Steven Campbell (artist)
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Steven Campbell (1953–2007) was a painter from Scotland.


Biography

Campbell was born in the Burnside district of
Rutherglen Rutherglen (, sco, Ruglen, gd, An Ruadh-Ghleann) is a town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, immediately south-east of the city of Glasgow, from its centre and directly south of the River Clyde. Having existed as a Lanarkshire burgh in its own ...
, attended the town's
Academy An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy ...
and worked as an engineer at
Clydebridge Steelworks The Clydebridge Steelworks, also known as Clydebridge Works, is a steel works in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The plant opened in 1877. The works made steel sheared plates to build ships (among other uses) - plates from Clydebridge were used i ...
before studying at
Glasgow School of Art The Glasgow School of Art (GSA; gd, Sgoil-ealain Ghlaschu) is a higher education art school based in Glasgow, Scotland, offering undergraduate degrees, post-graduate awards (both taught and research-led), and PhDs in architecture, fine art, and ...
as a mature student, from 1978 to 1982. Initially he studied the then still new subject of performance art, but quickly gave this up for painting. At the end of his studies he was awarded the Bram Stoker gold medal, and gained a
Fulbright Scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
which he used to go to New York to study at the
Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...
.Obituary to Steven Campbell, in ''The Times'', 21 August 2007 This move resulted in many of his early exhibitions taking place in New York, including his first solo show, in 1983, at the Barbara Toll Gallery. There is some dispute as to whether Campbell was one of the core group of students nurtured by the artist and tutor Alexander Moffat at Glasgow School of Art, including
Peter Howson Peter Howson OBE (born 27 March 1958) is a Scottish painter. He was a British official war artist in 1993 during the Bosnian War. Early life Peter Howson was born in London of Scottish parents and moved with his family to Prestwick, A ...
and
Ken Currie Ken Currie (born 1960 in North Shields, Northumberland, England) is a Scottish artist and a graduate of Glasgow School of Art (1978–1983). Ken grew up in industrial Glasgow. This has had a significant influence on his early works. In the 19 ...
, but Campbell was certainly included by Moffat in the 1981 group show ''The Vigorous Imagination'' at the New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh, later known as the
Fruitmarket Gallery The Fruitmarket Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since its opening in 1974, the gallery has become part of the Scottish contemporary art scene. After a period of closure to undergo a significant renovation, the ga ...
, which was the first public showing of this group. He was also included in the seminal exhibition at Glasgow's
Third Eye Centre The Third Eye Centre was a contemporary arts centre in Glasgow, founded by Scottish writer Tom McGrath in 1975. The building was at 350 Sauchiehall Street, close to the Glasgow School of Art, and was purchased by the Scottish Arts Council. The ve ...
entitled ''New Image Glasgow,'' again curated by Moffat,Alexander Moffat, ''New Image Glasgow'', exh. cat. (Glasgow: Third Eye Centre, 1985) which is still regarded as an exemplar in how a non-metropolitan centre can promote art and culture on the international stage. In this exhibition Moffat presented Campbell and other Glasgow artists as a 'New Scottish School'. He was also included in the 1985 Hayward Annual exhibition held at the
Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...
, London, and had a joint show with the British Pop Artist
Colin Self Colin E Self (born 1941 in Rackheath, Norfolk) is an English Pop Artist, whose work has addressed the theme of Cold War politics. As a student at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1961 to 1963 Colin Self received encouragement for his drawings ...
at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. Campbell returned to live in Glasgow in 1986, and that same year his painting ''The Dangerous Early and Late Life of Lytton Strachey'' was acquired by
The Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
.Tate Gallery image ref. T04137 The following year he was included in a group show, also called ''The Vigorous Imagination New Scottish Art'' held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh as part of the
Edinburgh Festival __NOTOC__ This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland. The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...
, at which he cemented his elevated status within the new Scottish art world by being one of the most prominently displayed artists. 1987 was also the year of his first exhibition of paintings with the London art gallery Marlborough Fine Art. This was only Campbell's second solo show in London, the first having been at the Riverside Studios in 1984. In 1988, Campbell's painting ''A Man Perceived by a Flea,'' painted in 1985, was acquired by the Scottish National Gallery, Further works were acquired by state collections in Britain, including ''Napoleonic Silhouettist Cutting the Progress of the War'' by the Arts Council in 1987, ''Painting on a Darwinian Theme'' by the
British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lan ...
in 1988, and ''Three men of exactly the same size in an unequal room'' by Leeds City Art Gallery in 1989. In the late 1990s Campbell withdrew from public life with worries over his health. It was not until 2002 that he exhibited again, with what proved to be his last major show, at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. A commissioned piece by Campbell was the cover art for
Sting Sting may refer to: * Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger * Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself Fictional characters and entities * Sting (Middle-eart ...
's 1991 album ''
The Soul Cages ''The Soul Cages'' is the third full-length studio album released by English musician Sting. Released on 21 January 1991 it became Sting's second No. 1 album in the United Kingdom. This was Sting's first album to feature guitarist Dominic Mille ...
''. Campbell died of a ruptured appendix on 15 August 2007, aged 54. He was married and had three children. Campbell's Estate is represented by Marlborough Fine Art, London.


Style and influences

Campbell's style of painting is figurative, with a hard linear quality to the application of paint. The colour palette is strong, with rich colours tending to be dominated by a blue-green light. Campbell would boast of being a very fast painter, although it has been suggested he liked to exaggerate claims like this. His subject matter has been described as focusing on the surreal ridiculousness of the English gentleman, with almost
Bertie Wooster Bertram Wilberforce Wooster is a fictional character in the comedic Jeeves stories created by British author P. G. Wodehouse. An amiable English gentleman and one of the "idle rich", Bertie appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose intelligenc ...
type scenarios shown in his paintings. Certainly a number of his paintings show slightly old fashioned looking men dressed in tweed suits, as in ''The Dangerous Early and Late Life of Lytton Strachey'' in the Tate. As this suggests, there is a strong literary element in the paintings, and in common with many other artists who were showcased by Alexander Moffat in his exhibition ''New Image Glasgow'' at the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, in 1985, one of the sources for this narrative bent in Campbell's work is the
Neue Sachlichkeit The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, who ...
artists of 1920s Germany. Of particular relevance would seem to be the paintings of the Neue Sachlichkeit artist
Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with Geor ...
whose colouring, subject matter and sharp realist drawing style in paintings like ''To Beauty'', prefigures the work of Campbell closely. However, Campbell's images have also been linked to English painters of the same period, including
Stanley Spencer Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small ...
. Certainly this linear, or as the art critic Tim Hilton called it 'illustrational', quality is evident in a painting like Campbell's ''Battle of Myths! The Tree Man/The Green Man, oil on canvas,'' which was unfinished at the time of his death in 2007. Campbell's paintings include many recurring motifs, such as skulls, birds and anthropomorphic foliage, but also recurring patterns, such as the paisley pattern that reappears in several of his late paintings. This use of visual motifs to hint at possible narratives which are rarely straightforward or easy to decode led to some critics dismissing Campbell's work, with the critic of ''The Independent'' newspaper in London calling it as a 'soup of arcane motifs'.Quoted in Clare Henry, 'Remembering Steven Campbell' in ''Studio International'', 24 January 2007 But following his death Campbell's store amongst art critics seemed to rise, with ''The Times'' newspaper calling him 'one of the most forceful and original artists to have emerged lately in Britain', and ''The Guardian'' 'The most exciting painter to emerge anywhere for many years'. Certainly Campbell's importance to the renaissance in Scottish art in the 1980s, which saw Glasgow become one of the major international centres for contemporary art at that time, is acknowledged to be very great. According to John McKechnie, the director of the Glasgow Print Studio, at which Campbell exhibited in 2004,: "If it wasn't for Steven Campbell, we would never have the focus we do now on visual art in Glasgow. Before Steven came along there really wasn't any expectation that you could make it as an artist on an international scene."Quoted in Phil Miller, 'Rare Hornel painting for sale at art fair', in ''The Herald'' (Scottish newspaper), 27 March 2008


References


Further reading

* Moffat, Alexander, ''New Image Glasgow'', exh. cat. (Glasgow: Third Eye Centre, 1985) * Calder, Angus, 'Art for a New Scotland', in ''Circa'', no. 64, Summer 1993 * Godfrey, Tony, ''Steven Campbell'' (London: Marlborough Fine Art, 1987)


External links


Marlborough Art Gallery, artists' page



The Steven Campbell Trust
{{DEFAULTSORT:Campbell, Steven 1953 births 20th-century Scottish painters Scottish male painters Scottish contemporary artists 21st-century Scottish painters 21st-century Scottish male artists People from Rutherglen People educated at Rutherglen Academy Modern painters 2007 deaths Artists from Glasgow Alumni of the Glasgow School of Art Pratt Institute alumni Deaths from appendicitis 20th-century Scottish male artists