The Moderns: The Arts in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s
Irish artists and writers have played a fascinating role in the story of modernism, and The Moderns traces this by bringing together exceptional examples of painting and sculpture, photography, film, architecture, literature, music and design, of Irish significance, in an exploration of the development of modern Ireland through its arts in the period from the 1900s to 1970s. Its broad interdisciplinary context proceeds from the recognition that art forms are not mutually exclusive and that the understanding of one may inform another.Here, the paintings of Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone and other advocates of European modernism are juxtaposed with the accomplishments of designer-architect Eileen Gray and writer James Joyce. Also examined are the works and influence of John Millington Synge, Paul Henry and the Yeats family; the impact of Surrealism; post-war connections among Irish and British artists and writers, including Francis Bacon, Louis le Brocquy and Anthony Cronin; and the introduction for the first time of Samuel Beckett as a visual artist through his work Film.
The Moderns reflects the ground-breaking Rosc exhibitions from the 1960s and ’70s onwards. Minimalism and Conceptualism and the emergence of postmodernism are traced in the works of Brian O’Doherty, Barry Flanagan, Michael Craig-Martin, Sean Scully and James Coleman.
The Moderns declares what we know to be the case, but which few publications have examined—that the arts of the past century owe Ireland some of their greatest works. It features major essays written from different disciplinary perspectives by noted authorities on Irish art and cultural life.
Foreword – Enrique Juncosa; Irish Modernism: The Early Decades – Robert O’Byrne; The Yeats Family and Modernism in Ireland – Bruce Arnold; Peripheral Visions: Rethinking Irish Modernism – Luke Gibbons; The Moderns: The 1950s – Aidan Dunne; The Gaze is a Thing: Beckett’s ‘Film’ and Bram van Velde – David Lloyd; Modernism and Beyond: The 1960s and ’70s – Christina Kennedy; Seeing and Time: James Coleman’s ‘Pheasant’ – Luke Gibbons; Mirrors of Memory: Ireland, Photography and the Modern – Luke Gibbons; The Conditions of Architectural Modernism in Ireland, 1900–1970: Between Aspiration and Production – Ellen Rowley; Swimming with sharks, going our own sweet way: Poetry, Modernism and Film in Ireland – Theo Dorgan; Modern Music in Ireland – Brian Cass
