Crowning achievement for Maclean?
BRUCE McLEAN emerged from Glasgow on to the British art scene in the 1960s, a time when the cultural and social revolution taking place created an appetite for a new and innovative approach to creativity.
McLean went that bit further, with his radical approach to his chosen genre of sculpture he aimed at taking the po-faced seriousness out of high art by adopting a more irreverent style. He could have been the person who placed a traffic cone on the head of the Duke of Wellington statue in central Glasgow such is his opposition to the elitism and preciousness of the art world.
After Glasgow School of Art (1961-1963), McLean studied at St Martin's until 1966. There he studied under some of the artists who were pioneering a new form of abstract sculpture. McLean thought these artists (dubbed "the new generation") were too distanced from the real world with simple shapes arranged in abstract compositions.
Since this style held no interest for him McLean went his own way. He even formulated a unique concept referring to all his work as sculpture whether it be painting, print, ceramic, photography, graphic design, performance art or film.
While perhaps not an easy concept to follow, it seems a reasonable idea and one which marks McLean out as an individual. Conceptual art was still fairly new then so it would seem that he was at the forefront of a movement that required more than just looking.
McLean was not comfortable with the kind of sculpture being produced in the early 1960's when he was at art school, so what did he do? He rebelled. This approach obviously got him noticed and, by the age of 27, he was offered a solo exhibition at the Tate, where he seized the chance to make a subversive statement about the art world's spurious conventions and hierarchical power structures.
The exhibition (1972) was entitled Retrospective: King for a Day; it mainly consisted of a list of ideas for 1000 prospective artworks presented in a catalogue exhibited on the gallery floor. The idea was to parody the contemporary art world's continual need to define and categorise artworks.
Fifty years on, McLean is still waiting for the credit he deserves for his pioneering work challenging the notion that high art, as demonstrated by his former tutor Sir Anthony Caro, should take precedence over popular art/culture and, as conceived by some, the lower end of contemporary cultural consumption.
McLean's latest exhibition at Modern One in Edinburgh is not a big affair but the title I Want my Crown is a loud shout at the art world. As one enters the exhibition loud rock music can be heard, this music is the soundtrack to McLean's dance shown on a screen in one of the exhibition rooms. Indeed, it is the piece that goes by the name of the exhibition title I Want my Crown. While he dances (or more accurately shuffles about) he keeps trying to reach a crown which has been placed above his head on a small shelf. Of course, he never reaches it, however, this is a statement, it is both funny and ironic.
It is plain to see why McLean deserves his crown. In this exhibition it is clear that he has amassed an impressive back catalogue of evidence of his innovative contribution to the art of this era (from the early 1960's until today).
His work is varied and random, it is difficult to pin him down but remember - according to McLean, it is all sculpture. His performance art pieces as shown in photographs from the period are interesting, I am not sure if he was the first artist to view the human body as a living sculpture? Nevertheless, here he is posing in the most impossible, uncomfortable and daring poses atop a plinth usually reserved for inanimate pieces of sculpture.
McLean seems to instinctively know that humans possess the inbuilt capacity to be a sculpture. He knew this before Sir Anthony Gormley explored the idea of the human body (using his own body) as sculpture and he did it with more humour.
In this exhibition, by encountering a selection of archive photographs, painting, sculpture, design and more, the viewer will become aware of what McLean wants the world to know. That is, there is room for levity in the creation of art, it should not always be a serious business. I hope he gets his crown (or whatever the equivalent is) because the art world would be a duller place without people like Bruce McLean in it.
CATHY BELL
