Charlotte Riordan
17 April 2024
The 1980s and 90s saw an extraordinary, internationally recognised breakthrough of artistic talent in Scotland, and critics and collectors alike remain intrigued by its sudden and spectacular eruption.
In many respects, these artists were both the product and visual representation of a Scotland which, having reached the bottom of its post-industrial slump, picked itself up and reinvented itself with extraordinary vigour; transforming into a vital force once again.
Glasgow’s successful rehabilitation was the epicentre, and it is not surprising, therefore, to find that its famous Art School became the nexus of the new wave of artistic talent. Though it was derided at the time, Scottish art schools never gave up on life drawing throughout the 1970s and 80s, so when the focus of art re-centred on the figurative tradition, Scottish artists were well placed to convincingly and skilfully innovate upon the past. This was combined with influential teachers, namely in the form of Sandy Moffat who did much to encourage the move away from the painterly, colourist orthodoxy of the still life and landscape tradition that typified Scottish art for so long; instead advocating an expressive and figuratively focused art, with a bent towards examining social issues. Crucially, a receptive and supportive gallery network evolved, ready to support this wave of young talent.
The key members of this group were Steven Campbell, Ken Currie, Peter Howson and Adrian Wiszniewski, who later became known as the ‘New Glasgow Boys’. While their artistic output was not homogenous, they all shared an interest in figurative painting during which broke away from the conceptual and minimal trends in contemporary art of the time.
Howson, in common with his New Glasgow Boy peers, chose to work on a monumental scale to ape the scale of traditional history painting. He consciously subverts it by elevating the insalubrious subject matter of his brawlers and dossers, magnifying his grotesqueries to heroic proportions.
Howson tapped into his lived experience in the military and as a bouncer in the dive bars of Glasgow’s city centre to find his subjects. Lifting figures from memory, he pumped them up into exaggerated and overgrown character archetypes, through whom he examined the most toxic aspects of masculinity in order to reveal its ugly, destructive truth. Though the acerbic, grotesque social commentary of Weimar Republic artists like Max Beckmann and Otto Dix are clear reference points, Howson’s work is in fact brimming with pathos. He allows his characters a tragic heroism, and his message is clear that they are just as much the victims of the violent systems they embody.
In 1992 Howson was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record the conflict in former Yugoslavia and a year later was appointed official British War Artist in Bosnia. The effect on the artist was near catastrophic and he suffered a breakdown. In 2000, Howson was treated for long-term alcoholism and drug addiction and that same year, possibly as result of this treatment, famously underwent a conversion to Christianity. Thereafter for a time, his work began to exhibit a strong religious content. Today, he remains an enigmatic figure. His work is found in the high-profile personal collections of celebrities including David Bowie, Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson and Madonna, who had apparently hung one of his canvases in her bedroom.
Born in 1960, Ken Currie graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1983. His work is typically dark and confrontational. Currie is highly aware of and influenced by the tradition of Western art, drawing inspiration from a variety of artists including Goya and Velazquez. Similarly to Francis Bacon, he is fascinated by the human face as a mechanism of expressing trauma, pain, and powerful psychological expression.
His early work is heavily inspired by his childhood in Glasgow’s declining industrial landscape; observational of the different character architypes that were beginning to vanish, and politically critical of the Thatcherite policies which saw the city decay. This early imagery is unflinching and, like Howson, skirts the grotesque, yet it is also multilayered, even romanticised.
His later work is predominantly in oil and focuses on the human body at a physical and metaphysical level. Characterised by a ghostly luminosity, his paintings explore illness, ageing and injury, whilst posing existential questions to his audience, as well as exploring an oblique social and political commentary.
Steven Campbell was born in Glasgow and originally worked as a maintenance engineer in a steelworks in Cambulsang before attending Glasgow School of Art in his thirties, becoming one of the leading Scottish figurative painters of his generation.
After graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 1982 Campbell won a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in the United States. Campbell worked from a studio in Brooklyn until 1986 and this period was key in establishing his status as an internationally renowned artist whilst raising awareness of Scottish contemporary art on a global scale.
His artwork is influenced by a diverse range of literary fiction from P.G. Wodehouse to murder mysteries, resulting in humorous and unsettling undertones. Campbell was also influenced by children’s book illustrations accounting for his use of a rich and vibrant palette which intensified after his U.S. period. His surreal compositions cannot be read as a conventional fictional narrative and his imaginary worlds intentionally challenge the viewer with their dreamlike quality leaving his artwork open to multiple interpretations. Campbell saw himself as a ‘director, writer and producer’ of these other-worldly scenes and he often repeated the figures in multiple artworks as if they were a cast of actors.
Campbell died an untimely early death at the age of 54 from a ruptured appendix.
Adrian Wiszniewski was born in Glasgow in 1958 and trained at Glasgow School of Art from 1979 to 1983. An oblique, poetic exploration of burgeoning adolescent sexuality typifies Wiszniewski’s subject matter, as does a current of melancholia. Akin to his peer Steven Campbell, there is something theatrical and mannered in his works, which again are often painted at a monumental, stage-set scale.
Wiszniewski is known for his depictions of ‘languorous youths’; his figures often sharing similar features, usually representing some form of alter-ego for the artist, taking centre stage in dreamlike Arcadian landscapes. His work often feels heavy in symbolism, though the references are obscure. The overall effect is that we’ve somehow stumbled into the artist’s dream.
‘The Vigorous Imagination: New Scottish Art’ was presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 1987 during the Edinburgh International Festival.
It showcased the work of 17 young artists who had attracted the spotlight of the international art world, from the powerful new wave of figurative art to sculpture and installation art, in a ground-breaking mixed curation and included the ‘New Glasgow Boys’, renowned sculptor David Mach; photographer-installations artists Calum Colvin and Ron O'Donnell, and painters Sam Ainsley, Philip Braham, Gwen Hardie, Ian Hughes, Keith McIntyre, June Redfern, Mario Rossi, Joseph Urie & Kate Whiteford. It proudly stated that visual art in Scotland was a force to be reckoned with on an international stage.
