Visiting Galleries in Edinburgh

Either I really like galleries or I just get myself into situations where I end up visiting them. During the three-and-a-half weeks I spent in Edinburgh I didn't do a whole lot of touristy stuff. I explored Edinburgh Castle, climbed Arthur's seat, and dropped into the National Museum but that's about it.

I went to four galleries.

• National Gallery
• Portrait Gallery
• Dean Gallery
• Modern Art Gallery

The National Gallery of Scotland

Poplars on the Epte by Claude Monet.

First one I hit was the National Gallery with Sierra, an art school grad I met in Aberdeen. She was a bit pressed for time so we blazed through the exhibit but it was all very impressive. Unfortunately, that means I wasn't taking notes but I do remember how Monet's Poplars on the Epte captured my attention as soon as I walked in the room.

Another interesting painting was by Alexander Nasmyth, depicting Edinburgh's shopping avenue, Princes St., in 1825. Nasmyth is most famous for his portrait of Robert Burns.

Some paintings had a bit of a story behind them. I noticed one that was left quite incomplete and they suspect that the artist had been given new specs because they seem to have abandoned that painting and started a new one on a taller canvas.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

The Portrait Gallery featured a free exhibit called "heroes" based on a self-help book written by Dr. Samuel Smiles back in 1859. I went to the exhibition with two of my flat mates and a friend each.

Dr. Smiles' book was basically a bunch of short blurbs telling the stories of people with good character. His take on good character was self-improvement and self-reliance. Sounds good, but he also had some old-fashioned ideals like dying gloriously in battle.

While the art wasn't stunning, some of the stories were pretty impressive. One of these featured Sir Walter Scott who shares his name with an unavoidable monument in Edinburgh. He had gone into debt some £ 120,000 because of some business venture and instead of declaring bankruptcy he arranged to have the sum paid off by the future royalties from his books.

I was glad to see the exhibit wasn't one-sided. There was a section on flaws of the book, such as leaving out distasteful details in some of the stories. In another corner it was noted that Dr. Smiles also featured very few stories about great women.

The Oncologists by Ken Currie.

In other parts of the gallery there was a spooky piece by Ken Currie entitled "The Oncologists." It had three doctors peering back at the viewer from a lowlit room. It was meant to commemorate the oncologists while evoking some of the dark feelings associated with cancer.

The Portrail Gallery also had a piece by Douglas Gordon, a fairly famous Scottish modern artist. The piece was titled Self-portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe. His work can also be seen in the Modern Art Gallery and I remember seeing his piece, 24 Hour Psycho at the VAG back in Vancouver. Cool stuff.

Dean and Modern Art Galleries

My artsie friends, Sierra and Nikki with Charles Jencks' landscape sculpture in the background.

Sierra, Nikki, and I had arranged to meet infront of the "Dean Modern Gallery" and were surprised to find that they were separate galleries just across the street from each other. Both featured modern works, Dada, Surrealist, and loads of scupltures by Paolozzi. They even had a reconstruction of Paolozzi's studio, an overwhelming clutter of plaster bodies and body parts, books, tools, and other miscellaneous junk. There were a couple Star Trek toys and I noticed the box for a model of the Millenium Falcon on one shelf.

The three of us were all impressed and more than a little envious of him for having a big space to keep all your junk and just be creative. It would be great to have your latest project just lying around for you to work on as you please. If I find myself in a permanent place of my own again I'm definitely going to consider going with this kind of "decoration."

Elsewhere, David Shrigley had an interesting series of photos featuring a fake, over-sized cigarette butt lying on the street. He placed it beside sewers, sidewalk weeds, and bottles, all of which looked quite small because your mind just assumed the cigarette butt was the right size and used it as a scale for all other objects in the photo.

Upstairs, Auerbach had a room of canvases sloshed thick with paint. The colours chosen for each piece were very intersting if sometimes borderline pukey. But with all the texture in the paint they were very expressive.