Page 44 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: The Glamour of Backwardness

AF HM catalogue 2023 PRINT.qxp_Layout 1 15/06/2023 17:37 Page 42

Language : politics is the broad appeal. Text in
paint may be garrulous. ‘Watson gives numerous
examples of how many Scottish literary works
heavily rely on vernacular speech and how many
Scottish novels use narrators and are essentially
speech-based.’ 1

Pliant but sophisticated. The following 3 separate
extracts intimate the case in point.

‘For Esche, the “political moment” in art is not
documentary or accusatory, but ambiguous and
sensual; it ushers in an instability . . . . ’
2

‘One great part of every human existence is passed
in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by
the use of wideawake language, cutanddry gram-
3
mar and goahead plot.’

‘Sometimes the people of the island of Ireland
live up to their reputation for linguistic genius.
Certain of them can compress five centuries of
history, murder, mayhem, sorrow and regret into
a single word. My favourite is “whataboutery”.
It signifies the habit of answering every grievance
with a sentence beginning, “But what about?” ’.
4
Helen MacAlister

1. Paul Henderson Scott, Scotland: A Concise Cultural History,
p116 (Roderick Watson)
2. Carolee Thea, On Curating, introduction p9
3. Seamus Deane, quoting James Joyce, in introduction to Finnegans Wake,
p.xi, Penquin Modern Classic, 2000
4. Ian Bell, Sunday Herald, 16 December 2012