THEO SNODDY's Dictionary of Irish Art (Wollhound Press, £35) is emphatically an event - an essential, surely, for any practising art critic, historian, scholar, etc., in this country, whatever about the general reader (it should also be available abroad, particularly in America). As it is nearly 600 pages long and factually very dense, I cannot claim yet to have read every entry in it, nor do I propose either to verify every detail: that would take years of intense work and would need a committee of art scholars rather than a single journalist/critic.
Living artists, quite rightly, do not qualify, and Snoddy says in the foreword that he had to draw the line with those who died no later than 1990. Neither is he overly purist about the term "Irish" and includes, for example, that fine sculptor Gerda Fromel who was German-Czech by birth, but certainly put down roots here. To what extent the comparable sections of this work will supplant Strickland I cannot say, though the ideal thing would be to own both (Strickland, however, did at least include portraits of many of the artists he wrote about, while the present volume has no illustration apart from a painting by John Luke reproduced in colour on the dust-jacket).
Nobody appears to have escaped Snoddy's fine-mesh net, from the eccentric emigre Paul Nietsche in Belfast to Charles E. Kelly of Dublin Opinion fame (an accomplished watercolourist in his own right, as well as a noted cartoonist). He has even traced the career of emigre Irish painters', such as Sam Walsh, who emigrated to London in the 1950s but found his true milieu in the Liverpool of the Beatles. The approach is factual and, historical, not critical-philosophic, which is surely the right one in what is essentially a work of reference; jargon and a half-assimilated abstract terminology, usually borrowed from fashionable French thinkers, are the bane of most contemporary writing about visual art. When Snoddy does state or quote opinions, they are usually those of critics and historians of the time and, by the way, he does not disdain to quote magazine and newspaper reviews.
This looks like becoming the standard work of its kind, and presumably it can be updated every ten years or so. Certainly I shall guard my copy carefully and shall stubbornly refuse to lend it out.
Louis le Brocquy: The Head Image (Gandon Press, £25 in UK) traces pictorially what has been the Leitmotiv of the painter's work since the mid-1960s, down to pictures which have been created only this year and in which the previous bodiless heads are often reduced to a single orifice, such as a mouth or an ear. As exhibition-goers hardly need to be told, the "subjects" include Joyce, Beckett, Francis Bacon, Yeats, Lorca, Heaney, as well as paintings which do not evoke a specific person. The text is confined to interviews with the artist, including an informative one by George Morgan. Handsomely produced, and a tribute Id the steadily climbing standard - and expanding range - of Irish art publishing.
Three Men on an Island, by James McIntyre (Blackstaff Press, £20 in UK) is a short, simply written yet endearing volume which promises to become a small classic of its kind. In 1951, McIntyre, then an artist-beginner, went to stay for some weeks with Gerard Dillon in a cottage on a small island off Connemara, accompanied by the painter George Campbell. Life there was predictably primitive (the "sanitary facilities", in particular, were non-existent) but the islanders were sympathetic, so were the main-landers on the coast nearby, and while domestic chores often caused discontent, the two older artists proved to be stimulating companions and helpful critics. One hilarious visit (by currach) is recorded to the home of the novelist Kate O'Brien, and on another occasion there was a breathless, breakneck row to the shore to escape from a (probably harmless) basking shark. The book is excellently illustrated, mainly by Maclntyre's own drawings and watercolours.
We tend to take the Chester Beatty Library rather for granted, though its imminent move to Dublin Castle may make it more immediate, and more accessible for the public. Its huge wealth of material - which is not, as some people have thought, virtually confined to innumerable editions of the Koran - is reflected in two handsome volumes published by Scorpion Cavendish, London: Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Collection, by Linda York Leach (£40 each). The Mughal dynasty was perhaps India's high-water mark politically, and it included one of the greatest men in history, the Emperor Akhbar - who was roughly contemporary with Charles V in Europe. The Mughals were Mongol by ancestry and largely Persian by culture, and the court art they favoured reflected this, with perhaps a debt to Ming China. It rarely went beyond the miniature, but its flawless taste, sinuous line and curious (to a Western mind) mingling of hedonism and spirituality make it unique. Matisse and, more recently, Howard Hodgkin are only two of the many moderns who have learned from it. The book does not confine itself to the Delhi court, however, it also discusses subsidiary schools, such as the remarkable one which flourished in the Deccan.
William John Leach: an Irish Painter Abroad, by Denise Ferran (National Gallery of Ireland/ Merrell Holberton, London, £29.95/£22.50) is of course tuned to the exhibition at the National Gallery which has just ended, but it is a self-sufficient work and the outcome of long research. Leach's long residence in France and his early (and unsuccessful) marriage there, his later settling in London with a woman who eventually became the second Mrs Leach, are virtually the only highlights in an otherwise uneventful life and career, devoted to steady productivity. The reproductions are many and good, though my impression is strengthened that the early work (inspired by French Realism) is the strongest, while the later pictures are relatively conventional, though always sensitive and technically adept.
The Irish Arts Review Yearbook 1997, edited by Homan Potterton and published by Anne Reihill, maintains its high standards both in content and presentation. It includes meaty articles on Maurice MacGonigal, Paul Henry, Camille Souter, Thomas Ryan and an interview with Kathy Prendergast, who won a prize in the most recent Venice Biennale. There are also retrospective surveys of the year's exhibitions and art activities, reports on sales and auctions, a large section of book reviews. The yearbook costs £35 hardback and £22.50 softback, and is good value both for art scholars and the wider public.
Conor Fallon is a monograph from the Gandon Press (£20/£12.50), numbered 1, which presumes that others will follow on the same lines. There are lively, intelligent contributions by Hilary Pyle, Vera Ryan and Ciaran MacGonigal, as well as a foreword Seamus Heaney, and the plates are good. From the same, hyperactive publisher comes the second of their Profile series, Sean McSweeney (£7.50), with a critical essay by myself and a lengthy interview with the artist by Aidan Dunne. Good colour plates.
There is a strong emphasis on the visual arts in Neglected Wells: Spirituality and the Arts, edited by Anne M. Murphy and Eoin G. Cassidy (Four Courts Press, £12.95). Eileen Kane writes on Spirituality Reflected in the Visual Arts, while Gesa Thiessen considers a thorny area intellectually and aesthetically - what might be described as the religious content of, modern art - in a chapter entitled Imaging God: Spiritual Dimensions in Modern Art, which ranges from Picasso to Rouault. The other contributors deal mainly with theology, literature and music. This slender, well-considered volume would have been enhanced by a few colour plates, but presumably budgeting did not allow for these.