Under the surface

A great way to divert my son’s attention, if only briefly, from the lure of fragrant blossoms and free seeds is to ask him hard questions about art. He doesn’t have all the answers. Nobody does. But he’ll likely have pondered the question.

‘I loved Future Library,’ my sister says, as we soak up the sun over late lunch outside Modern 1 in Edinburgh. ‘I can see that’s art. But what about the Sarah Lucas? That reminded me of pained intestines tied in knots.’

He scratches his bearded chin and nods. ‘Yeah, but I thought it had a sensual curviness from some angles. It is art.’

‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘How can ladies’ tights stuffed with fluff be art? And how can the Lucas and say the Mona Lisa both be art? What can they possibly have in common?’

‘Not much visually,’ he says. ‘But one of the great discoveries of the 20^th century, according to Arthur C. Danto, was that something could be art without being pleasing to the eye. The history of art until then was all about aesthetics. Artworks had to be beautiful.’

‘Who’s Arthur C. Danto?’

‘Philosopher and art critic. Done a lot of thinking about the question: What is art? So have I. But he’s written more books than me.’

‘Yeah, but you’re here and he’s not. Tell us what you think.’

A little dachshund, from the next picnic-table, sausages it’s way between his feet, chasing a sycamore leaf and making him smile.

‘A good artist is trying to do something specific,’ he says. ‘So an artwork goes through a process of being made with intention. There is meaning in the artist’s mind.

‘Some contemporary art is missing that, I think. So when you look at it you, the viewer, don’t get any meaning from it. When you see good art and think about it, on the other hand, you don’t necessarily get all of its … Platonic meaning, if you like. You do get a shadow of that though. And it’s enough.

‘But you only get that because the artist put it there.’

‘What you’re saying reminds me of Hemingway’s thoughts about writing,’ I say. ‘He claims that most of the meaning of a good story is under the surface. The quality of what the writer does not say is the test of a good story. He called it the Iceberg Theory.’

‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘And quite similar to what I’m talking about.’

‘So what meaning did you get from Future Library?’ my sister asks.

‘The idea is appealing and original, I think,’ he says. ‘It’s an optimistic piece. There’s faith there that despite wars, floods and climate change, people will still be around in 100 years and will want to read books, rather than simply survive from one day to the next, in a post-apocalyptic hell.’

Much as I’m enjoying the chat, I have to stand up now to give space to the small apocalypse that my iceberged Americano has set off in my tummy. ‘Should we go look at the flowers?’ I ask and turn to get their response.

But they’ve gone. Never seen either move so fast. Largo is their usual speed, but from a sitting start they’ve leapt straight to allegro, leaving me with the friendly dachshund sniffing at my toes.

Looking over to the herbaceous border, I can see Sis shoving something into her pocket, in a manner that would be furtive in someone less elegant, while my son has an appreciative nose buried in some pale, pink phlox.

The dachshund looks up at me hopefully, so I offer the last corner of my raspberry almond flapjack, which he gobbles gratefully. ‘What is the meaning of a carnivore eating a vegan biscuit?’ I ask him.

He studies me with big brown eyes and ambles amicably away, in silence.

Secret library

When we’re anywhere near a sunlit garden, chats with my son and sister become a losing battle for their attention. Rather than talking to me, they’d far rather be wandering among the plants, sniffing the blossoms or surreptitiously stuffing purloined seeds into their bulging pockets.

They’re both keen gardeners. And hardened seed bandits.

So as my son’s eyes stray towards the herbaceous borders surrounding the outdoor café tables at Edinburgh’s Modern 1, I struggle to pull his mind back to all the art we’ve been looking at, and the Katie Paterson piece that so impressed him, in particular.

'When you were doing your degree at Glasgow School of Art, you told me you'd made a breakthrough in your own understanding,' I remind him. 'You'd realised that art was about the process as much as the product.'

‘Maybe more so,’ he says. ‘I still believe that. It’s why I really liked the Paterson artwork. There’s a lot going on there.’

We had stumbled upon this seemingly innocuous piece on the wall of a small room on the second floor, and had been fortunate enough to have our puzzled pondering overheard by gallery attendant Jackie Lindsay, who asked if we would like to hear the full story.

We would.

‘This is a certificate made to look like tree rings,’ Jackie had explained. ‘In the centre it’s 2014 while the outer ring is 2114. That’s the year that a thousand Norway spruce trees will be harvested, which the artist has planted in a forest just north of Oslo.’

The wood from those trees will make the paper for a print-run of a newly published book. Each owner of one of the certificates will then be entitled to a copy of that book.

‘And what’s inside the book?’ my son asks.

‘Nobody knows,’ Jackie smiles. ‘Only the authors. Each year, beginning in 2014 with Margaret Atwood, an internationally celebrated writer is being invited to contribute a written piece.’

That story or poem is then locked away in the Silent Room of Oslo’s public library which, with its crafted layers of wood panelling and a glass drawer for each manuscript, etched with its author’s name, is in itself an artistic creation.

Other contributors so far to the slowly-growing book include David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, Han Kang and Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jackie tells us. ‘No one has read any of their stories, except the author. Not even Katie Paterson. And until 2114, no one will.

‘It’s a lovely idea isn’t it?’ She says, looking around our well-worn, fascinated faces, and smiling again.

‘But I don’t think any of us will get to read the stories.’

Future library 

Drink to me, drink to my health

Like any other new skill, looking at art gets easier the more you practise it, especially if you’re lucky enough to have a real artist wandering around the galleries with you.

But there is a downside. Slow learners often provoke an expert, particularly if the latter is a close family member who still unconsciously resents you, many years later, for thwarting his first artistic attempts to drink pink shampoo and stick his little fingers in the electricity sockets.

So when I try to impress my now fully-grown and highly capable son by dismissing an artwork in Edinburgh as ‘a feeble attempt to paint like Picasso’, he makes no effort to let me down gently.

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ he goes. My sister looks at the painting’s label and joins in merrily. ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ she goes.

You’ve guessed it. The painter is Picasso and the painting, of the American photographer Lee Miller, is quite well known, if you know anything about art. The joke’s on me.

But here’s the thing. Slow looking, as my son tells us frequently, is about you and the artwork, initially at least. You study the painting or sculpture and wait. You feel and think. You give it time. You let it percolate. You don’t read the label. You don’t ask an expert what it’s about. You certainly don’t google its context or its history.

None of this is easy, particularly when you’re just starting out. And more especially when you’re looking at modern art, which usually has scant aesthetic appeal or resemblance to anything that’s ever existed in the natural world, except perhaps in the inky depths of the ocean.

You feel the need for guidance strongly. The urge to latch on to facts that can provide a foothold in a swamp of shifting shapes is hard to resist. But you must. You’re learning a skill for yourself, not swotting for an exam or gaining erudition to impress people.

Slow looking can be practised alone. But it’s hugely helpful to have a couple of companions, and the combination of deep-thinking artist and another smart beginner is, I think, just about ideal.

So having passed a couple of pleasantly stimulating, slow-looking hours in National Galleries Scotland: Modern 1, my son, my sister and I figure we’ve earned a seat in the walled garden, bathed in warm sunshine today, along with whatever goodies the attractive café in the basement can provide. (A vegan raspberry almond flapjack and an iced americano with honeycomb syrup for me, if you'd like to know.)

‘Let’s chat about what we’ve seen,’ my son says, when we’ve got ourselves settled around a heavy-duty picnic table. ‘One of my favourites was the Katie Paterson. What was it called?' 

'Future Library,' my sister reminds him. 

'Yeah, that impressed me.‘

‘Tell us what you liked about it,’ Sis says, and he looks to the sky for inspiration before beginning to talk, hesitantly at first and then, as his thoughts clarify and coalesce, with considerable fluency.

‘For me, good art is about the process …’ he begins

Banksy – Queen Street Art

‘The artworld is a huge hungry amoeba,’ my son informs us, before shifting his attention to the menu in the Italian restaurant we’ve found for lunch, following our visit to the Banksy exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. He likes to make us work for his artistic insights, these days.

So I nod and go ‘Yeah sure’ like I know what he means, but my sister bites. ‘How’s that?’ she asks him.

‘Well it’s like this,’ he says, then gives his full attention to pouring balsamic vinegar into a little yellow dish of olive oil, dipping his artisan bread in the pre-emulsion, and gnawing the end of it with obvious relish.

‘I remember we used to have conversations and you weren’t annoying,’ I tell him.

‘No you don’t,’ he says.

‘No I don’t,’ I say.

‘Huge hungry amoeba,’ sis prompts.

‘Yeah well, Banksy began far outside the artworld, right? Outside the law, in fact. He was a graffiti artist, defacing public property for fun and respect, and trying not to get arrested. But look at him now. Art gallery exhibitions. Sotheby auctions. Money to burn.

‘The artworld amoeba saw something tasty, enfolded it in its tentacles and swallowed it whole.’

‘Pseudopodia’, I tell him. ‘An octopus has tentacles. An amoeba has pseudopodia.’

‘Zatright?’ he says. ‘I almost went octopus but thought amoeba gave a better feel for the amorphous artworld engulfing its prey. It’s not the first time, either – Van Gogh, Duchamp, Pollock, Basquiat.

‘You can’t throw shit at the artworld for long, because it’s a shape-shifter. It’ll reach out and swallow you whole, no matter how far back you stand. Tracey Emin once got ridiculed for claiming her bed was an artwork, but she's now a professor at the Royal Academy of Arts. You could hardly get more mainstream artworld.’

This restaurant offers few vegan options, so I stick with the artisan bread and olive oil starter, while sis goes for a large pizza, and my son orders enough food to feed a horse with a tapeworm. He’s a working man these days.

‘But did you enjoy the exhibition?’ I ask him.

‘Well yeah, obviously,’ he says.

‘Thought you would. Banksy’s stuff has the same playful surface and thought-provoking depth I see in the art you make.’

‘Some critics refuse to see any depth,’ he tells me. ‘They say that real art is complex and challenging, so if people are queuing round the block, it must be too easy to be art.’

‘That assumes people are stupid and only art critics can recognise art,’ sis says.

‘Some of them even say that. Don’t talk to me about art critics!’ He waggles a large slice of pizza and melting cheese, in a way that might be aggressive if it wasn’t so limp and floppy.

‘An art critic is someone who can’t draw, paint or sculpt, has no original ideas but craves recognition, and needs people to listen to him. So he writes shit for money.’

He scratches his bearded chin and looks me in the eye, and I know what’s coming.

‘Just like you.’

‘Favourite part of the show?’ I ask, ignoring the abuse.

‘I liked the words as much as the images,’ he says. ‘Words can add something to art. Sometimes they are the art – like in Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit.

‘Couple of things Banksy wrote stick in my mind. ‘It’s not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster. That feels true to me. You can't know how it'll turn out when you begin a piece of art – and you have to take chances. 

‘I think my favourite though was his story about a child telling Picasso that when he grew up he wanted to be an artist.

‘You can’t do both,' Picasso told him.

Slow looking

The Blute-Fin Windmill (Glasgow Museums)

It's been a while since my artist son and I got together without domestic stuff weighing us down and slowing the pace of our lightning brains and scintillating conversations.

So we've arranged to meet in the French Gallery at Kelvingrove and take in some paintings, and the first thing I do wrong is start reading the labels, my thinking being that an uneducated viewer like myself needs guidance on what he's supposed to be looking at.

'No! No!' he tells me. ‘What you already know about a painting isn't relevant on your first encounter. It's just you and the artwork. Look at it. Engage with it. Notice things. Put them into words, if it helps. It’s called Slow Looking. 

'So take your time and tell me what you see here,' he nods towards a small work mounted at eye level and framed by ornate brass, as most of the paintings in this gallery seem to be.

'It's a windmill,' I tell him. 'Up on a hill against a blue sky with fluffy clouds, viewed from what looks like an allotment that has a rickety old garden shed, lit by the sun. I like the shed. It’s bright and homely. In fact the whole scene sort of glows.'

‘Very good. What else can you see? Look more closely.'

I step in and notice French flags on top of the windmill and a viewing tower beside it. 'Why are there French flags on the windmill and a viewing tower beside it?' I ask him.

‘Because this is The Blute-Fin Windmill, Montmartre, painted by Vincent Van Gogh,’ my sister reads from the label, having either failed to get the memo or decided to ignore it, as aunts often do.

‘This windmill was a popular tourist attraction,’ she reads on. ‘Because of the magnificent views it gave over the city of Paris.’

I stare expectantly at my son, waiting for him to repeat the admonition to engage with the artwork before reading anything about it. But of course he doesn’t. Correcting dads when they’re wrong comes naturally. Correcting aunts would be rude.

‘I’ve noticed something about these little figures milling around the windmill,’ I tell him. ‘Viewed from a few feet away they’re clearly people. One's even holding an umbrella. But up close they’re just splodges of colour. How does a painter do that? Is it planned precisely or does he just go blob, splash, dash and see what happens?’

He pauses, trying to put into words a skill that exists quite happily without language. ‘It’s not really either of those,’ he says. ‘You sort of feel your way into it and the feeling transmits itself to your hand without going through your  … intellect. You get the essence of the thing and your hand moves.

‘You can even look at it afterwards and wonder how you did it – and sometimes you just don’t know.’

‘So does that mean art can’t be taught?’ I ask.

 ‘Can anything really be taught?’ he replies.

‘I guess not,’ I say. ‘You just have to learn stuff yourself, don’t you?’

A little splodge of colour beside me grows much more animated than Van Gogh’s on the viewing tower. ‘You do remember I was a teacher for 30 years,’ it tells me. ‘Are you saying I didn’t teach anybody anything, in all that bloody time?’

My son gives me a long look then shakes his head sadly. ‘You're still learning about slow looking, chief,’ he says. ‘But you're the best I've ever seen at slow thinking.’

While my guitar gently weeps

"Someone once said they found me intimidating," Bob tells me as we're sat in his back garden, sipping coffee from his bean-to-cup machine, a thing I'd never heard of, whose price when I looked it up later provoked a small pang of envy for a lifestyle that delivers mellow coffee on the patio, a specialist workshop in the extension and a black beast of a BMW in the driveway.

Surprised at first by this depiction of a man that in 50 years I’ve never heard raise his voice, much less lose his temper, I eventually hit on the answer. “You’re good-looking and carry yourself with an air of confidence,” I tell him. “Some might find that intimidating. You also look down your nose at people.”

“I’m six feet three,” he says. “I can’t help it.”

“And you’re witty which intimidates the humourless.”

Bob's wife Kim steps through the French windows with a packet of large, hospitable biscuits, briefly stays to chat, then returns to her Zoom call with other international aquaculture experts.   

Bob sips his coffee and nibbles a biscuit, while following the flight of a butterfly that’s finding slim pickings on the patio, and asks a hesitant question.

“How’s your treatment going?”

“Better than I was led to expect,” I tell him. “Hot flushes and tiredness are the main side-effects. Oh and a weird one I noticed the other day when I was in the shower and made the mistake of looking straight down.”

Bob squirms. “Steady on,” he says. “We’re men. We can be good friends without sharing intimate secrets from the shower-room.”

“It’s my legs,” I tell him and he visibly relaxes.

“What’s weird about your legs?”

“They’ve gone bald,” I tell him. “Well, half of them. All the hair has vanished from the outside of each leg. The insides are as hairy as ever.”

“Look,” I add, rolling up my trousers for inspection.

“Bugger me, you’re right,” Bob says. “Did you ask your doc why?”

“Yeah, she said loss of body hair was a side-effect of the hormone treatment. I’d have to get used to looking like a plucked chicken, she said.”

Bob shakes his head. “Harsh but you’re not even that,” he says. You’re a half-plucked chicken. You’re a chicken somebody started plucking, got a phone call from the wife and forgot all about.

“Speaking of plucking, would you like to see the guitars I’m making?”

Happy to drop the subject of my health and always interested in another man’s workshop, I concur and we head inside. A resinous blend of shellac and pinewood welcomes me, as we enter a white-walled room, well-equipped with dark work surfaces and lined with tools, shelves and enticing, grainy woods.

“Looks professional,” I tell him. “I’m guessing making a guitar that sounds good - and looks good - is highly technical. Takes a lot of experience?”

He smiles. “Somebody once said it was easy: you just cut down a tree and take away all the bits that aren’t a guitar.”

“Michaelangelo?”

“Probably,” he picks up a lovely, light-coloured piece of wood. “This is spruce, a favourite for the soundboard. I’ve been using some very old – and very expensive – spruce from the Dolomites. The cool mountain air makes trees grow slowly there, and evenly. Gives you a wood that’s light, strong and resonant.

From our student days together, I remember mellow evenings with beer, girls and Bob on guitar, but I never knew he made them.

“I didn’t then. Built my first three from kits – oh, years ago now. Gave me confidence to start building from scratch. For the moment, I’ve settled on a design that combines classical guitar ideas with techniques for strong steel string constructions. All my guitars are finished with French Polish. Takes a while but produces a lovely, fragile sheen that lets the top vibrate better than a heavy lacquer finish.”

I shake my head with that mix of envy and admiration that craftsmen have inspired in me since I was a boy watching my Dad build TV sets in a small bedroom-workshop, filled with the smoky scent of rosin-core solder.

“Gimme some technical terms, Bob, so I can look them up later and learn more.”

“Sure.” He rubs his chin. “Well, there’s silking, purfling and kerfing.”

“Don’t just make shit up – that’s my job.”

“Silking – small cross-grain lines in the wood, a sign of a perfectly quarter sawn top,” he says. “Purfling – a narrow decorative edge inlaid into the top of a stringed instrument. Kerfing – strips of wood glued around the inside seams to add strength and stability.

"Then there’s chatoyancy, Spanish Heel and a phrase that luthiers often use." He gives me that deadpan look of his. 

"What's that?"

"'Oh shit!'"

“Right. What’s a luthier?”

“Me. Someone who makes stringed instruments, especially violins or guitars. Comes from the French for ‘lute’.”

It’s my turn to broach a sensitive topic. “How you doing since Archie died, Bob?”

"I miss him. He was a lovely dog."

"You think you'll get another?"

"Yes, we will. Another Labrador. We tried for a rescue dog, but you just can't get them now - everybody wants a dog to keep them company since the pandemic. So we're going to buy one."

"How much?"

"Couple of thousand."

"Wow! You got a name in mind?"

Bob scratches his chin. "I reckon good names for dogs have two syllables with a plosive in the middle - like 'p' or 'b' - or a sibilant. So I want to call him Basil."

"Not a common dog's name."

"No, but I like it.  I don't know if I can get it past Kim, though.” 

He gives me that look again. “Especially if it’s a girl.”

The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui

Macaroni balls. Sounds like something a cyclist gets after a long run in tight pants, doesn't it? Hands up when you know for sure that's not what they are.

I'm on a recce in the Cairngorms and I've tried to get up on to the plateau near Coire an t-Sneachda, where deep snowdrifts still cling to the walls of the corrie, even in mid June. Out of nowhere, gusts of wind so strong that they twice have me on my knees force me back down.

Having a coffee in the car while assessing alternative routes, I pull a little plastic bag from my backpack, courtesy of a kind friend who doesn't trust me to feed myself, take one of the mysterious, brown wrinkled balls between thumb and forefinger, and savour the sensual springiness as I squeeze. Dipping it in salt crystals from a silver-paper twist, I raise it to my lips and bite. The mouth-feel and flavour are deeply satisfying.

Draining the coffee, I wipe my lips and head up by a different route. Straight out of the car park, I meet a couple of young, street-clothed women pulled along by a perky Jack Russell on a long lead. They ask the way to the Cairngorm summit, so I point them to the Windy Ridge track. But visions of their little pet soaring like a kite, move me to warn of the likely strong gales up top. They thank me kindly, ignore me completely and push on.

My friend Iain reckons no one ever listens to him. That can't be true or I wouldn't know he says it. But I take his point. It's frustrating that you can't pass hard-won experience on to the young. Muttering about this, I find myself joined in my uphill trudge by a tall, dark, similarly muttering figure, with a woolly bunnet pulled down over his forehead and a scarf covering the lower half of his face up to his nose. His beef seems to be tourists rather than young people, but he sounds as disgruntled as me.

Falling silent as he matches his pace to mine with a loping, effortless stride, he fixes me with a disconcerting stare. I feel compelled to speak, so tell him my plan to come back and camp out on Ben Macdui, once I've recced the route.

"Wild camping, iss it?" he says, as he holds me with his glittering eye.

I sense disapproval but burble on. "I've been on a course in the Lake District and now I'm ready to go solo. I'm really looking forward to it. I want to test myself in tough conditions." 

"On Ben Macdui?" he says, shaking his head. "You'll not haff heard of Am Fear Liath Mòr?"

"What's that?"

"It iss a who, not a what. The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui."

He says no more and a sepulchral silence falls between us, as our footsteps crunch on the stony track, three of mine to two of his, in a syncopated, slightly stressed beat. I'm keen to hear more but hesitant to question him, so I study the plants beside the winding track, many of them more at home in cooler climes than Scotland. 

Dark-hearted flowers of dwarf cornel peek out between clumps of Alpine lady's mantle, their silver-edged leaves spotted with shimmering dewdrops. Ragged deergrass blossoms seek the sun, while solitary bees sip nectar from cloudberry flowers, whose rose-orange fruits I last saw nestling in tall glasses in a Turku boardroom. 

"Strange tales are told of Liath Mòr," my companion comes to life again. "Many more will never be told." He lapses into silence and I wonder if one lifetime will be enough to reach the end of this conversation. 

"Sightings are rare," he starts up again, casting a glance in my direction. "But his presence is often felt and his footsteps heard in the mist ... behind you."

I suppress a shudder and try scepticism. "Yeah, but you get stories like that in the hills. Most told by tourists with scant experience of wind and mist and mountains."

My companion emits a guttural sound and I realise I've annoyed him. "Professor John Norman Collie wass not a tourist," he says. "He was an eminent scientist and mountaineer, the first to tell of Am Fear Liath Mòr."

Crunch, crunch on the track. This is a man who talks slow but walks deceptively fast, and I'm starting to pant as I struggle to keep pace, keen to hear his story. 

“Collie heard footsteps stalking him, near the cloud-covered summit of the Ben. He told himself it was nonsense but the footsteps kept on coming. He was seized with terror. 'I took to my heels,’ he reported later, ‘staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles. There is something very queer about the top of Ben Macdui and I will not go back there again.’"

My companion turns his head to gauge my reaction. We walk on. Crunch, crunch, crunch. He speaks again. “Alexander Tewnion was not a tourist. He wass a naturalist and mountaineer. Will I tell you his story?”

By this time I can breathe or speak but not both, so I simply nod and he continues. "As Tewnion reached the top of Ben Macdui, the mist swirled across the Lairig Ghru, shrouding the mountain. He heard loud footsteps and a huge shape came charging at him. He pulled his revolver and fired three times.

“'When it still came on, I turned and hared down the path,’ he reported later, ‘reaching Glen Derry in a time that I have never bettered.’”

Crunch, crunch, crunch. I've heard more than enough to know I should find another mountain for my next camping expedtion. The wind is up again, as strong as ever, shrieking like a lost soul and trying to push me back down the mountain. 

"What about you?" I ask and my companion's dark eyes turn towards me. "Have you ever encountered the Big Grey Man?" 

The cloud is down now, clammy on our faces, as we approach the snow-banks in the headwall of Coire Cas. "I haff not," he says, lengthening his stride and pulling effortlessly away from me. 

As the cloud closes around him his soft Highland tones sound in my ears one last time.

"But you have.”