Glasgow (28 page)

We took the little Athenaeum for a thirty weeks' season and looked around for a producer. We were given a guarantee by C.E.M.A. [Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts] to meet what we thought was an inevitable loss. It was war time. Actors were hard to come by and so was material. The theatre had a comfortable auditorium, but few other modern amenities. But two boards and a passion were enough. We broke even in our first year and made a four-figure profit in our second. We did twenty plays and took two of them through Scotland to places ill-supplied with Drama. We hit a remarkably high standard of acting and production and chose no catchpenny plays.

When I say ‘we' all did this, I mean that Mr Eric Capon did it, with the exception of three productions by Miss Jennifer Sounes. Mr and Mrs McCrone, Miss Savile and Mr Gorrie looked after the business side and our Secretaries kept our finances straight. A loyal and clever company worked hard and their efforts were supplemented by such distinguished visitors as Ernest Milton, Jay Laurier, Morland Graham and James Woodburn.

Then Harry McKelvie offered us the Princess's on most generous terms and we crossed the river. Mr Matthew Forsyth, who had a long and distinguished career as an actor, a producer and a manager, took the wheel from Eric Capon and we began on a much bigger scale.

The same people who told us that it was hopeless to start a theatre in
the midst of a war and that, anyhow, the Athenaeum was no good, were vocal once more. Nobody would cross the river to the Gorbals to see high-brow plays. Highbrows, apparently, inhabit exclusively the northern bank. Well, highbrow or lowbrow, North, South, East or West, they have come.

To those who have come, we have presented plays that would not, for the most part, be seen otherwise in Scotland. We have rehearsed them with the same time and care and mounted them with the same elaboration as if we had been in holy Shaftesbury Avenue itself. We have provided the most comfortable theatre in Glasgow for our audience. We have kept open for eleven months of the year. We have taken the risk of presenting a higher proportion of new plays than any repertory theatre outside of London has ever dared to do; and most of these plays have been by Scots.

We have taken another risk by keeping our prices down to the minimum. We, as a strictly non-profit-making company, are relieved of entertainment tax and we have handed every penny of it we could spare back to the audience. If we ever return to the days when the customer demands his money's worth, it may interest some of us to consider how much the half crown we pay for a seat is spent directly on providing entertainment and how much goes to gentlemen who are in the business purely for their health and who neither act, dance nor sing. In the Citizens' Theatre the proportion spent on entertainment is something like two and threepence. I understand that this is not so in the cinema.

While I am boasting about the Citizens' Theatre, I may go a little further and say something about its reputation. A reputation is a hard thing to assess. There is no human activity that produces such a diversity of opinion, informed or otherwise, as the theatre. Two experienced theatre-goers may see the same play. One may be entranced by everything he sees and hears, while the other is irritated and bored. The whole thing is mixed with illusion and emotion. But, out of this welter, a good reputation or a bad reputation arises and, when it does, there is no mistake about it. Almost within the last few months rumour has fixed us as the best repertory theatre in Britain.

That is enough boasting. Whether we have deserved this reputation or not we shall try to do so in future. We have only begun, though it is something to have made a beginning. If the Scottish Theatre ever comes into being, I hope that we shall be a lively, efficient, experienced part of it and that we shall have some credit for producing, even at this early stage, a superior sort of article, honest in purpose and sound in workmanship.

1951–1975

HELLO, DALI

A TALE OF TWO CITIES, 1951
Moray McLaren

The rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh is similar to that of sparring boxers; punches may be landed but they are not designed to injure. In the not-so-distant past a visitor might have remarked that in the former, people – invariably men – tend to wear blue collars while in the latter they always wear white. In Glasgow, moreover, it was more usual for working people to get their hands dirty. This was not so in Edinburgh, where ink was the only stain likely to adhere to exposed parts. Moray McLaren (1910–71), who was born in Edinburgh, wrote perceptively on his native heath. He worked in journalism and was the BBC's first Programme Director for Scotland. During the Second World War he was attached to the Foreign Office as head of the Polish Region in Political Intelligence
.

It is only forty miles from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Either by road or by one of the frequent trains it will not take you much more than an hour to travel between the two cities. You can do this several times a day if you feel so inclined; and a number of businessmen live in Edinburgh and go to their work in Glasgow. There are even some who do the reverse, sleeping in Glasgow and working in Edinburgh. There are also people whose work is evenly divided between the two and who have homes in each city.

The forty-mile belt that connects the two chief towns of Scotland passes through an on the whole dull landscape, undivided by hills, minor watersheds or rivers or any recognisable natural breaks. Scattered indeterminately upon its length are small towns and villages, most of them of nineteenth-century industrial or mining growth. There is not very much difference between them; for they are all products of the Glasgow–Edinburgh belt, and not of either city. Near Glasgow they become a little more conglomerate and grim. Nearer Edinburgh they lie
about more starkly and individually scattered. It is difficult to tell, however, where the eastern Scotland influence ends and the western begins. Nor is it likely that anyone, save the most curious, has tried to discover. The journey by road or rail is too quick and too dull to merit much investigation or even attention.

And yet, the journey having been made, and having arrived in Glasgow from Edinburgh or in the Capital of Scotland from the great city of the West, one does not need to be curious or unusually observant to notice that one has passed from one world into another. All within the small country of Scotland and merely by travelling an easy forty miles. The differences between these two worlds are those of character, of East and West, of climate and appearance, but most of all of character.

The character of Edinburgh and the character of Glasgow, so vivid, so complementary to each other, are in their roots as Scottish as the characters of the Highlands and the Lowlands. For nearly a century and a half they have been as important in the general pattern of the character of Scotland as even the Highlands and the Lowlands were. It is impossible to know the Scotland of today without savouring the difference between the quality of Edinburgh and of Glasgow – and this is not because they are the two largest and most important towns in Scotland: it is because the difference between them is of the essence of Scotland.

THE DALI STORY, 1952
T.J. Honeyman

Spending money on art always has a tendency to bring frothing philistines to the fore. So it was no surprise when Glasgow Corporation decided to use public money to purchase Salvador Dali's surrealist
Christ of Saint John of the Cross
that critics began to howl. Tom Honeyman (1891–1971), Director of Kelvingrove Art Gallery, pressed ahead regardless and persuaded the powers-that-be that this was an opportunity not to be missed. And so it has proved. Dali's wonderful painting is one of many jewels that belongs to the people of Glasgow. Honeyman's reputation and charm were such that he was able to attract several major gifts to the city's galleries and museums, including the peerless collection of Sir William Burrell (1861–1958). Ironically, and sadly, Honeyman had to leave his post in 1954 after he lost the support of his political master, the new chairman of the Glasgow Corporation Art Committee
.

Of course we expected criticism, but not quite the concentrated bitterness or irresponsibility on the matter of the purchase price, £8,200. The decision reached by the Corporation was not lightly taken. Glasgow wanted the picture and Glasgow had to pay the price, which, after considerable negotiation, was fixed at the lowest figure acceptable to the artist – the catalogue price had been £12,000. I remember that about the same time a small picture – in an imperfect state –
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
by Peter Brueghel was sold in auction for £11,025. Commenting on this Denys Sutton, then art critic of the
Financial Times
and now editor of
The Apollo
magazine, said ‘Its price, though high, bears greater relation to its value than the £8,200 paid by Glasgow for a painting by Salvador Dali.' I still wonder who and what determines that. His and similar criticism led me to retort:

‘Some years ago a leading gallery in this country paid something like £12,000 for a “genuine” Old Master. It has now been discovered that the “Old Master” is still alive, and the picture now reposes in a basement as a “curio”. At least we
know
who painted Dali's picture. Recently a collector paid an even larger sum for another “Old Master” which is a triumph of the art of the restorer. The “hand” of the master is buried in the velvet glove of contemporary pigments. Paint and canvas begin to undergo the perishing processes within a short time after the completion of a painting. By that token we should be able to enjoy “pure” Dali for a much longer time than some other expensive works.'

We also reproduced in the
Art Review
the pre-Raphaelite picture
Christ in the House of His Parents
or
The Carpenter's Shop
by Sir John Millais which, not so many years previously, was bought for £10,500. It is in the Tate Gallery. The vicious contemporary criticism, including a piece by Charles Dickens, was also reprinted with a final comment from William Armstrong.

To the artists, including Augustus John, who deprecated this ‘wilful extravagance' and deplored such a ‘mad price' for a work by a living painter, we said something like this:

‘Extraordinary! Why do they not rejoice that, for once, the artist rather than the collector or dealer or their descendants reaps benefit from his labour? Salvador Dali is a man with an international reputation. His “news value” is at least as great as that of Picasso and Matisse and he considers this painting of Christ to be his masterpiece.'

A few months later it was reported than an English actor was to receive £40,000 for playing a part in a film.

The events of the art market of the last ten years, related to living painters, make it seem to appear that we had created a precedent.

Stephen Bone of the
Manchester Guardian
in reporting the distribution of works commissioned by the Arts Council said:

‘Will any of them reach Glasgow, a city that has just spent many thousands of pounds on a surrealist Crucifixion by Salvador Dali that no art critic could take seriously? After this sensational extravagance it may be felt that Glasgow Corporation is a little ill-placed for receiving gifts from the taxpayer, but this would be a short-sighted view. Glasgow may soon feel the need of good modern paintings in its galleries.'

His was more than a short-sighted view, for no gallery in the country had acquired through its own limited purchase funds more modern works than Glasgow. True, like most of the others, we didn't ride very high in sculpture. In recalling some very ill-informed criticism I am provoked into a bit of boasting to support our defence: or is it defiance? In my time and on my recommendation Glasgow acquired, by purchase,
Blackfriars
by Derain for £150 and a Utrillo for £450. Other French paintings by artists such as Cassat, Courbet, Gauguin, Marquet, Monet, Pissarro, Signac and Sisley came through the Hamilton Trust. They do not reveal the purchase price but I know all were between £1,000 and £4,000 at the most. We bought excellent examples of L.S. Lowry (in 1943 for £42 and in 1944 for £135). The works of a number of English and Scottish artists, when they were at the beginning of their careers, were acquired for very little expenditure. We like to think that to the ridiculously small sums might be added the value of an official gesture of support. From the Contemporary Art Society we received some good works, but as we were more distant than our English colleagues the first choices seldom came our way. The Arts Council never favoured us by adding works to the collection.

The Art School, staff and students, were with very few exceptions, particularly against the purchase of the Dali. Some of my University friends were convinced we had made a grievous blunder. ‘It will be down in the basement in three years' was the prophecy of one of them. A few had no objections to the acquisition of a work by Dali. After all, he was a leader of a particular movement which was part of art history; but why did we not get a typical surrealist painting instead of this ‘non-characteristic' example? One exasperated critic was certain we knew very little or nothing about surrealism.