Toile and trouble
The aforementioned Edinburgh toile created for this year's Edinburgh International Festival didn't take long to cause a mild rumpus among the capital's more traditional residents.
The images, on bags and brochures at yesterday's launch, show a selection of images in the French Toile de Jouy tradition, but instead of rural French scenery, they show modern urban vignettes, like a double decker bus beside some roadworks, a homeless man sleeping rough outside St Giles Cathedral and most controversially two men vomiting and urinating on Greyfriars Bobby's statue.
It didn't take long for journalists to rouse a few politicians.
Tory MSP David McLetchie reckoned it was artistic sabotage - a Glasgow design team having fun at the expense of its old rival.
But fans of the Glasgow-based company Timorous Beasties will point out they produced a similar toile for their own home city in 2005.
It included heroin addicts in a graveyard, teenage mums pushing prams by Glasgow towerblocks and a man urinating against a tree.
The Beasties - Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons - who first met as students at Glasgow School of Art - created the toile as a backlash against the boring safe design of the 1990s.
They found the original French patterns of the 1770s, a little sinister and unsettling, not surprising since they were produced during the civil unrest in pre-revolutionary France.
As well as replacing the landscapes with urban icons, they replaced the revolting peasants with their 21st century Scottish equivalent - the ned.
The toile was so popular it was used on wallpaper, cushion covers and lampshades - and despite the inevitable political outcry about how it gave the wrong impression of the city - they soon became the must have housewarming present in many a fashionable home.
Edinburgh wasn't even their next target. They did one for London first.
In 2007, they made a version for Edinburgh, one of five new designs commissioned for the Six Cities Design festival, and displayed prominently in Edinburgh's Waverley Station.
Edinburgh International Festival say they're delighted to use the design - which will feature in all their publicity material.
If it creates a little frisson of fuss, they say, all well and good.
And most of the journalists at yesterday's press launch weren't so shocked by the images that they couldn't take home their press pack in a little Edinburgh toile cotton bag.
And for those who complained about the lack of Robert Burns in the official programme, at least it offers one more tenuous link to the Bard.
The design team of course take their title from the poem To A Mouse.
Not London’s South Bank, but the south bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow - every bit as lively in cultural terms as its namesake. I’m Pauline McLean, 91Èȱ¬ Scotland’s arts correspondent, and I’ll be blogging here about arts events and issues happening across the country.
Comment number 1.
At 27th Mar 2009, Brian Hill wrote:"It included heroin addicts in a graveyard, teenage mums pushing prams..."
Pauline, you must have had a very strong magnifying glass to a) pick out the the addict in the first place and b) determine that he was a heroin addict.
Also how did you know it was teenage 'mums' pushing prams? Couldn't it have been teenagers pushing their younger siblings for a walk?
Once again we see this pathetic negative, worse case, Scotland can do nothing right scenario at every opportunity coming from the so called Scottish media.
Try getting your sights in perspective and in this case, you will only see a beautiful, classy design
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