An Old Pub Near the Angel (16 page)

Literary artists will still be able to fight. They will be able to do their work. Certain areas and markets will be closed off to them. It will become increasingly difficult for authentic writers to enter institutes of higher learning in a teaching capacity, not unless they have obtained a ‘Degree in Creative Writing’ and are equipped to teach students how to disguise their passions, conceal their emotions, dull their minds, push the self-destruct button on their imagination.

For generations Departments of English Studies and other language literatures have fought to pronounce the death of ‘the artist’, that and their own entitlement to a tenured position, the right to earn a lifetime’s salary derived from the artwork produced by the deceased. Nowadays the one branch of the study that pays lip service to the human beings who create the stuff, ‘Creative Writing’, is slowly but surely having its life snuffed out from within, like a worker dying from the effects of asbestos fibre. People who die from this do not ‘pass on’; the breath is squeezed from their lungs forever and ever, amen.

When I find myself within such an institution I feel like the character portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the movie about Zombies and Sunflower Plants, as I stroll across campus, trying to mask my self-consciousness, awaiting a bloodless body in a flowing black robe to halt in mid-stride, pointing me out to his colleagues in an accusatory shriek: Aaahhhh! Aaarrtist!

A hunner and fifty years ago, or thereabouts, Herman Melville suggested that two novels might exist for every one created; the unwritten one concerned the endeavours of the writer in the act of creating the damn thing. The horrible part of this is that Melville, as I recall, was silent for almost twenty years. Meanwhile
in other parts of the world the literary texts of a handful of writers indicate that not only might they have shared Melville’s insight, they were attempting to rectify matters. But what truly would have excited Melville was that these furnir literary artists were doing it simultaneously.

What furnir literary artists is he talking about?

Away and fucking read the fucking books.

The work of these artists is at the heart of what we call the ‘existential tradition in literature’. Anglo-American institutions have difficulty with such furnir stuff.

Theorists of ‘Creative Writing’ have derived a ‘holding tactic’ to stem the nightmare: Graduate Students are now instructed that in order to qualify for the Jackie Wilson Degree in Creative Writing – ever Higher and Higher – they should submit a Final Paper that is a Critical Analysis of themselves in the act of creation; to what extent does their finished ‘art product’ match the original idea, conception or design?

Ah, excellent, an Anglo-American counterblast to the literary Enlightenment that allows a return to Shaftesbury and Alexander Pope, while sneaking in a neat wee argument for the existence of a Christian God –
a priori
, if we do our homework. What more could be asked by academia?

Under the banner of ‘Creative Writing’ the Anglo-American higher education institutions have tried to corner the ‘literary art market’ for years, producing their own literary journals, anthologies of poetry and fiction, chosen from among themselves, and fostered within academia as ‘the good’. Nobody buys them apart from each other, but it does not matter, because the public pays for most of it, via state and/or government subsidy. Nevertheless, students are taught to recognise this work as ‘the good’. Forget all that existential angst stuff, our society moves as one, with a sharply defined set of criteria. For all I know, ‘Creative Writing’ has its roots in a 1950s
CIA/MI6 propaganda project relating to literary arts and the suppression of debate generally. Certainly it bears the analytic stamp of that giant of the Anglo-American intellect, B.F. Skinner.

Fortunately there are academics who believe that a relationship exists between art and those who create it, that this may be protected and fostered, thus they fight to employ real writers.

Perhaps the defect is not yet structural, that it might be remedied by saturating these tiny departments with living breathing literary artists who can open a vein and offer students a drink. But the artists will not come if time and space is denied them. They will not come if the academics look enviously upon them, and demand that they share the full burden of bureaucratic and administrative necessity. And the artist must say to the academics, Fight yer own fucking war.

The ‘literary art market’ of the world cannot be controlled in the same way as they controlled my father’s craft of picture restoration. Yet the irony is severe. They transformed his craft into a ‘fine art’. They are transforming my art into a craft. Those dulled by institutionalised ‘Creative Writing’ are roused to excitement by talk of ‘craft’. Students walk about arm-in-arm and with beatific smiles, bearing a striking resemblance to the duo who came finally for Josef K. Oh, they say, we are learning our craft. Do not talk to us about formal necessity or arguments from design; when we hear any of those we run for cover. Next year our Creative Writing Professor is taking a Sabbatical to follow up an idea he has for a Gothic Romance. But he may do a Literary Novel instead. His editor, a former M. Litt graduate student from our very programme, has asked him to outline a proposal, always remembering the subtle nuances of the literary market. But what about the one he discussed with us in class, about the Detective Chief of Police who continually
flouts Political Authority but always gets his man through the powers of Ice-Cool Logic and his intimate knowledge not only of the underworld, but Early Victorian Fiction in Old London Town?

My father still received picture-restoration work in a private capacity. One of his personal customers was the Director of Kelvingrove Art Galleries, Dr Honeyman. Occasionally he and a pal made antiques (
sic
). His pal was a cabinetmaker to trade. At that time in Glasgow many of the city’s cabinetmakers and French-polishers were employed around the Corunna Street area of Finnieston. Along Argyle Street were various crafts and antique shops. Different tradesmen could work on the same job. One fine cabinetmaker was Ben Smith, British champion racing cyclist. (By coincidence Ben Smith’s daughter and her husband are now close friends of me and Marie.) My father always knew when he arrived by the sound of the cycle’s handlebars against the workshop window.

Craft-suppliers and related businesses were centred around the old Anderston Cross, and right the way along Stobcross Street was a range of carriers to transport your goods across the world. I tramped that whole area as a 15-year-old message-boy, carrying goods to the shipping offices and the carriers, the stamp and dyers, printers and machine-tool shops. It was my first job after leaving school. Like all young folk I walked to save busfares, servicing my tobacco and gambling habits. Myself and my elder brother were used to going business messages from schooldays. Usually it was to one of the wee private galleries and frame-makers around the Kelvinbridge and Charing Cross districts.

I am the second of five, all boys. We enjoyed poking about in Dad’s workshop and he showed us how to burnish gold-leaf frames. Whatever we did, we must not sneeze or cough, otherwise
flecks of gold scattered into the sawdust on the floor. He had all that great stuff beloved by boys and girls: oils and water-based paints; brushes; methylated spirit by the gallon; knives, glues and tools and tools and tools; and planks of fresh wood; and scores of frames and crazy ornate moulds from the early nineteenth century. Composition forever bubbled in strange little saucepans – the ‘compo pots’. Old composition had solidified round the walls and over the edges of the saucepans. The ‘compo recipe’ was a closely guarded family secret. When times were tough and all else failed we ate it with a mixture of cod-liver oil and brown sauce. He used to offer customers a cup of tea but to their horror – Do you think I’m made of pots? – he boiled the water out the ‘compo pot’.

Most of the old-time journeymen were meths drinkers; according to my father, the ‘compo’ put a lining in their stomach. When he was 15 his own father – my grandfather – employed on a casual basis an elderly picture-framer by the name of Jake, who was then hitting 80. Therefore he was born in the 1830s. I have his saw. But a pal of mine, Alistair Kerr, is not impressed by the saw. He is a joiner to trade and believes this mystique of the legendary skills of old-time tradesmen is romantic keech.

There were always old paintings and reproductions around in our family. My grandfather started the business, immigrating to Glasgow from Aberdeenshire around the turn of the twentieth century. It was a luxury trade. In times of depression business was scarce. If there was work on occasionally he needed other workers, usually his older sons. He hung exhibitions down south for private galleries, including the Annan which greatly impressed myself.

As a youth I was fond of van Gogh although his life did not excite me like that of others. I enjoyed reading about him but he was just too messianic for myself at that age, and his bad luck with women put me off. My opinion has changed. When
I taught a graduate class at the University of Texas I used his letters on art theory. All students of art should read his letters. But as a youth I knew well his portrait of Alexander Reid. I wondered if it was Mister Reid’s hair that appealed to van Gogh. No matter, my grandfather shook the hand of the man who shook the hand of Vincent. I liked the idea of him and my uncles driving to London to hang an exhibition and, of course, that my middle name is Alexander.

But he could never build the picture-framing, gilding and restoring business sufficiently to employ more than one man and a boy on a regular basis. His older three sons sought work in other towns. My father was the baby of the family, by several years the youngest of six children, two of whom died in infancy. It was his own misfortune never to have worked alongside his three big brothers.

My grandfather took a part-time job as a door manager at the old Empire Theatre. His great pastime was music and he sang in one of Glasgow’s choruses, so maybe he had contacts in show business. He still worked in a small way at the trade where possible. One customer was the artist J.D. Fergusson. His wife was Margaret Morris, a famed dancer and beauty of the day. She is the model Fergusson painted most frequently. Unfortunately my grandmother was sensitive to certain matters where Alexander was concerned. She thought his choral activities an excuse to meet other women. One night he got the family free tickets for a show, and when he was showing my grannie to her seat in the stalls there came a call from above, Yoohoo Sandy!

It was Margaret Morris from up in the boxes with J.D., dressed in the height of fashion. She stood up to wave down to my grandfather. And she used ‘Sandy’, his family name. My grannie never forgave him. Later they separated. My father was 12 at the time. He remained with his father, lodging in houses
around Kelvinbridge. When the pair flitted from place to place the bulk of their belongings was choral songbooks. They had different workshops over the years; Partick Cross, Otago Street, Gibson Street and Great Western Road were some of the addresses. But he stayed in touch with his mother, and when we were growing up we visited her regularly. She was the last Gaelic speaker in my immediate family, Katherine MacKenzie from Kios on Lewis. Dizzie Gillespie’s grannie was also a Gaelic speaker, from North Carolina, U.S.A.

Before the First World War picture-framers and gilders could be hired on a casual basis at the corner of Cadogan Street and Waterloo Street. Many art studios lay up Blythswood Hill, in the vicinity of the square, five or ten minutes from the Glasgow School of Art. Female models were traditionally hired from there by artists. The art models have been gone for nearly a century. From there and down the hill towards Argyle Street women continue to hire their bodies, but for the last many years they have risked horrific violence, including murder, selling themselves for sex.

In the 1950s Salvador Dali’s painting,
Christ of Saint John of the Cross
, was vandalised by one of Glasgow’s religious bigots inside Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Under Dr Honeyman’s direction the gallery had purchased some very fine art, including the vandalised Dali painting. My father was one of the many with whom he discussed its restoration. I remember seeing other ripped, scarred and badly damaged canvases people brought into his Gibson Street workshop. In some of those paintings large areas were threadbare. Time and patience were required for these jobs. Eventually, and it could be several months later, he could show us where he had mended the canvas and applied the paint and whatever else was necessary. Note the clouds and the flock of geese. See that bush, these big waves. Look closely.

If it had been a very bad rip you might see something of the repair; otherwise not. Of course it was him that had painted the clouds, the bush and the flock of geese, matching the oils of the eighteenth-century original. That trade was full of stories.

One morning in the early 1970s Marie and I were walking along Sauchiehall Street and we stopped to read the notice for a forthcoming sale of Scottish paintings at the old Crown Auction Rooms. One of the artists whose work was to be auctioned was Alexander Kelman. I asked my father if he was a relation. He’s your grandpa!

Whenever the signature disappeared from the face of a canvas during the restoration process one of the old-time journeymen signed their own name for a laugh. Some of these old paintings had been in and out of restoration so often that the only paint left on the canvas had been applied by the restorers.

My grandfather died in 1951. He is buried in his family lair along King Street, Aberdeen.

In my teens the biographies of artists of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries were some of my favourite reading. I looked at reproductions of their work too. I enjoyed people like Dave, Ingres, Corot and Courbet; and Velázquez and Rubens; and, in particular the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. My early heroes were Degas and Manet; afterwards Modigliani, Rodin, Cézanne and Utrillo; especially Rodin and Modigliani, flitting in and out of Parisian bars and coffee houses, never eating, swallowing dope and booze by the bucket, constant sex. Then they all met other artists for conversations over a bowl of Mrs Pissarro’s homemade soup. What a life! I thought Modigliani’s paintings of naked women were just superb and if anybody wanted to argue – well, I would just have argued back.