For most people, the launch of your autobiography offers a chance to sit back on your laurels and bask in everyone’s admiration. Not so Bruce McLean. At a party this week at Tate Modern to celebrate his rollicking and often hilarious autobiographical tome A Lawnmower in the Loft, the inimitable Scottish performance sculptor and man of many actions chose to conduct a spirited interview with himself.
This exchange involved Bruce McLean 1 (wearing spectacles) asking Bruce McLean 2 (spectacles removed) "Ten Difficult Questions". These were lubricated by a regular intake of red wine and ranged from, “Why do you live in [the South London district] Barnes, the most boring part of the world?” (a question that went largely unanswered); to “what are your major influences?” (“Action Painter Jackson Pollock, Action Singer, Johnny Ray”). Matters became somewhat heated when, on accusing himself of being “annoyingly flippant,” McLean’s retort was “if that’s your attitude you can fuck off!” But before both alter-egos came to blows, some mollification was provided by the final question, in which McLean pressed himself on further influences. This yielded the revelation that the single most important influence on the burly Glaswegian maestro of performance had been Oscar Wilde, with McLean providing something of a personal manifesto by rounding off the self-interview with Wilde’s observation that: “Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.” Amen to that.
