Opening Saturday, take a trip through time with  Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980

Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980
Opening 29 April 2023
Free
National Galleries Scotland: Modern Two
Free-use images are available in this Dropbox link

Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980, is an exploration of the modern art scene, from 1900 through to the 1970s.  See how artists have captured changes in society as you move through the free exhibition, opening at Modern Two this Saturday (29 April). You will discover how the mood and atmosphere of the work reflects and embodies each changing decade with works that have been carefully selected to best represent the period. 

Filling all of Modern Two and spread across six rooms, the journey begins at the turn of the last century, in 1900. Meet the French artists who painted with electrifying colour in the first room, with work by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Their brightly coloured landscape paintings were so radically different that the artists were given the derogatory label ‘Fauves’ – meaning ‘wild beasts’. The term stuck and Fauvism had a major impact on British and particularly Scottish art.

Two new acquisitions, by Scottish Colourists FCB Cadell and JD Fergusson, feature in this room. JD Fergusson, who was born in Leith but lived in Paris before the First World War, was one of the key Scottish artists of the twentieth century. Painted in 1911, Flowers and Pink Box, has bright bold colour and confident, energetic brushwork. Fergusson’s work of this time often had sexual overtones and covert erotic references. In this painting, the pink box depicted is believed to have been used to store his condoms. This is the first still life by Fergusson to enter the national collection. The Rose and the Lacquer Screen, by FCB Cadell, combines several of his favourite still-life props: a rose in a transparent vase, a black fan and its trailing ribbon and a detail of the lacquered screen that dominated the drawing room of his house in Edinburgh’s New Town. 

Moving into the 1930s, artists such as Piet Mondrian believed that abstract art could change society. This room features work by Alexander Calder, Paule Vézelay and Ben Nicholson. Entering the 1940s, abstraction and idealism were replaced by grim realism. Paintings and sculptures by Francis Bacon, Joan Eardley and Bet Low, created during and immediately after the Second World War, speak of a new reality, reflecting the harsh times. Benno Schotz’s sculpture Lament (1943) speaks of the Holocaust while William McCance’s Atom Horizon refers to the bombing of Hiroshima.

The 1950s saw a battle between Abstraction and Realism, played out in the shadow of the Cold War and the nuclear age. This is illustrated in Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980 by two mural projects created for the great Festival of Britain exhibition of 1951, which are shown together here for the first time. Josef Hermann’s project shows a row of miners - builders of a new social order; Victor Pasmore’s mural project is instead a daring essay glimpse of spiralling abstract forms. The art of the 1950s reaches into the future yet seems steeped in anxiety. The display from the 1950s also features exceptional works by Alan Davie, Louise Nevelson, Fernand Léger, Eduardo Paolozzi and Elisabeth Frink.

Art became celebratory, playful and experimental in the 1960s. Sculptors abandoned traditional materials such as bronze and marble for ‘soft sculpture’, exemplified in the work of Jann Haworth, Yayoi Kusama and Duane Hanson’s iconic Tourists. A firm favourite with visitors to the Modern, Tourists, captures the banality of post-war, consumer society with humour and warmth. Although these two figures are presented as a couple, they were cast from life but never even met. David Hockney’s etching of two gay men in bed dates from 1967, the year in which homosexuality was legalised in England and Wales.

Throughout the 1970s, artists took Abstraction and Minimalism to extremes. Fred Sandback’s Untitled, 1971 – two coloured cords which cut across the corner of the room – questions the very notion of art as something with three-dimensional form or narrative meaning.

The Keiller Library presents a witty and original focus on the motif of the hand in Surrealist art and writing. Drawing on works by artists like Man Ray, Edith Rimmington and Salvador Dali, from the national collection’s world- class holding of Surrealist books and archive material.

From a time when the motor car was just beginning to populate the roads to the dawn of the space race, the world changed significantly in the 80-year timespan that the exhibition covers.  This selection of one hundred works from the national collection shows ways in which artists have continually pushed the boundaries and created art which defines its time. These pieces still have the power to shock and make us think about our world today and the changes and innovations to come.

Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, Sir John Leighton, said: ‘National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to reopen Modern Two with an exhibition that celebrates the strength of the national collection. Featuring a fascinating range of works by many of Scotland and the world’s greatest artists, Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980 encourages visitors to think about how art can both reflect and change the way we see the world around us. We welcome you to join us on a voyage of discovery through 80 years of bold artistic achievement.’

Simon Groom, Director of Modern & Contemporary Art, said: ‘Decades is an amazing opportunity to discover the rich range and depth of art from the national collection in the 20th century. Arranged by decades – starting with the beautiful paintings of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and the Scottish Colourists, the show takes us on fascinating journey to see how artists as diverse as Francis Bacon, Joan Eardley, Eduardo Paolozzi, Yayoi Kusama, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, and Joseph Beuys reflected and gave shape to our experience of the 20th century.’