Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has been re-hung to celebrate it’s 50^th anniversary. I only found out about it as I was waiting for my friends in the small and chilly hall of the main building (I like how, in modern art galleries, every-day objects become recontextualised and you find yourself admiring the ingenuity of the metal coat hanger in the hall). What that means is that works than never make it out of the archives are uniquely available for viewing, and this is a Good Thing.

The museum’s collection is split between the main building and the Dean Gallery on the opposite side of the road. The location of the museums is very unassuming – they are housed in grand buildings in a very quiet part of town, on the Northern side of the Water of Leith, across Dean Bridge. Surrounded by extensive gardens, they feel isolated and calm. In fact, it was late afternoon when we were there, and there were only a few people inside, contributing to the atmosphere of a place beyond time.

The collection in the main building is just big enough to be skimmed through in a an hour, which was how long we had until closing time. One of the sections celebrated drawing, and there were some really unique pieces to be seen. Out of loyalty, I have to mention Klimt’s sketch of a couple, the woman heavily pregnant, lowering their heads as if facing an invisible judge. But there were works of many artists I have never heard of before, and whose names I will not remember, but whose drawings really touched me. There was a work called ‘The Hokey Pokey Girl’, all bizarre and warped, the girl’s face all eyes and mouth, like a child’s drawing. I passed it without thinking, but then felt compelled to come back to it, and the atmosphere of the scene, the characters of the people shown, the murky light somehow conveyed, the quasi-illicit meaning of it all made clear in the ticket seller’s face emerging from the shadows, all done in simple pen, really came through for me. There was also a drawing the title of which I have forgotten, but it depicted a group of young men standing around, perhaps in a courtyard, their bodies close, the drawing breathing the air of autumn, of teenage youth… It was very good. And, yes, a charcoal sketch of a fat female body emerging from the darkness, pale and old, with just enough light for the viewer to be able to make out the contours of this expanse of flesh. Finally, there was a simple piece of A4 printer paper, blue-tacked to a plank and covered in glass. In the middle of the page was a tiny image, perhaps 2x3 cm, and it looked just like home print-out of a scan of an old photograph. But it was not – it was, instead, a micro-drawing, done by hand, in pencil, by a man my age. It was so detailed and so minute my eyes watered when I tried to focus on the features of the individuals, the drawing pretending to be a school photograph of a class of children taken in the nineteen thirties. Madness.

There was no shortage of typical modern art gallery sort of stuff which makes you either shrug and go away or, well, take frantic notes I suppose. Black square on white background sort of thing, and I admit to walking past it without looking. The current display clearly shows some groundbreaking moments – things that were important as they were being done for the first time, like a 1x1 study of a London street, which IS a replicate of a piece of London street, bizarrely hanging on a wall (‘Addison Crescent Study’ by Boyle Family). We spent a long time looking at Douglas Gordon’s ‘List of Names’, where he charts his life through the names of people he remembers meeting, writing them down in identical font in long columns running the height of the gallery. Some are misspelled, some half-forgotten, some we even recognised. It inspired me to do a similar exercise if I ever find myself with a pen, a paper, and a lot of time.

The best thing about the gallery is that it is right on the Water of Leith, and allows for a thoughtful, refreshing walk home through the green.