Bruce McLean

(Scottish, born 1944)

Bruce McLean is a contemporary Scottish artist. Working across performance, sculpture, photography, and painting, he consistently challenges art world hierarchies using sharp satire and subtle subversions. McLean’s work employs the formal language and aesthetics of work he parodies, thereby confusing traditional understands of authenticity, skill, and sincerity for his audience. In one of his most iconic early works, Pose Work for Pliths 3 (1971), the artist enacted a series of increasingly playful poses atop simple white pedestals, thereby elevating and satirizing the traditional display of sculptural objects. “Pose Work for Plinths was just one of many pieces,” McLean remarked, “but it seems to have become my hit record, and it was instrumental in helping me move on to other things. I got very interested in architecture and in how you behave in different spaces.” Born in 1944 in Glasgow, United Kingdom, he studied at the Glasgow School of Art then under Anthony Caro and Phillip King at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. His works are in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Edinburgh, among others. McLean lives and works in London, United Kingdom.

Bruce McLean Artworks

Bruce McLean (571 results)