The Twisted Arcade: Unconnected Thoughts on Martin Creed’s Work No. 1059

Abstract

This paper presents a public commission by artist Martin Creed through an experimental essay form that replicates the structural features of the artwork itself. Creed’s work is entitled Work No. 1059 (Creed has been numbering his artworks sequentially since 1986) and consists of a flight of 104 steps that join two streets in Edinburgh, part of a refurbishment project by Edinburgh City Council and Edinburgh World Heritage. In this essay “walks” from the lowest point on Market Street to the uppermost level on North Bridge, naming as it goes each of the different marble steps sourced from twenty-seven countries. The steps had previously fallen into disuse, and were eventually closed. In 2011, they were reopened as an artwork and a public right of way: The Scotsman Steps. They are encased within an octagonal, turreted stone tower, originally part of The Scotsman Newspaper building. The whole forms part of a Category A-listed structure built in 1899 by architects James Dunn and James Finlay. Commissioning Creed’s Work No. 1059 was at the instigation of The Fruitmarket Gallery, which lies near the bottom entrance to the steps.

Keywords:

• Martin Creed
• Scotsman Steps
• public art
• Edinburgh
• picturesque

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Fiona Bradley and Armida Taylor of The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, for providing all primary material relating to the Martin Creed commission; the two anonymous peer reviewers and the two editors of this issue for their insightful comments on the draft submission; and Gautier Deblonde for the superb images of Creed’s work.

Notes

¹ John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, ed. J.G. Links (Harmondsworth: Penguin, (1853) 2001), 154.

² Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Belknap, 2002), 211.

³ Walter Benjamin, “On Passage Véro-Dodat,” quoting J.A. Dulaure; ibid., 33.

⁴ John Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque. Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 5.

⁵ Benjamin, Arcades Project, 423.

⁶ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (New York: Norton, 1954), 20.

⁷ Fruitmarket Gallery, “Video Interview with the Artist” (2011). Available online: http://fruitmarket.co.uk/exhibitions/scotsman-steps/2011 (accessed on March 3, 2015).

⁸ Anon., “The Scotsman Steps Edinburgh Pre-Application Planning Statement for Martin Creed Art Work” (unpublished document) (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2010), 5.

⁹ From an Illustrated Guide to Paris, in Benjamin, Arcades Project, 3.

¹⁰ Ibid., 417.

¹¹ Camillo Sitte, The Birth of Modern City Planning (with a translation of the 1889 Austrian edition of his City Planning according to Artistic Principles), ed. George R Collins and Christiane Crasemann Collins (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 247.

¹² William Shenstone, “Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening” (1764), in The Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone, Esq, 2 vols (London: R&J Dodsley, 1764), 2: 142–3.

¹³ There are a further five marbles cited in the guide – numbers 105–9 – unused spare stock but standing in, presumably accidentally, for an expanded Yugoslavia: Giada White [Macedonia], Fior di Crema [Bosnia Herzogovina], Blu Venezia [Croatia], Crema Nuova [Croatia] and Verdi Alpi [Italy].

¹⁴ William Gilpin, “On Picturesque Travel,” from Three Essays (1792), in Nature and Industrialisation, ed. Alasdair Clayre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 25.

¹⁵ Shenstone, “Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening,” 127.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Benjamin, Arcades Project, 540.

¹⁸ Ruskin, Stones of Venice, 148.

¹⁹ Ian Hamilton Finlay, “Unconnected Sentences on Gardening,” in Nature Over Again After Poussin (Glasgow: Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, 1980); “More Detached Sentences on Gardening in the Manner of Shenstone,” PN Review 42, Vol.11, no. 4 (1984) pp. 18-20.

²⁰ Benjamin, Arcades Project, 206.

²¹ John Ruskin notebooks, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Eng. misc. c. 218; from George P. Landow. Available online: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/3.2.html/ (accessed on May 31, 2013), n.p.

²² Ruskin, Stones of Venice, 103.

²³ Martin Creed, Inauguration video (2011). YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YiYCMwJtj4/ (accessed on 30 July 2015).

²⁴ Fiona Bradley, ed., Martin Creed. Down Over Up (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2010).

²⁵ From Work No. 989, in Martin Creed: Works (London: Thames & Hudson, 2010), 989.

²⁶ “Interview. Tom Eccles with Martin Creed,” ibid., x.

²⁷ Gioni, ibid., xxiv.

²⁸ Benjamin, Arcades Project, 423.

²⁹ Ibid., 9.

³⁰ Ruskin notebooks, n.p.

³¹ Shenstone, “Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening,” 142.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Patrizio

Andrew Patrizio is Professor of Scottish Visual Culture in the School of History of Art at Edinburgh College of Art/University of Edinburgh. He specializes in Scottish art after 1945, environmental humanities and the ecological. Curatorial projects include Ilana Halperin. Steine and Hand Held Lava (Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité and Schering Foundation Project Space, Berlin, 2012) with Sara Barnes and Thomas Schnalke. Books include Contemporary Sculpture in Scotland (1999), Stefan Gec (2002) and Anatomy Acts (winner of Medical Book of the Year 2007). He is preparing a new book called The Ecological Eye which will place art history clearly within Green political and cultural contexts. Previously he held curatorial posts at Glasgow Museums and the Hayward Gallery, London.