Modern Art in Ireland by Dorothy Walker Lilliput Press 239pp, £25
Here at last is a readable and knowledgeable history of modern art in Ireland written by someone who knew most of the individuals involved. This splendid book is avowedly partial. It is, as the author states in the first sentence of her preface, "a highly personalised account", but it is all the better for it. Walker pulls no punches. George Russell is despatched because he equated mysticism "with his own deeply silly paintings of fairies", and we are left with the view that it is a pity that Sean Keating was not a better artist. The book is spiced with anecdotes which enliven the text with humour, poignancy, outrage.
The story of Irish art in the first decades of this century is dealt with speedily, and 1943, the year of the first Irish Exhibition of Living Art, is deemed the true birth of Modernism in the visual arts in Ireland. The subsequent chapters, carefully interwoven, explore the emergence of the "Modern" manner in art-making, from the quirky days of the so-called White Stag group, refugees from the war, through the heady weeks of the first ROSC exhibition in 1967, to the institutionalisation of the new vibrant visual culture in exhibitions held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (opened 1991) or in shows abroad, such as L'Imaginaire Irlandais (Paris 1996).
The book provides incontrovertible evidence that the reputation of Ireland as primarily a literary culture is under challenge - the visual arts are thriving. An Irish artist, Kathy Prendergast (most of the best Irish artists today are women), has just won a major award at the Venice Biennale, the first time since Louis Le Brocquy in 1956.
The exploration of the language of Irish art is told here by an agent of change, for Dorothy Walker has been involved closely in many of the initiatives that she describes so well. Philippe de Montebello, the respected director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has written recently that "there is a whole generation of art historians who have a real terror of works of art", writing theoretical books and making conceptual shows that nobody can understand. In contrast, Walker's descriptions of the work of her favourites, such as Le Brocquy, Patrick Scott, James Coleman and Dorothy Cross, provide the delight of immediacy of engagement with the physicality of art objects.
The history of the ROSC exhibition, held in Dublin at intervals between 1967 and 1988, is a fascinating one: a tale of debate, dissension and provocation. ROSC worked so brilliantly that it is easy to forget the obstacles against which the organisation struggled.
Michael Scott, the celebrated architect, conceived the idea while recuperating from a heart attack. The stress of the fierce arguments over an exhibition of Irish Christian art, planned to act as a counterpoint to ROSC, caused Scott further heart trouble and he missed the grand opening. Walker's book provides a strong sense of a courageous few people pushing the great debates of avant garde art against a sea of antagonistic and horrified opponents. The success of the visual arts in Ireland is to be celebrated today, but we are left in no doubt that it has been a hard-won achievement.
It is good to see a fine art book of this quality being printed in Ireland, proof that the printing industry here has been revolution ised technologically in recent years. The high quality of the illustrations in the book was made possible by sponsorship, itself indicative of a changed commercial environment, a sharp contrast to the early postwar period.
Walker offers a useful discussion of the reported assertion that "painting is dead". The book comes admirably up to date on the issue and discusses Stephen McKenna's curated show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art of spring 1997, in which, through the display of a series of eccentrically chosen works, he challenged new media work by demonstrating the variety inherent in the art of painting.
The Glen Dimplex Prize, begun in 1994, has yet to find a painter deserving enough to win, and in this is following its British counterpart, the Turner Prize. Walker, however, while making a strong case for painting, also gives admirable space to sculpture, multimedia, installation and performance art. She has a soft spot for the work of Brian O'Doherty (Patrick Ireland) and the talented Nigel Rolfe.
AS regards the growth of art venues in Ireland, the book relates the history of recent developments at the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, the RHA Gallagher Gallery, and of course the Irish Museum of Modern art. The regional galleries are covered too. The book is by far the best introduction yet published on the history of 20th-century Irish art.
It is also, in many respects, a counterstrike for the 1960s inner circle of art experts, which included Walker, who have been attacked vehemently as a blind elite around the then Director of the Arts Council, Father Donal O'Sullivan, SJ. The trenchant opinions expressed by Walker are an echo of Michael Scott's comment that there were good artists and bad artists in Ireland and "we knew the difference". Only time will tell whether the favourites of Scott, Walker, Professor Anne Crookshank, Basil Goulding and Fr O'Sullivan et al will be the important names of the story of Irish Modernism. On Walker's ably articulated and well-illustrated evidence, they stand a fair chance.
Brian Kennedy is Director of the National Gallery of Australia