Comment: First Minister connects with the art-buying public
It’s always rather encouraging when a politician shows artistic leanings. So three Christmas cheers at the news that our most popular First Minister to date, Alex Salmond - a man with the twinkle of the benevolent dictator in his eye - has commissioned a new work of art for his first Christmas card as First Minister.
Perhaps less encouraging for the art establishment is that he’s picked one of Scotland’s most popular artists to paint it.
Short of Jack Vettriano, Mr Salmond couldn’t have made a safer political choice than Jolomo, the assumed name of landscape artist John Lowrie Morrison.
For a First Minister who likes to be seen making grand, Saltire-flavoured gifts to the public, and knowing he must sugar the radical pill of independence, the choice of the 57-year-old Glasgow School of Art graduate, whose vibrantly coloured oils glorify the Scottish landscape, is predictable and unimaginative, but in popular political terms, very astute.
Jolomo’s attractive, unchallenging landscapes may not please the critical establishment, but his prolific output, expressionistic flair and Colourist preoccupations ensure that he does please many of the art-buying public. And politicians like to connect with their public.
But what, if anything, does Jolomo’s Linlithgow Palace landscape say about our first ever SNP Christmas?
Interestingly, for those who find Jolomo a little bland, this isn’t just a pretty picture with vaguely Christmassy overtones and a tonal palette dominated by the blues and whites of the Saltire. The iconography is certainly that of the classic Christmas card - a romantic, idealised wintry scene, a church and a star invoking, non-offensively, the Christian spirit of Christmas.
But in Mr Salmond’s version, St Michael’s church is couched against the mighty outline of Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots. It is the archetypal vision of a Scottish castle, brooding with past (and inferred future) might.
In effect, Mr Salmond has chosen a grand, evocative and very Scottish vision of Church and State, of power and place, rather than the more neutral, homely and in some cases more inclusive vision of his predecessors. There is no “revolting family” here, as Mr Salmond said of Tony Blair’s Christmas cards. There is no semi-religious vision of a leader tending his flock, as Jack McConnell’s 2004 vision of his homefarm and sheep suggested.
This is a Christmas card that robustly states, Make (Me) Mightier Yet.
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