irish Art 1830-1990: The Modern Movement (extract)

In one sense, Modern Art did not occur in Ireland – not at least, in the sense that it happened in most other European countries, where culturally it was as complete an upheaval as the Great War was politically. Leaving aside any over-ambitious comparisons with France or Germany, the ferments and revolutions of pre-1914 European Modernism did not come to Ireland until the 1920s, and even then only in an attenuated, second-hand form.

It is arguable, of course, that they came almost equally late to Britain, where critics still found Augustus John mouth-gapingly original and daring at a time when the more advanced continental and American buyers were already collecting Picasso and Matisse. Yet even Wyndham Lewis's Vorticist movement, though it was in many respects meretricious and second-hand, showed at least an awareness of what was in the air and of the need to catch up with the great, vital international currents. By comparison. Ireland at the time was still caught up in the Lane controversy, and was finding it difficult to come to terms even with the Impressionists. There were, of course, Modernist enthusiasts and even collectors in Dublin, but they were mostly isolated figures and certainly not typical of their milieu.

The credit for introducing Cubism and French Modernism as a whole into Ireland is generally given to two remarkable women, Mainie Jellett (1897-1944) and Evie Hone (1894-1955) [detailed in Irish Art 1830-1990]. By background, inevitably, they were Anglo-Irish gentlewomen who took the boat to Paris in 1920 after studying in Dublin and in London under Sickert. The fashionable teachers of Modernism in Paris, at a time when Cubism was already becoming a salon style, were Andre Lhote and Albert Gleizes, both second-rate artists but excellent theorists and educators, as well as able technicians in their own right.

Up to this period Hone and ]ellett had worked in fairly traditional modes, touched slightly by the second-or-third-hand Modernism which had filtered into London from France. They quickly left Lhote for Gleizes, working under him annually for years and thoroughly absorbing his codified, eclectic brand of Cubism. In turn, they introduced this style into Ireland, where they became intensely active and influential as teachers, theorists and propagandists for Modernism. In the tradition of so many Irish women artists, they were also excellent organisers and had a strong social sense, which culminated in the leading role they played in the establishment of the annual Irish Exhibition of Living Art in Dublin in 1943. ]ellett, in fact, never showed at the IELA, and was terminally ill when its first exhibition took place.

Unquestionably, this remarkable duo did a great deal to popularise Paris Modernism in their homeland, while their achievements as energisers and inspirers can hardly be overrated. It should be remembered, too, that they had to face very powerful, heavyweight opposition from many quarters, including the RHA, which was then almost entirely dominated by reactionary followers and pupils of Orpen. In the early years of the Free State, waves of fresh, youthful and forward-looking energy came up against stagnant lakes of insularity and entrenched, often ignorant, prejudice, while the new bourgeoisie formed in the wake of revolution was already stabilising itself into a new conservatism. The outward and inward-looking factions often clashed; and in the 1930s in particular it sometimes seemed as if the latter was dominant and that Ireland might lapse into provincial isolationism, or into a rather cranky, defensive form of puritanical nationalism.

From the Irish Art 1930-1990 by Brian Fallon, published by Appletree Press.