Fast-Forward Mode Tom Walker Applauds a Ground Breaking Study of Modern Irish Art
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BOOKS MODERN IRISH ART Fast-forward mode Tom Walker applauds a ground breaking study of modern Irish art Art in Ireland since 1910 Fionna Barber Among these, this richly illustrated and feminism and postcolonialism, Barber aims Reaktion Books, £29 critically engaged book offers a very welcome to offer 'a more dynamic sense of how the ISBN 9781780230368 attempt to outline the story of Irish art from forces of nation and modernity have shaped 1910 to the present. art in twentieth-century Ireland'. Fionna Barber's Art in Ireland since 1910 is Barber's introduction suggests that part The study takes as its starting point the that rare thing: a book that is needed. Irish of the problem in mapping the history of arrival of Paul and Grace Henry on Achill cultural history has been a rather unbalanced Ireland's 20th-century art to this point has Island, off the coast of Mayo, in 1910. They affair. The country's extraordinary contribution been the conservatism of much Irish art stayed for nine years, and the rugged to world literature from the late 19th century historical practice - whether in striving to landscape and peasantry they painted there onwards has somewhat overshadowed uncover the chimera of an essential national might seem straightforwardly of a piece with the endeavours of its visual artists; the visual identity or evaluating works according cultural nationalism's recurrent idealisation corresponding wealth of scholarly responses to their embrace of the formal techniques of the west of Ireland (Fig. 2). Yet as Barber to Irish writing stands in contrast to the small of European modernism. But the turn to the shows, on closer examination a complex amount of such work produced on its visual social and the political in art history and the set of influences and priorities emerge: culture. This neglect has recently shown study of Irish culture more generally since the their Ulster and Scottish Nonconformist signs of ending, with the publication of a 1980s has slowly filtered through. Drawing backgrounds; their earlier training in Paris flurry of path-breaking books on the subject. particularly on the perspectives offered by (which for Paul Henry included a period at 122 APOLLO JUNE 2013 BOOKS MODERN IRISH ART 1 Big Red Mountain 2 Launching the Currach 3 Decoration, 1923 Sequence, 1967 1910-11 Mainie Jellell (1897-1944) Anne Madden (b. 1932) Paul Henry (1877-1958) Tempera and gold leaf on Oil on canvas, 185X220cm Oil on canvas, 41 x 60cm panel, 89 x 53cm Trinity College Dublin The National Gallery of The National Gall ery Art Collections Ireland, Dublin of Ireland, Dublin © Estate of Paul Henry/ © Heirs and Successors IVARO, Dublin, 2013 of Mainie Jellell Photo © National Gallery Photo © Nati onal Gallery of Ireland of Ireland As history slowed down with the arrival Gerard Dillon, Anne Madden, Louis of partition and independence during the le Brocquy and Tony O'Malley, Barber 1920S and 1930s, the ideologies of the emer suggests that Irish visual culture often ging establishments on both sides of the new came to be 'constituted outside Ireland's border co-opted radical and conservative national boundaries, shifting and challenging artistic practices alike, This study convincingly the parameters that existed in Dublin or suggests that even the controversial embrace Belfast', For some, this meant that innovative of abstraction by Mainie Jellett during the compositional strategies could also involve period was marked by the prevailing concerns a dialogue with Irish experience and the of the Free State, arguing that 'her evocation traditions of its visualisation, Anne Madden, of a pre-industrial spirituality is also remini for instance, is described as drawing subtly scent of the self-conscious primitivism on Abstract Expressionism and Irish motifs identified with the under-developed west' in works such as Big Red Mountain Sequence (Fig, 3), Meanwhile Barber reads Frank (1967; Fig, 1): 'Positioned on the edge of McKelvey's bucolic landscapes of the Bann abstraction,' Barber writes, 'these half and Lagan valleys - displayed in the homes glimpsed slopes and contours also return of his prosperous Northern Protestant client to the sensory experience of landscape - ele - as distancing the landscape of the new a walk not as a whole but as a sequence statelet from the sectarian violence still very of discontinuous fragments', much at large in its midst. Necessarily perhaps, the book's The study devotes considerable attention interpretative and narrative arc is less 3 to later Northern I rish artists too, As the coherent as it moves towards the present. Whistler's Academie Carmen); the fascin province emerges from the Second World It becomes more of a survey than a history, ation with the primitive at work across Europe War into the 1950S, Barber highlights the As is also inevitable in this kind of overview, at this time; the rough brushstroked verisim eclectic surrealist-inflected vibrancy of the there are omissions that, for me at least, ilitudes of 19th-century French realism; and works of Colin Middleton, John Luke, Nevill regrettably include Patrick Swift, Harry the writings of J.M , Synge, Their represen Johnson and F,E , McWilliam, Later chapters Kernoff and, most surprisingly of all, Harry tation of a landscape and archaic culture are much concerned with artistic responses Clarke, Clarke's absence also points to the seemingly beyond time at the fringes of Europe to the Troubles and their aftermath, taking in unacknowledged focus on painting and, to was, at least in its formation, as much an work by, among others, Deborah Brown, a lesser extent, sculpture as the media on avant-garde strategy as a romantic retreat. Robert Ballagh, Willie Doherty, Rita Duffy which the book concentrates - at least A theme running through the book is that and John Duncan, The attempt to keep until the breaking down of hierarchies and Ireland's evolving experience of modernity Northern Ireland's parallel and sometimes turn to conceptual modes starts to be was distinctive in ways that place the history divergent artistic development in view is foregrounded in the 1960s, This is a great of its art in discordant relation to European welcome, But some of the contextualising shame, considering the achievement of modernism, For time could not be stopped: assertions made are somewhat one-eyed, Clarke and others in stained glass earlier in Irish history from the early 1910S onward trapping the mid-century artists within a the century, A more serious problem is the went into what the Irish historian Roy Foster rather monolithic sense of Protestant identity, decision to bury references to the locations has described as 'fast-forward mode', Barber for instance, or somewhat simplistically of the works illustrated to a fearfully dense rightly emphasises just how embroiled in viewing later works as responding to list of picture acknowledgments, Despite these turbulent times were the lives and intransigence that was solely the preserve its faults, Art in Ireland since 1910 is to be work of an array of artists, including Oliver of the British government. Indeed the applauded: it offers an engaging overview Sheppard, William Orpen, John Lavery, historical framing throughout sometimes for the common reader, as well as a starting Sean Keating, Estella Solo mans, Jack lacks nuance. point for further critical debate, " Yeats, Grace Gifford, Patrick Tuohy and More successful is the book's integration Charles Lamb, The urgent need to reflect of the diaspora of Irish artists operating Tom Walker is Ussher Assistant Professor and even affect unfolding events impinged beyond the country's shores from the mid in Irish Writing at Trinity College, Dublin, on many, guiding Irish artists down parti 1940S on, Exploring the mobile perspectives and is writing a book about W.B. Yeats cular pathways, in play for artists such as William Scott, and the visual arts. JUNE 2013 APOLLO 123 .