ABSTRACT
The repetitive and circular representations of ‘Artistic Glasgow’ continued, however: the array of stereotyped ‘descriptions’ being presented as the outcome of the reporter/observer’s confrontation with real-life situations. Both ‘fiction’ and ‘parody’ are recognizable elements within much tum-of-the-century popular ‘leisure’ writing in Glasgow. The commonest means whereby Glasgow’s petit-bourgeois journals set limits to discourse on and around artistic developments were by ignoring to a striking degree the Art School and most of the events relating to it. In 1894 Glasgow was presented with images so strikingly modernist that the ensuing hostility of the local artistic establishment must, in retrospect, appear to have been inevitable. The potential for decorative art to begin to colonize the public sphere in Glasgow was being acknowledged in the city prior to 1890. The slavish following of English developments was by no means something new in Glasgow and it was certainly not unique to the Glasgow Advertiser.
