Out Of The Frying Pan: Remembering William Scott

William Scott, 'Figure And Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 1219 mm x 1530 mm, 1956

We're officially amidst what would normally be the academic Easter break - although that's clearly pretty meaningless, given the current situation.  Many teaching staff have continued to work from home, preparing online teaching materials and attending to the myriad paper/screen/data-based tasks they would normally have to squeeze into the gaps between actual teaching.  Some may be consequently wondering a bit about the exact nature of their vocations/careers.  What exactly, is implied - if so much of the job can be performed without any children in the room?

William Scott, 'Table Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 1433 mm x 1838 mm, 1951

Whatever the ins and outs of all that, I've always been thankful that my own support role as a Technician, mostly involves the everyday practicalities of what happens in actual rooms.  Most of my time is spent engaging with tangible things I can count on shelves, mix up in pots, or clean under a running tap.  Even in Photography lessons, much of my time is spent charging batteries, changing lenses, and setting up lights.  That's all fine and dandy with me - but it does, of course, make it harder to envisage how I might do my job from home.  Given that I am much luckier than many, in still being paid (for now, at least - and something I'm very grateful for), it seemed only reasonable to seek out something significant that might be of use to students and staff, once/if things return to a situation resembling 'normality'.

William Scott, 'The Harbour', Oil on Canvas, 613 mm x 917 mm, 1952

Something that has happened on a fairly regular basis, over the years, is that teachers (and sometimes students) have turned to me, uttering words to the effect of, "Quick! - can you think of an artist/artwork that exemplify (fill in style/approach/theme of choice)?"  An ability to throw up an appropriate name, at least some of the time, has gained me the reputation of being a bit of a walking Art encyclopaedia, although I'm generally at pains to point out that  it's really only because I've been around longer than most other folk in the faculty.  I've been visiting exhibitions and reading books on the subject for most of that time - and for no other reason than I was interested.  If nothing else, I guess I should be grateful my visual memory still works reasonably well - even if I often have to grope a bit harder for the names, these days.

William Scott, 'Yellow And Black Composition', Oil on Canvas,  1524 mm x 1016 mm, 1953

Anyway, I've long thought  I should get this potential archive out of my head, and into a form that others could access a little more readily.  There's no shortage of books and online resources already out there, obviously - but it did seem to me that it might be useful to compile something focussed around some of our more consistent schemes of work, or around examples that might prove refreshing alternatives to the same old - same old.  Let's hope that proves to be the case.  If nothing else, it's keeping me mentally engaged - and has certainly allowed me to delve a little deeper than I might habitually do when challenged at short notice.  I've already had a lot of fun researching partially remembered artists and artworks, and making the kind of connections that transcend my habitual thought patterns.  I've reacquainted myself with a few slightly unexpected names in the process too.  One such is William Scott, and what better excuse could there be to have a look at some of his paintings here?

William Scott, 'Green Pears And Blue Pot', Oil on Canvas, 304 mm x 384 mm, 1955

There doesn't appear to be too much drama in Scott's biography, and I suppose some might also argue there's nothing especially edgy about his work generally.  Mostly, it seems to epitomise an aesthetic often reduced these days (in the shorthand of designers and interior decorators), to 'Mid-Century Modern'.  It's certainly not too difficult to bracket him with other British artists like Nicholson, Hepworth, etc., who sought to extend the modernist tradition of formal abstraction, originated by such pioneers as Cezanne, Braque or Mondrian.  There always remains some connection with observed appearance, and a degree of step-by-step logic in his progressive distillation of subject matter into increasingly stripped-down compositions of  essential shapes.  In Scott's case, there's also a typically British fixation on modestly domestic subject matter (he most readily identifies as a still life painter), and to a largely tonal, slightly chalky, approach to colour.  Both feel typical of the paintings of these islands, and the period in which he rose to prominence.  It's also perhaps worth noting that his work might typify the kind of soft utopianism that prevailed, to some extent, in the post-war period.

William Scott, 'Egyptian Memory', Oil on Canvas, 1118 mm x 1829 mm, 1958

All that Modernist urge to abstract and to purify is, of course, a pretty familiar story by now -  and one which is rapidly diminishing in the rearview mirror of art history.  But, the point of this post isn't about just regurgitating what one lazily thinks one knows about a particular artist's work, but rather - the frisson one gains from viewing afresh something half forgotten, and discovering it still has the power to excite on purely visual grounds.  There may be little that's grand or unduly extrovert in Scott's painting, but, like Braque, Morandi, or even Chardin - he consistently found an impressive degree of poetry in a few domestic items on a table top.  In a typical Scott painting, it seems to be all about the considerable visual tension that might exist between those skillets, cups and bottles, once they are reduced to emblematic essentials, and distributed across a modest arena.

William Scott, 'Painting', Oil on Canvas, 2120 mm x 1350 mm, 1959

As I say, that whole formal thing may hold less currency, nowadays. But when its ideological or philosophical underpinnings are set to one side, there's still something about it that chimes with many of my own aesthetic defaults - however many subsequent layers of implied meaning or theoretical justification I may seek to erect on top.  The disposition of shapes on a picture plane, the acceptance of the inherent flatness of that plane, some attempt to impose a degree of geometric organisation on the visual world, as well as an overall urge to simplify, are all instincts I've long come to acknowledge in myself.  They're also things William Scott exemplified with both verve and elegance - and mostly without moving very far from his own kitchen table.

William Scott, 'White Floating Forms', Oil on Canvas, 1016 mm x 1276 mm, 1960

William Scott, 'Blue And Black Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 864 mm x 1118 mm, 1962

My own acquaintance with Scott came, via a fellow degree student, sometime around 1981.  Scott himself was still active then, although it's probably fair to say his work had settled into a fairly undemanding reiteration of familiar tropes.  As I've mentioned previously, prevailing art trends were definitely moving in a contrary direction, but in Bristol Polytechnic's slightly cosy Fine Art bubble, it was pretty easy to overlook that fact.  The tendency to look further south-west, to that whole mid-century St Ives scene (with which many of our tutors, and indeed, Scott, himself) had been attached, was still pretty powerful, even in the early 1980s.  It became all the more so, once one took the trip down the peninsula (and back in time), to experience all that seductive, self-abstracting landscape at first hand.

William Scott, 'Blue Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 1218 mm x 1831 mm, 1969

William Scott, 'Still Life With Orange Note', Oil on Canvas, 1680 mm x 1720 mm, 1970

Of course, nowadays, you can't move in Cornwall for tourist-facing galleries of all shapes and sizes, and many are stacked with mass-produced, sub-sub Herons, Lanyons, Nicholsons - and, indeed Scotts.  Such stuff also lines the walls of every other second home and holiday rental throughout the region.  And my own inspirations and enthusiasms long since turned away from both the landscape and the still-life table - towards something far more urban and potentially hard-edged.  But, just as one should avoid the tendency to pigeonhole or write-off an artist for superficial reasons - one should also resist denying one's own back story.  We all get wherever we're going by a variety of circuitous routes, after all.  Above all, I should always remember to keep looking at stuff afresh, and to never deny myself the pleasure of re-engaging, on its own terms, with work I'd half-forgotten.  Mostly, I'm just glad to have remembered that some of those Scott's really are very good.  Who knows? - they might even get some of our students to think a bit more clearly about shape and composition, one day.

      

William Scott, 'Permutation 4 - Ochre', Oil on Canvas, 1676 mm x 1726 mm, 1978