Alasdair Gray: My work is Glaswegian insofar as it records my life in Glasgow,
or people I’ve known there.
It’s as much documentary work, I suppose, as Dickens documents London,
and Dostoyevsky – Moscow and [Saint] Petersburg, or any artist documents their surroundings.
[Audio of someone whistling a tune]
[Sounds of cars on the road, and birds chirping]
Liz Lochhead (reading from Lanark by Alasdair Gray): ‘‘Glasgow is a magnificent city,’
said McAlpin. ‘Why do we hardly ever notice that?’
‘Because nobody imagines living here’… ‘think of Florence, Paris, London, New York.
Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited
them in [his] paintings, novels, history books, and films. But if a city hasn’t been used
by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.’
Well, by writing that passage, Alasdair changed the truth that it contains, by it being a
city that we are allowed to imagine living in now. He has been the poet of this city
– in prose and in painting.
Alasdair Gray: My mother, I think it was when I was about 11 or 12, she was a bit bothered
by the fact that I didn’t get out playing with other kids, and I immersed myself hugely
in reading, in Glasgow – in Riddrie Public Library, which was, I’d say, just about
a university to me. But I also drew a lot.
My mother read about art classes that Miss Jean Irwin was holding for schoolchildren in the art galleries.
Therefore on mornings, during the summer months, I went into the art galleries
at 10 o’clock in the morning, which was before it was open to the general public.
And I would prolong my journey up there by going through the downstairs museums,
starting with the natural history sections with the prehistoric monsters,
and then the displays of the – of animals,
and then go upstairs to the gallery in which Jean Irwin was holding her class.
And that was very great, and a very useful experience.
I did my own illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’ poem,
because the [John] Tenniel’s illustration I found too upsetting and frightening.
So I did my own illustration which was not quite the same and didn’t frighten me at all.
Liz Lochhead: Everybody knew Alasdair Gray when I was at art school – a good decade,
a bit more, after him. He was a known genius, because he doesn’t fit in to any of the
current fashions at any point.
As a painter he’s quite literary, and as a literary writer
he’s very visual. In a way – not of this world, and not of this time.
Alasdair Gray: When I was at art school my work, I think, could be honestly called –
ugly -
in most people’s views. But interesting.
When they looked at it there would be a silence and then they would offer two comments:
‘very interesting’, and ‘you’ve certainly put a lot of work into it’.
The order in which they did it, it implied
the didn't enjoy it very much.
Liz Lochhead: Well Alasdair, from the very time that I knew him, he did murals at art school
many of the churches that he did murals in, and I visited him in them when
he was living there with a camp stove and tins of soup, and sort of sleeping under his work.
I don’t know if Michelangelo did it like that.
He’s a timeless artist, I think is the thing that I would say about him,
and he’s taken the right to live in the here and now,
and live in conversation with all the art of the past.
Alasdair Gray: These are notes actually for – diary notes, but also notes for versions
of poems I’ve been writing from time to time. But as I say, I’m working on the cover
of the ‘Purgatory’.
It came about four years ago. I’d read about nine modern versions,
English versions, of Dante.
I found all of them striking, but these translations slightly annoyed me
by not being in the kind of speech that the authors used,
and therefore I started translating Dante myself.
In these I started writing out earlier versions in English,
and then putting them into my own speech, who do not know Italian – the original Italian.
Liz Lochhead: He’s somebody who does keep a dialogue going with his own work.
Maybe he’s not always satisfied with what he’s done, and achieved,
and there are so many wonderful paintings.
There's a Garnethill painting which is done with a perspective that goes
in very many different directions – quite like Chinese painting, and it is just a magnificent
painting of the times. When I saw the last large retrospective of Alasdair’s,
it's all encompassing, and it’s so totally Glasgow, and it’s so totally his personal vision
of this city.
[Sounds of Subway trains]
Man: First time I’ve actually stood and looked at it closely. Every other time I’ve
seen it I’ve just been walking past – catching a tube, so I was quite pleased to stop and
look at it today. And it became quite memorable, because I’ve lived in these places all my life:
all the places you know, and all the flats you’ve stayed in,
and all the people you knew stayed in these flats, and you think – it’s all there.
Alasdair Gray: You must realise that for years I was not what anybody would call
a successful visual artist.
My work was only occasionally commissioned – not very often.
It was a matter of painting or drawing friends usually,
and these were not often sold, and therefore there was no rush for me to finish them.
Since then some of my work has turned up in auction sales.
I’m getting more work from my visual art than I ever had at the start of my life.
I was quoting a conversation with a friend who remarked that I added my artist central
character work in order to give his city a more imaginative life, to which the artist
said, ‘no’ – he did it because he felt cheap and useless when he didn’t.
Which was my view.
I’m very glad that it’s come to that eventually. Very late in my life.