The Cultural Devolution by Mulholland Neil

Author:Mulholland, Neil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Within two days of appearing in 'Expressive Images' Campbell left for New York to study at the Pratt Institute, courtesy of a Fulbright scholarship, where he was able to utilize his skills as an impresario more fruitfully, quickly establishing his reputation with two solo exhibitions, at Barbara Toll Fine Arts and the John Weber Gallery in 1983. Between 1983 and 1984 Campbell's work appeared in thirteen group exhibitions and two solo shows in the usa and one solo exhibition in Munich, before being given a solo exhibition at London's Riverside Gallery His renown in the usa was such that he did not return to Glasgow until 1986, by which point he had taken on Morley's mantle as Britain's most successful, and most productive, ex-pat painter.

Commuting daily from Manhattan to his studio in Brooklyn in subway cars covered by subway artist Keith Harings, Campbell became enraptured by the tales of P. G. Wodehouse and Bram Stoker. His paintings were soon dominated by pretty vacant young Englishmen in tweeds and plus fours who often appeared to be undertaking experiments or exploring absurd landscapes: all the 'eccentricities' of American expectations of Europe at one false remove. Hollywood clichés of Scottish identity were also favoured, especially the shortbread-tin landscapes of Edwin Landseer: 'I usually paint things that are typically Scottish because apart from Landseer no-one's really done that. And he made such an arse of it – in a wonderful way.'50 Although American critics keenly described the manner in which the 'fir trees, the ferns, the rugged terrain, the frequent castle ruins in the background distinguish his landscapes as Scottish',51 they were more than aware that 'the artist, a native of Glasgow ... has toured the Scottish Highlands only within the confines of an automobile'.52 Like Morley, Campbell's travellers and explorers did not seek authentic experiences of the landscape; their journeys were dictated by aesthetic predicates. The Man Who Climbs Maps (1984) revealed a world which has collapsed into its own representation, a world that is completely at the mercy of man. The attempt to paint the world is futile; we are reminded of the old chestnut, 'The perfect map would cover the entire kingdom.' Campbell, then, reveals a typically postmodern fascination with clichéd views of nature and culture, the déjà-lu. While there is a strong element of Morleian catastrophe, confusion and artifice, 'there's also some order in it and the order tends to be the composition'.53 Unlike Morley, Campbell was not content to allow man to ascend nature. In a number of drawings and paintings we find nature taking 'revenge' on its human analysts, as in Fern's Revenge – Pool (1984).

On an iconographic level, Campbell's emphasis on the performative and temporal character of producing and looking at paintings was explicit in his recurring choice of hikers and pitched tents as symbols which remind us 'that we are but temporary dwellers on this earth'.54 At the level of practical genesis, by painting at such a furious pace, Campbell's working method increasingly paralleled Wodehouse's.55 Basically

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