Jan, broke. On leaving the US, the canvases were rolled up and consigned to a cupboard in his studio. The shipping costs were more than the McLeans could bear. Last summer, the studio was cleared out by the owner. These works, forgotten by the artist, were repatriated. John’s admiration for the US and Canadian abstract painters had taken him across the Atlantic regularly from the late 60s onwards.
left: detail from Duct (pp.16-17)
His first trip to Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1981 was, however, the beginning of a new chapter and its influence emphatic. The impact of prairie light was astonishing: “It was far stronger, brighter and clearer than I had ever seen,” he said. John’s work took on an “ariel quality”. The bold strokes of colour in these Boston works appear as if suspended, agitating independently. He was once described as “an explorative perfectionist” by Tim Hilton. The apparent freedom with which these pictures are painted belies the fact that nothing is accidental. We are lulled into a sense of unconfined possibility. John is regarded internationally as one of Britain’s most significant abstract painters.
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BILL HARE IN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN MCLEAN First published in the Scottish art journal ALBA, Winter 1987 on the occasion of John McLean’s show at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
Constable said it was his childhood experience of growing up in Dedham Vale which made him a painter. What made you a painter? If Constable was expressing more than the depth of his feelings for motifs, his remark is pretty vague when you think of his mature paintings. It tells you nothing of how he evolved his means of expressing himself. Similarly, it doesn’t tell you much about my work if I tell you I spent my adolescence on the north east coast of Scotland and think it very beautiful. I am not repudiating my background. It’s just that its relation to my work is too nebulous to talk about. The only thing worth mentioning is that when I left for London in 1963 nearly everything I had painted had been figurative.
Photo © Chris Morphet
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Which artists have influenced the development of your work? The Americans Louis and Noland were shown in London in the 1960s, and for me the directness of their painting seemed to open up the future. But it took me a while to get rid of what, looking back on it, was unnecessary intricacy in my own work. A painting who helped me beyond this was the Washington artist Sam Gilliam, who worked wet into wet. I saw his painting in the late 1960s. It was only when I worked as loosely as he that I really came to terms with the directness and scale of Louis and Noland, not to mention Pollock who influenced all three. But happy as I was with this new work of mine it began to dissatisfy me because of its all-overness and limited colour. It was at that juncture I saw Jack Bush’s 1972 show at Emmerich’s in New York. I loved seeing his chunks of colour floating. You get a similar feeling in some of Miro’s paintings. The latter is an unsung revolutionary when it comes to freeing colour and space. To many, your method of painting is unconventional… My touch is directly related to the scale I’m working on. I’ve found [that] a good way of putting a ground onto, say, a 6ft x 4ft canvas is with a squeegee mop. The sponge is a reservoir for paint. It even holds thick stuff. And it’s sensitive to pressure. Not being a precision instrument, accidents happen that open up possibilities. All the interesting abstract painters I know find themselves having to improvise ways of getting the paint on. My methods are unconventional only when compared with Rowney’s fine art accoutrements. The squeegee will probably outlive its usefulness. How I put the paint on is dictated by the way the paintings are going. I have a plan of campaign when I start. In the exigencies of work that paint gets adapted or abandoned. I play my hunches and I keep on the lookout. If and when the painting comes alive it’s always in a surprising way. Certainly I cajole it or bludgeon it, but it’s still a surprise – the final form. I realise planning and surprise might seem contradictory but there it is. You are one of the ‘purest’ abstract painters I know, unlike some abstract painters who are inspired by the natural world and are basically landscape artists. You’re right. Any feeling of landscape in my work is incidental. But purity isn’t my aim. It’s only an impression resulting from comparison with other less abstract painters’ work. Also, painting abstract doesn’t mean independence of the natural world. The most obvious aspect of the natural world that affects me is light. Spirit, mind and energy go into it too. 5
Photo © Chris Morphet
Is there any underlying mystical dimension to your work? I’m not a mystic and I don’t want to take anything from the simple direct fact of the painting there on the wall. But nevertheless ‘spiritual’ maybe describes the effort in art, the nurturing as opposed to faking like Frankenstein and his monsters. Abstract painting didn’t appear from nowhere. Its roots are in Cézanne, the Impressionists and so on, right back. It grew. It’s unavoidable. You can’t concoct real art. Most art you see is concocted, fake. That includes a lot of abstract art.
You praised Miró for ‘freeing space and colour’. Is that the ultimate aim in your own painting? Since I don’t work to a theory my ultimate aim is a matter of hindsight. And because I’m always learning, I’m always adjusting my immediate aim… It really exists only in its embodiment in paint in each successful picture. Certainly colour is very important. When the colour is right the space is right. But then it’s the light of the painting that makes the colour right.
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I know you have a great deal of respect for Clement Greenberg. However, his concept of modern art is very much under attack in our present post-modernist era. Has the shift in the taste for painting affected your work in any way? What shift in taste for painting? In the important commercial centres for contemporary art dealers are busy sacking their neo-expressionists and taking neogeo, neue stille, call it what you will. From time to time the market place needs these stimuli. Art journalists thrive on them too. I can’t get worked up about it and it has no effect on my work. Is that because you feel abstract art and post-modernism are fundamentally antithetical? Abstract art is antithetical only to the inability to look at art. I can’t take the term ‘post-modernism’ seriously. It’s just an intellectual fad… Do you think there is any critical mileage to be gained in the arguments between figurative and non-figurative painting? No. I enjoy both. Most of the best art of the last 40 years has been abstract. That’s unarguable. Have you consciously striven towards creating an ‘image’ for your painting? I mean, an abstract painting has an ‘image’ even more than a ‘representational’ work, doesn’t it? By image I assume you mean something like signature – as far as my work goes – a ‘McLean look’. If my work seems homogeneous in that sense, I don’t wilfully bring that about. It’s the feeling, not the ‘look’ of the painting that concerns me. Each successful work has a unique feeling. I can’t foretell that feeling as I work on a painting. As I said before, it’s always a surprise…
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Photo © Chris Morphet 8
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1. NEPONSET 1982
signed, titled and dated 1982 on canvas verso acrylic on canvas | 170.5 x 109 cm 10
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2. BEVY 1982 acrylic on canvas | 110 x 170 cm 12
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3. BOSTON 1982 acrylic on canvas | 170 x 110 cm 14
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4. DUCT 1982 acrylic on canvas | 75.5 x 170 cm 16
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5. SHAWMUT 1982 acrylic on canvas | 170 x 105 cm 18
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6. DANCE HALL 1982-2018
signed and dated 1982 on canvas verso acrylic on canvas | 170 x 101 cm 20
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7. BROOKLINE 1982-2018 acrylic on canvas | 165.5 x 105 cm 22
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8. CONCORD 1982-2018 acrylic on canvas | 110.5 x 230.5 cm 24
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9. PITCUNDRUM 1985
signed, dated ‘85 and titled verso
oil on canvas | 112 x 175 cm 26
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10. GIOCO 2007 acrylic on etch-primed aluminium | 80 x 80 x 63.5 cm 28
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11. CAROUSEL 1987 signed, titled and dated 1987 on canvas verso acrylic on canvas | 103.5 x 65 cm 30
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12. GIOIA 2009 acrylic on etch-primed aluminium | 80 x 80 x 63.5 cm 32
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13. BLUE BERRY 1989
signed, titled and dated 1989 on canvas verso; initialled and dated ‘89 on canvas edge acrylic on canvas | 111 x 120 cm 34
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Photo © Chris Morphet
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The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh
6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ +44 (0)131 557 4050 www.fasedinburgh.com art@fasedinburgh.com
Published by The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh for the exhibition
JOHN MCLEAN THE BOSTON PICTURES, 1982 held at 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ from 12 October to 10 November 2018 Catalogue © The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh Studio photographs of John McLean © Chris Morphet Photographs of exhibited artwork © John McKenzie Photography All rights reserved
front and back covers: detail from Dance Hall (pp.20-21) left: detail from Bevy (pp.12-13) 39
The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh