Scottish Artists in an Age of Radical Change: 1945 to the 21st Century
The visual arts throughout the post-war era have made an invaluable contribution to the cultural development of modern and contemporary Scotland.
Joan Eardley, Alan Davie, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ian Hamilton Findlay, Boyle Family, Craigie Aitchison, Barbara Rae, John Bellany, Alexander Moffat, John McLean, Bill Scot, Joyce Cairns, Steven Campbell, Ken Currie, Lys Hansen, Alison Watt, Douglas Gordon and Kevin Harman – these are some of the artists whose work reflects the radical and complex transformations of the post-war period. These Scottish artists not only observed and absorbed the socio-economic and technological changes taking places during this era, but also devised a wide range of innovative ways to represent and creatively re-present those changes and their powerful impact on our times.
Through a compilation of in-depth interviews with the artists themselves and accompanying critical essays, Bill Hare here examines the richly diverse work of these important figures in modern and contemporary visual culture, revealing the intellectual power and artistic imagination of those who have created one of the greatest eras in the history of Scottish art.
Bill Hare was born in Edinburgh in 1944 and studied at the University of Edinburgh, the Courtald Institute of Art and the University of London. He has curated a number of important exhibitions both in Scotland and abroad, and has published books and catalogues on a range of different aspects of historical, modern and contemporary Scottish art. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in Scottish art history at the University of Edinburgh.