Art By Design

His design and architecture is iconic but JENNY WHITE reveals how CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH embraced painting throughout his dazzling career

Fluid, natural forms fused with bold geometric lines; the tightly coiled Glasgow rose; the exclamatory uprights of furniture which even now seem strangely futuristic: as an architect, designer and pioneer of Art Nouveau, Charles Rennie Mackintosh needs little introduction. The Glasgow-born visionary’s influence can be seen in his city’s most arresting buildings, but also in public and private collections far beyond the busy industrial city where he lived for much of his life.

A new exhibition at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Making the Glasgow Style, places his work in context, providing a timeline that reveals his development, influences and, ultimately, his groundbreaking individuality. As curator Alison Brown puts it: “He tapped into the zeitgeist and created something utterly unique; his first high-back chair, for instance, which he designed for Miss Cranston’s Tearooms in Glasgow in 1898, is still used as the basis for designs in modern sci-fi and fantasy films today. His mind created something that was so ahead of its time, it’s still viewed as a way of representing the future.”

MAKING A MOVEMENT

The exhibition also sheds light on Mackintosh’s life as a painter. A keen watercolorist and prolific sketcher, he created and exhibited paintings throughout his career. As a student at Glasgow School of Art, he was encouraged to sketch and this laid down a habit that lasted a lifetime. The exhibition includes his Italian sketchbook, displayed on an iPad so you can flip through. It also includes early watercolours, sketches of Glaswegian architecture, and watercolour and ink studies ranging from stylised plants to his later flower compositions and studies of France.