Celia Scott - Alan Colquhoun

Celia Scott profiles some of the artist’s best-known heads, from Eduardo Paolozzi to Colin St. John Wilson, with both a rigorous discussion of their aesthetic nature, and the engaging narrative surrounding their creation.

Celia Scott attempts to rescue public sculpture from its exclusively classical connotations, while at the same time employing the visual and formal language of classical method. The resulting work sets itself apart from the current architectural and artistic landscape, highlighting moments in the collective memory against the backdrop of modern experience. This classical approach chooses strange subjects, indeed most of Scott’s sitters were influenced by, and influential in, the modernist movement in architecture.

Alan Colquhoun opens this volume with a critical look at public sculpture and Scott’s place within, and outside of, its limits. In a characteristically robust analysis, Colquhoun examines the psychological and physical origins of Scott’s practice, and relates her work to the history and meaning of public sculpture.