Muscle and guts are at the heart of Peter Howson’s work in this major exhibition, as one of Scotland’s most formidable and most sensitive artists squares up to his back catalogue on an epic scale. A holy trinity of self-portraits introduce each of the three floors, from Jekyll and Hyde (1995) to the Repentant of 2001, and, in his most recent study, a man etched with the lines of experience.
This points all the way back to Howson’s early images of boxers, bruisers, prostitutes and dossers, who seem to be threatening a square go with the viewer. Like the prowling beast in Tiger (2000) painted during a wildlife commission in India, many of Howson’s subjects look ready to pounce. Howson’s choices of celebrity portraits are as telling, as a toned and pneumatic ‘Madonna’ (2002) sits in repose, while a defiant but wary looking ‘Steven Berkoff’ (2002) occupies the mean streets.
On the second floor, under the umbrella title of Suffering and Salvation, Howson charts his religious awakening that came following a breakdown shortly after his tenure as official war artist in Bosnia. Howson’s take on The Last Supper (1999) depicts a cramped and crowded scene full of scary looking disciples resembling his bruisers of yore. Howson’s own desire for personal transcendence is palpable in the determination on his face in A Singular Road (2001), marking a turning point in the artist’s life and work.
On the top floor - as close to Heaven as the gallery will allow – Howson’s recent work falls under the trenchantly titled banner of Apocalypse Now. This reveals a world of Bosch-like carnage, where flag-waving violence bursts onto the streets, while the suffering of the Coronavirus pandemic also makes its presence felt.
Howson’s brighter side shines through his portrait of David Bowie (2016). The connection came about after Bowie purchased one of Howson’s Bosnian paintings, and finds Howson an excited if just as intense fanboy.
There is a vital currency too in works such as Wagner (2023), which depicts seven deadly conscripts to the private army at the vanguard of Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Poised for action, the seven’s strength in numbers can’t hide their own war with themselves. In a world where acts of terror are driven by fear on a grand scale, perhaps this is Howson’s most terrifying vision of all in this mighty show of strength charting a life’s work in all its torment and triumph.
City Art Centre, Edinburgh until 2 October
Scottish Art News, July 2023
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