DOUGLAS GORDON
Oppositesattract
Nick Barley wrestles with the challenge of writing an introduction to the work of Douglas Gordon, this country’s most successful artistic export, who gets his first retrospective in Scotland this month.
‘m sitting in front of a blank screen.
worrying about writing a piece on Douglas
Gordon. I‘m clear what I want to say: I hope to persuade sceptics and wavering readers that Gordon is one of the most interesting artists working anywhere in the world. And I want to celebrate the fact that he‘s finally being acknowledged in Scotland with a big retrospective. so ambitious it spills out of the RSA Building in central Edinburgh. all the way down to Inverleith House. But I‘m concerned that I might get the tone of this all wrong. The thing is. Gordon's work plays on
ambiguities. on threats. on opposites. So. if
you begin as I just have with an easy
superlative ‘Douglas is the best . . .' — you immediately feel the need to counter it with the opposite — “He‘s the worst artist working
anywhere in the world today.‘
What makes it harder is the fact that Gordon and his collaborator Philippe Parreno have been all over the press this summer thanks to their film. Kit/(me: a 21st Century Portrait. (iordon has achieved a new notoriety outside the art world. but there has been comparatively little discussion about the artistic output of the man who won the Turner Prize in 1996 and the Hugo Boss Prize in l998.
Read as much as you like about Gordon. you won’t feel you‘ve got the whole story. despite the fact that the publications devoted to his
work have seen off several rainforests~ worth of
trees. Iiach of his books avoids telling the whole truth about him (with the notable exception of Katrina Brown‘s excellent I)(}. published by Tate Publishing). As editor of The List. my temptation was initially to go along with the ‘economical with the truth' approach.
Maybe I should just publish the works of
fiction that appear on the following pages. But then I realised we‘d be preaching to the converted. and if you've already decided what you think of Gordon‘s work. you‘re unlikely to be reading this article anyway. So I'm setting out to explain why he‘s really as good as large sections of the art world think he is.
20 THE LIST 19 Oct- 2 Nov 2006
You talking to me? Through A Looking Glass (1999) (this picture); and 24 Hour Psycho (below left)
DECLARING AN INTEREST Why should you believe what I have to say about Gordon? I‘m the wrong person to give a balanced view because I know the man. So you can easily discount this as a jumped up piece of hype. peddling the work of a muckcr whose reputation is all based on having friends in the right places. But. if you‘ll set those reservations aside. let me try to explain what I think he’s up to.
DIALOGUE
I met Douglas back in the mid-1990s when I
lived in London and he was the most visible of
a group of artists from Glasgow who were setting the art world chattering. This is not hype. He was making art that didn‘t come
packaged together with the laddish culture of
the YBAs in London. and which was both
sharply intelligent and accessible. The first of
Gordon's works that really had an impact on me consisted of a simple sentence:
From the moment you hear these words, until you kiss someone with blue eyes.
It was part of a work he had made for the curator Hans-Ulrich ()brist. and Gordon‘s stipulation was that ()brist should make internal calls to colleagues within a Parisian art museum. and speak these words down the phone without any further explanation. I imagined I‘d feel a bit threatened. a bit bemused by this ambiguous statement. But I also realised that this piece of art makes manifest the dialogue between artist and ‘viewer': if art works. it sets up a proposition. an idea. which lodges inside your head and changes the way you think about the world.
That piece illustrates one of the best aspects of Douglas‘ work: his understanding of the relationship between subject and object —
WHY EXACTLY WOULD SOMEONE CHOOSE A TATI'OO SAYING ‘TRUST ME'?
between 'me' and ‘you‘. liast forward to 2002. when my wife. Fiona Bradley. was organising a mid-career retrospective for Gordon at the Hayward Gallery in London. The exhibition was only a few weeks away and plenty of things still needed to be finalised: Fiona was stressed and unsure whether Douglas was receiving her messages. Then one morning. out of the blue. she received two beautifully typed letters in the post. They were part of an ongoing project in which he sends identical letters to a number of people. but they seemed particularly pertinent: Dear Fiona, I’m closer than you think. Yours, Douglas Gordon
and Dear Fiona, You’re closer than you know. Yours, Douglas Gordon
Typical Gordon: both intimate and distant: brutally honest and wilfully ambiguous: and utterly manipulative.
OPPOSITES
Gordon's work is about much more than just pretty phrases. It almost always deals with dualities such as light and dark: life and death: good and evil. The title of his forthcoming Edinburgh show. Superhumanutural. plays