Irish Art 1920-2020

Description

Irish Art 1920-2020: Perspectives on change by Catherine Marshall and Yvonne Scott, is a generously-illustrated book in which eleven authors examine different aspects of Irish art through the hundred years or so since independence. During this time, art in Ireland has borne witness to unprecedented social and political transformation, and this book of essays considers how some of the established perspectives in Irish visual culture were challenged and represented during this time. Art in Ireland has been shaped by a range of factors - the country's geographic position, post-colonial history, political upheaval, religious environment - and of course the complex interconnections both within and beyond the country, prompted by shifting patterns within society - identities, migration, technology, for example - as well as the artists' evolving engagement with the wider world. This is not a linear story; each chapter explores a particular aspect of art, how it reflected the interests of artists, the environments in which they worked both in Ireland and abroad, and how subjects and methods changed over time. The extensive richness of the last century or so, as well as the diversity, creativity and originality of the artists means that no single text can ever be comprehensive, and this one makes no such claims. Rather, his book, however, is a kind of map; it does not pretend to fully represent the entire narrative but may provide some useful clues to negotiating parts of it, or at least the basis for further exploration and debate.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Ireland
• Stephen Ireland
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Royal Irish Academy
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781911479895
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

Irish Art
1920-2020
Perspectives on change
Catherine Marshall and Yvonne Scott Editors
Irish Art 1920-2020 Perspectives on change
First published 2022 Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2
www.ria.ie
Royal Irish Academy and the authors
ISBN 978-1-911479-82-6 (PB) ISBN 978-1-911479-88-8 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-911479-89-5 (epub)
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owners or a licence permitting restricted copying in Ireland issued by the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency CLG, 63 Patrick Street, D n Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, A96 WF25.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is supported by:

Production Editor: Neil Burkey Design and typesetting: An Design, Tara Index: Jane Rogers Printed in Malta by Gutenberg Press
Royal Irish Academy is a member of Publishing Ireland, the Irish book publishers association
A note from the publisher
We want to try to offset the environmental impacts of carbon produced during the production of our books and journals. For the production of our books this year we will plant 45 trees with Easy Treesie.
The Easy Treesie-Crann Project organises children to plant trees. Crann- Trees for Ireland is a membership-based, non-profit, registered charity (CHY13698) uniting people with a love of trees. It was formed in 1986 by Jan Alexander, with the aim of Releafing Ireland . Its mission is to enhance the environment of Ireland through planting, promoting, protecting and increasing awareness about trees and woodlands.
Kathy Prendergast, Untitled , pencil on paper, 24 x 16 cm, 1998.
Contents
Preface
Editors foreword
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and conventions
1 Taking charge: making art in a century of change
Catherine Marshall
2 The languages of abstraction: Irish dialects and dialectics
Riann Coulter and Donal Maguire
3 Visualising Irish history: conflicting utopias
Catherine Marshall
4 Landscape as an expanded field
Yvonne Scott
5 The body in space and time: reading corporeity and Ireland in art
Suzanna Chan
6 An expression of matter: sculpture and installation
Paula Murphy
7 The Arts and Crafts movement and its influence on Irish art
Nicola Gordon Bowe
8 Culture is ordinary: an (incomplete) history of Irish graphic design, 1950-2020
Linda King
9 New Media: there is no special way works of art have to be
Si n Hanrahan
10 Conceptualism: the last partisans of the avant-garde ?
Gavin Murphy
11 Beyond the walls of national identity: the triangulation of art criticism, curatorial discourse and art practice, an Irish case study
Lucy Cotter
12 Globalisation and Irish art: a grand scheme?
Yvonne Scott
Bibliography
Image credits
Authors biographies
Preface
Across cultures and time, scholars have examined how artists and designers have represented and negotiated their own eras and those of history. How we examine Ireland s history and present through art depends not only on an interrogation of the object and its space, but on how it is received and perceived, both in the artist s own time and by later generations. To help us in this, we look to the objective (or not so objective) writings of critics, historians and theorists. In Irish cultural studies the thoughts of various writers and critics are a determinative presence in the historiography of Irish modern and contemporary art and design. Each writer or critic allowed readers to think more meaningfully not only about the art itself, but also about how it resonated with, commented on or challenged society, then and subsequently. Their work has allowed later researchers, with the benefit of time and retrospection, to construct new understandings, or to use that work as a point of departure to deconstruct existing analyses and agendas. In recent decades, critical thinking has expanded to consider art and Ireland beyond borders, dominant sociopolitical contexts and prescribed heritage.
Over the past 100 years, Irish art and design has evolved from postcolonial nationalistic concerns of the local, to Modernist subjective explorations in search of the universal, to defying boundaries of any type and situating itself within the global community. Building on, and at times deviating from, extant art writings, this volume traces these developments within themes of identity, modernity, landscapes, corporeality, technologies, canons, race, migration and globalisation.
Irish artists and designers have represented, expressed, reflected and confronted. Those who study art, its making, its meaning and its contexts seek to understand, to interpret and to position art within the wider Irish cultural narrative, both at home and abroad. They assess impacts and they expand or refine the discourse. The best of scholars do this in a knowing way, recognising that the perspectives presented in their scholarship belong to a given moment in time, and bravely offering their analysis to scrutiny. The editors of this collection of writings do not assume to present a definitive statement on Irish modern and contemporary art; rather, they have brought together a series of individual voices. Their considered, nuanced positions reflect the complexities and ambiguities of Ireland s past and present.
These editors, Catherine Marshall and Yvonne Scott, are among the finest scholars of their generation. Recognised nationally and internationally, each has played a formative role in visual cultural studies; curatorially, critically and pedagogically. Alongside her many independent curatorial projects, Catherine Marshall was a transformative head of collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and is a key figure in developing a national policy that recognises the artist as an active community member. Yvonne Scott, a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, was the founding director of the Trinity College Irish Art Research Centre (TRIARC). Both editors have steered and shaped Irish cultural thinking as teachers and mentors. Marshall has taught at the National College of Art and Design, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. Scott headed the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Trinity and has curated a number of seminal exhibitions with leading Irish cultural institutions.
Each has published extensively, their work spanning criticism, theory and art history. Over the years, they have (re)positioned leading figures in Irish art within national and global cultural discourse, and they have introduced the work of new practitioners to wider audiences. Their work has served the artist, scholarship and the public by aiding engagement and understanding, and they have asserted the relevance of art and design within the wider story of Ireland. This volume marks a high point in their journey.
TRIARC is proud of its association with this volume. It congratulates the academic achievements of its editors and its contributors. Its presence will augment, direct and challenge existing and future readings of art and Ireland.
Angela Griffith, Director, TRIARC, Trinity College Dublin, November 2021

Charles Tyrrell, Untitled , 1979, acrylic and mixed media on board (diptych), 196 x 115 cm, and the logo for the Trinity Irish Art Research Centre (TRIARC) based on that painting.
Editors foreword
The story of a people can never be told without its artistic representation . 1
Introduction
Art in Ireland between 1920 and 2020 has borne witness to unprecedented social and political change. This book of essays considers how a range of established formats and thematics of art were fundamentally challenged and changed in Ireland during that time.
It is not a linear story. Like the art it addresses, it is composed of many narratives that extend far beyond the politics of government and sovereignty to reflect the complex realities of life as lived on the island and among the Irish diaspora. Each chapter addresses a particular aspect of art: what artists sought to express, the milieu within which they were working, and whether and how their subject changed over that time. Independence brought a host of opportunities and challenges. For many the conundrum was how to construct a cultural identity that was recognisably Irish, while for others such a challenge was irrelevant as they sought to reflect constituencies that were geographically borderless, seeking to express their humanity, or to respond to transnational challenges regarding the nature of art itself.
Independence brought with it the pressure of negotiating new relationships with former colonisers, as well as shaping new political entities. The colonial influence on Irish culture was not, however, immediately dissolved after the seismic impact of independence. Despite the partition of the island into the Irish Free State (later ire) and Northern Ireland, both remained members of the Commonwealth until ire was declared a republic in 1949, but they followed parallel paths when the UK and the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community in the early 1970s. Even since then, proximity, overlapping cultures, migratory ties, established trade links, a common language (and currency until 1979), common EU membership (until 2020), as well as a shared island and contested border, have meant that cultural independence was slow to reveal itself. Ireland has grown in confidence, with exponential development of international relationships, replacing colonial subservience with equality, diffidence with a new level of confidence.
The pressing demand for an identifiably Irish visual culture has subsided over the decades, shifting instead towards an exploration of Ireland s place in a