Art review: Tartan, V&A Dundee

Tartan is a chameleon, a shape shifter, endlessly variable both in its coloured patterns and in the purposes it serves whether clan, army, or nation, the grand, or the humble. Beloved of kitsch, it has been both a punk symbol of protest and inspiration for the elegance of haut couture. It is these contrasts that provide the text for Tartan at the V&A Dundee. In the words of the press release, the exhibition “highlights the ways tartan shapes identities, embraces tradition, expresses rebellion and conjures fantasy.” Correspondingly there is as much of the whacky and weird as there is of the straightforward story of tartan.

The show begins with an intriguing account of the mathematical basis of tartan and how with the simple opposition of the vertical and horizontal threads on a loom, the warp and the weft, it can build patterns of wonderful complexity and variety. This appealed to abstract artists and even to architects and a piece of tartan glass by Cathryn Shilling, transparent but folded like a cloth, does give a vivid idea of the spatial quality of the fabric. Architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed a black and white chequerboard fabric. It is not altogether clear that it derived from tartan, but the same pattern was adopted by Glasgow police and thence became the identifying symbol of police everywhere.