Scottish Art Pick 2: Charles Rennie Mackintosh & the Promise of Spring - Esther
Quote by J.D. Sedding
It’s nice to be able to say that you remember positive things from your
childhood, particularly when they still connect with you as an adult. Charles
Rennie Mackintosh was the first artist name I ever knew. His whole name seemed
to run together like one word. My parents were (& remain) fans; Dad in
particular who as an architecture student was allowed as he puts it “to climb
all over” Glasgow School of Art in order to make a full set of architectural
drawings of the building for his final year’s study (1971?). Mother was a
crafter & she made clothes & drew for us. They both had a taste for the
mildly esoteric at the time. There were some art monographs on the bookshelves.
My godparents were an artist & architect respectively.
In this way, I grew up learning to look for & respect the art in all
objects as well as places & buildings. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so
easy for me to be so enamoured of the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (I
have the temerity to shorten it to CRM from hereon) since he undertook &
excelled in so many disciplines: architecture & painting as well as interior,
textile, furniture & metalwork design. It’s as if there’s something for everyone
in his oeuvre. In addition, CRM is one of about three or four subjects you can
consistently get Dad properly excited by in conversation to this day.
During his lifetime, CRM’s success, ability to make a living &
popularity came & went but there is no doubting it now. You can tell he is
popular these days by the amount of junk his designs get horrible reproductions
pasted onto, completely at odds with his purpose & notions of all artistic undertaking.
There was pain, sadness & rejection in his life but I’d always much rather
focus on why he’s well regarded today & why we should be grateful that he
existed.
He was a key influence on the Vienna Secessionists at the time – he was
their Elvis, their Leadbelly. He was properly & deservedly revered for the
ideas he generated & inspired & the skills he had mastered. Back then,
he was The New & the Secessionists were all about art claiming its time,
not to mention placing artistic freedom & effort over commercial endeavours.
Considering Gustav Klimt was a co-founder of the movement, it is easy to see how
they all came together as like-minded spirits & why CRM’s emphasis on
pattern, the beautiful & the decorative was so significant.
Art Nouveau arose from a vision of unifying artistic concepts & applied
art, from the Arts & Crafts movement & sought to enrich the lives of
those for which their objects were made. Art Nouveau then gave way to Art Deco
& whilst maintaining the interest in an overall fusion of decoration, style
& function, Deco adopted a smidge of Cubism & begat a spikier &
more streamlined, “modern” look.
Although much of his work may be considered Art Deco (for instance his astonishing
Derngate interiors in Northampton), CRM’s reliance on plants & the natural
world for inspiration owes more to Art Nouveau. But really, much like Klimt
himself, he transcends both movements.
CRM’s conviction in a unified concept running from the exterior of a
building, to the rooms, through the furniture all the way through to the finer
details of the light fittings was made reality in very few remaining examples.
The more well-known instances of renovation or preservation denote a period
when he could overwhelm a room with decoration inspired by the natural world, as
if the space itself was bursting into new life. Every corner, table & cup would
be stuffed with his distinctive approach to ornamentation.
Looking for recent signs of life, one sees that just as CRM is present
everywhere in Scotland, so is he everywhere in Spring. It’s hard to avoid the
parallels between the flatness & perfection of the lines he created with
what the emerging season brings. Among the abandoned streets, life emerges
everywhere & as they say nature finds a way. His floral paintings are some
of the most beautiful of his works. The cross pollination of ideas between CRM
& his wife Margaret explains the double signature found on his botanical
watercolours – his initials along with hers.
The tendrils, the spiralling fronds & lush, fertile shapes appear in
the works of both artists; stylised & graphic, sometimes illustrative,
their influence on each other has rendered their artistic differences almost
indistinguishable for some stages of his life, as if their respective works are
the living products of their partnership.
It’s easy to see from any of his exquisite designs & paintings that he
was the most magnificent draughtsman with a staggering level of control &
discipline of line. He was master of a range of media & it takes an
absolute genius to engage me even a little in the applied arts – I’ve wandered
too many galleries & museums looking at endless TEAPOTS. But it isn’t just
that. There are dozens of above-competent artists. CRM matters because he moved
things along. Despite his need to make a living, he managed to elevate form,
line & space, decoration, sometimes magic over reality & sometimes even
innovation over practical function – apparently those high-backed chairs aren’t
all that comfortable – in a way we can still recognise as significant &
desirable today.
In a human sense however, CRM matters because his work represents the
beauty in life & the hope that lies in beauty. There is always beauty.
There is always hope.
As the great man himself once lectured, “Art is the flower, life the green
leaf. Let every artist strive to make
his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world
that there may be, there are things more precious, more beautiful, more lasting
than life itself.”
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, we salute you.
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