ART PREVIEW
W _ , — reveal the survival of human ‘. compassion in times of the greatest ' ». adversity. Edinburgh-based printrnaker Tim
In Disease. Disability and Madness. Dockburn chose his favourite piece of we are offered a harrowing portrayal of work in Leonardo to Manet, an ' 't the vulnerability of life. From l7th exhibition of drawings at the llational century Germany. two stark black Gallery, crosses. stamped with the warning ‘Plague'. evoke the devastating power ofepidemics. Early images of sympathy towards disability contrast with the harder. less tolerant attitudes of our own era. And a l9th century illustration of a traumatised Swiss soldier echoes other views of madness from the 15th century to the present day.
Finally. The Cycle of Life illustrates our fascination with the processes of birth. aging and death. ()dilon Redoii‘s lithograph. [)erit/i: My Irony .S'urpassex All Others encapsulates a recurring
Blood, guts and medical schools feature in an exhibition of art currently showing at the Royal Museum of Scotland. Justin Mackenzie Smith recommends the expefience.
SmithKline Beecham. the patrons of an
exhibition cat't‘dAr-itt""1“7“-"t"’~ theme. The irony is the inevitability of _ ; Medicine and the Human Condition are Mania succeeded by Dementia by Ambmise the death that man spends his whole j famous for powders that offer fast relief {adieu (1833). new", comes, of philadephia MC fighting ' ‘. i 3 from winter miseries. A visit to this Museum of Art PhotographS by Diane Arbus‘ Eugene .- . “Xhtt’ttton at the Royat Museum or In Anatomy. the process by which Richards and Nicholas Nixon‘s portrait i i SCOttand may “0t Otter mttCtt Comton- mil“ teamCd 1mm“ the human bOd)’ it of CC. Boston may be more instantly 135 Prttttsi detngS and Phomgraphs rCVCalCd. The earliest images ilI'C 0f accessible to contemporary audiences. have been 391%th from the ATS crowded dissection theatres in medieval However, there are many images that z Medic“ COtICCttO“ Ottttc Philadelphia UDiVCFSitiCS- Ant-“t5 WCFC €111th UPOn 10 transcend time. circumstance and " N. N. .. “gm-w E Museum "t. A” Since the 192053 the record thC findings ()t‘thC-‘C medium in their portrayal ol‘the human 7| java the Horse Fair at Bfuntsfiejd Museum has assembictt a” PTOCCthHgS~ antt their intricate condition. Three works by Edvard Links by paui sandshy which is a small CXttitordmttrY COttCCttt’” dc_\’0t‘3d t9 the anatomical Stl'ldlC-S‘hilV? 11 CUI‘IOUS Munch are particularly striking. As are waiemolom’ pen and ink and black i IllCdiCal SClcnces and the history of aesthetic quality of their own. More w_ Eugene Smith”S imugcs of chajk work painted in about 1750_ “’5 i mCdtCtti‘fi' Works tmm ti“: “3C0th (trusts WC“ 115’ Rat’WhCi‘bt‘rg Laiiibarene. the West African medical really detaiied and is arranged in a Rennaissance to the present day. and and‘Clemente have used anatomical ammuniin founded by Aihm son oi ciassicai iomai with a j from cultures across the world. have subjects as the bases for their own Schweitzer. foreground, a middle ground and a Milli???“ anistlcgvilu“ as Perceptttm-S- . . i To single out individual works background of the castle and ihe town Wt d5 t UV mt "fl CONWI- ‘ 9U]. Healers charts the colourlulhistory oi reduces the impact this exhibition has of Edinburgh. ; iOgcmcr‘ they PFOY'dC ‘1 “m9”? "wt—1h! tho.” Wt“) Wadi-"C tth ("15“ 0t Pill" as a coherent entity. it is a fascinating "is one oi these wonder,“ pictures i into the COilipiCX‘lliter-reiiltionhhli‘is t‘hat relief. From earlier centuries. we meet approach to beautiful pictures.that . where you can just keep looking and th‘itfitfi/‘u’nl [tht’iworlds 0t '"Ldtum “mic $331913“ Phrcnt)t0g15t5 mid 11” . draws on the indissoluble relationship seeing mom and more things. And ; ‘1“ ti t i '_ I . manner ofquaeks. .However. some of between an and me. some of ihe figures in the middle Th9 t—Xhlbltlon 15 lelde lmoifmlf the most affecting images are from our ' . ' ground are only about a quarter 0' an sections: Anatomy: Healers: Disease, own century. Prints from both sides in Am Met/tea -./it'l. Met/tune and the inch high, but you can still see the Disability and Madness; and The Cycle World War I — by the German artist, Human Condition is at the Royal of Life. Beckmann. and the American. Bellows Museum of .St‘ot/ontl until 291/) May.
l l trousers and what their jackets look i like and some are drinking beer with I
open shirts and rolling around the
ground. There are others selling buns I from a barrow, various makeshift tents ; which have been set up and some i
people have smlls made of wagons t
and drapes.
Most fascinating are the strange ; unidentifiable 18th century objects which people are carrying around i Searching through a video tape in an which you have to look at for ages to exhibition of three artists’ new work work out what they are. It’s just one of at the Mackintosh Gallery, all i find is those paintings which you can keep a dead blue screen. Then suddenly the . .,., _. - t -: . looking into. figure of artist, Douglas Gordon " ‘ : '
It’s actually quite an optimistic appears, hands gesturing wildly, a t W: 2 ~ piece. Whereas lots of paintings with newspaper flickering in his hand like a . ; f. is“
subject matter like this one would be manic antidote to his last major work, ; quite depressing and sleazy because - 24-hour Psycho. And then I realise my ~ . some of these people are quite poor * finger is still on the rewind button. t ‘ . ' . u a I . . and quite drunk, it somehow has a Douglas Gordon’s video installation,
, liveliness about it. It also has a great ‘ The Magic Newspaper is actually .
inner simplicity although it is filmed in very slight slow motion. The ~ “xi .
i extremely complex in the way he’s video monitor sits in the corner of the ’ approached the subject matter. gallery in front of a small mountain of
It doesn’t immediately relate to what discarded newspapers. Dn film, the
I do, I don’t have the patience to do so artist carefully folds up his copy of a Douglas Gordon and his magic newspaper much detail. I do monoprints and l Scottish Sunday paper, throws it off covered with a shower of small framed painted in large-dotted Lichenstein- paint landscapes but the monoprints screen and like a boomerang, it comes fragments which look like they’ve style which portrays a scrap of paper. are about people whether on the flying back to him. He looks satisfied been found in someone’s pocket. Bus Arnikam Toren’s clumsily executed street or in bars or hairdressers or and the picture fades back to blue. A tickets, a raffle ticket, torn bits of landscape paintings are the kind of whatever. But I suppose that’s why simple action, Gordon’s work is a maps, an edge of a cigarette packet thing you find in cheap hotels. But in this picture appeals to me. It’s like comment on the media. Dr it could be and other personal ephemera are stencil-lettering, he has cut out words about ten years of my work all Gordon experimenting with special dabbed with a single brush stroke of from their surface to make them into crammed together in one picture. effects, the pile behind the TV being paint, making art out of old memories. double-edged signs, like In Ball (Beatrice Colin) all the mistakes. His other pieces include a series of Games, on an idyllic jungle landscape. Tim Dockburn has a solo show of new More daily disposables appear in the ruler paintings where wooden rulers A simple idea, but nevertheless, like work at Art Exposure, Glasgow from 16 work of David Bellinng. In his piece, have measured dabs of colour on their all the work in this show, effective. Al"- Silhouette, a corner of the gallery is outer edge, and a huge billboard (Beatrice Colin)
52 The List 25 March—7 April 1994