A Cultural Biography of William JohnstoneThe Making of British Modern Art
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Published 28 February 2027
About this book
Tells the virtually forgotten story of pioneering educator and influential artist William Johnstone
- Examines his relationship with poets and musicians of the new Scottish Renaissance and in particular with Hugh MacDiarmid
- Reflects on his exhibition history in relation to his identity as a Scottish painter
- Includes a catalogue of Johnstone’s posthumous library
- Includes works by Johnstone previously thought lost to scholarship
- Considers his painting in relation to his Scottish peers post-1960
- Based on primary sources including National Library of Scotland, CSM Museums and Study Collection, National Arts Education Archive, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Lhote Studio Archive and the Bourdelle Archive
Scottish artist William Johnstone (1897–1981) has been significantly overlooked in the histories of British modernism, yet his role as the progressive Principal of Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and subsequently the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London helped shape the work and careers of artists such as Richard Hamilton, Victor Pasmore, Nigel Henderson, Alan Davie and Eduardo Paolozzi.
Drawing directly on Johnstone’s personal archive as well as a range of newly researched primary sources, Beth Williamson studies Johnstone’s ideas and his artworks within the context of his working relationships with other important British artists of the period. His dialogues with significant thinkers in the wider cultural field serve to illuminate these intellectual debates in a lively way.
Williamson considers these important relationships against the background of Johnstone’s thinking and theirs, examining key texts, artworks, and moments in British art and art education in an international context, revealing Johnstone’s intellectual formation considering its significance then and now.
Reviews
William Johnstone was not only one of Scotland’s most important twentieth century painters but also one of England’s most significant art educators. Johnstone’s contribution demands proper reassessment, and this invaluable book does just that, illuminating his work both as an artist and as a leader of higher education.
Beth Williamson takes us from Johnstone’s boyhood in the Borders and his association with the ideas of the major ecological thinker Patrick Geddes, from Edinburgh to Paris in the 1920s, then having established his loyalties as a Scot and a European, we travel with him to America and his encounter with Native American visual arts and abstractions in the 1930s and 1940s. Williamson’s elucidation of the thinking behind and within the abstracts such as ‘A Point in Time’ is brilliant. Lucid, incisive, and unafraid of using difficult words and ideas to contextualise the expositions of Johnstone’s paint and ink on canvas and paper. Beth Williamson’s book helps us see how William Johnstone’s work shows us what makes being alive truly worthwhile.
Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this new study of William Johnstone is much more than a fresh biography of the artist. It provides a lens through which many of the complexities of British modernism are revealed and is nothing less than a major contribution to the study of twentieth-century cultural politics.
William Johnstone was an energetic, charismatic and influential Scot. Pioneer of radical modern ideas in his painting, as a teacher he transformed art education in England, but hitherto there has been no full account of his life and achievements. Beth Williamson has now filled that egregious gap with a wide-ranging and thoroughly well-researched account of his remarkable career.
Table of contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Timeline
Introduction: William Johnstone: Artist and Teacher
1. Journeys: From Edinburgh to Paris, circa 1919 to 1927
A Borders Childhood
An Edinburgh Education
William Richard Lethaby
Patrick Geddes
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
To Paris and beyond
André Lhote
Method and Materials
Elsewhere
2. Landscapes: Between America and the Borders, circa 1928 to 1949
Scottishness
An international artist
Johnstone in America
The nineteen forties
Abstract painting
Industrial design
3. Time: A Point in Time, 1929/1937
Time
Experiment
Chasm
Change
A Place in Time
Theosophy
4. Children: From Child Art to Man Art, 1941
A history of child art
Froebel and Ciek
Marion Richardson
Herbert Read
Johnstone and R.R. Tomlinson
Writing on child art
Creative Art in England
Children as Artists
Child Art to Man Art
New methods
5. Art School: Camberwell (1938–46) and Central (1947–60)
Interdisciplinarity
Responsiveness
Internationalism
Adventurous Experiment
6. Poets: MacDiarmid, Scott, Muir, 1930s and 1970s
A New Scottish Renaissance
Endarkenment: Unreasoned Relationship with Art
Re-emergence
7. Peers and Painters: Scottish Artists, 1960 to 1980
A Borders Return
Abstract Landscapes
Portraits and Patrons
Miraculous Objects
Plaster Reliefs
Tachism
8. Reflections: In Retrospect and Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography