MY words

by George Wyllie

Famedram, #4.95

POPULAR appeal is often a barrier to serious recognition, even in an age when popular culture is taken more seriously than ever before. Scul?tor George Wyllie is a case in point.

His vision has provided a series of powerful emblems for Glasgow and Scotland that are quite unparalleled. The straw locomotive that was torched as it hung from the Finnieston crane, the paper boat on the Clyde, the safety pin at Glasgow Cross - all have taken thought-provoking art to the populace. Crucially, the artist has always been closely identified with his work - Wyllie is a presence as compelling as his work, but not in any overbearing way (he is too skilled a performer for that), even when you might disagree with the views he expresses.

His intellect, however, has remained underrated, something this little volume, the collected essays he has contributed to Bill Williams's ArtWork magazine, will correct in anyone who reads it. Wyllie is a conceptual artist in the true meaning of that overloaded and overused term. His thinking is lateral, even tangential, but always interesting and more rigorous than it might appear, perhaps because it is often very funny.

Wyllie can extend a metaphor so far it becomes a mode of travel, as we already know from his work. For my money, A sideways look at gravity stands tall in the great tradition of the humourous essay. His thoughts on art are as firm as the purpose of the man himself, and his turn of phrase so sure that what is quite profound can be mistaken for glib. He warns his own community: ''Like mad cows we unquestionably allow ourselves to be fed on our own art, and the deadly disease is visual rhetoric.'' His definitions are as interesting: ''A conference is usually a disparate congregation of unsures seeking the togetherness of being sure.'' The dismissive attitude to the comfort of certainty befits a chap who has incorporated the question-mark into his self-employed designation.

Wyllie can be an entertaining reporter, as readers of the Herald's arts pages will know. Here his coverage of the clan gathering of the Macmillans at Langbank is a good example. As Wyllie knows, there are few certainties in life, but there must surely be fewer more stimulating ways to spend less than a fiver.