THE TYRANNY OF CONVENTION - ROYAL HIBERNIAN ACADEMY
IF THE IRISH EXHIBITION of Living Art, which opened in May and closed in June, and which was reviewed in Magill last month, was to some extent domiinated by the need or urge among its artists to be original, then the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibition is subbject to an even gloomier tyranny: that of convention.
Strictly speaking, the word 'convenntion' means general agreement or connsent as embodied in any accepted usage or standard or style. But in the context of the RHA it is far worse than that.
The problem is that the 'general agreement' has never been sufficiently updated to allow for the consensus, the synthesis of old and new, that would make the RHA tradition powerful enough to earn effectively the label of 'accepted usage, standard or style'. It does not do this. It is narrow, insular, introverted; each year, a significant number of the paintings which it allows to go .on exhibition are just frightfully bad. And because of this the idea of there being any convention seems to fall apart. Nevertheless, as far as the memmbers of the academy are concerned, the tyranny of convention under which they still struggle to operate has never been more powerful.
On the day before the official openning, when the President and the Taoiseach and a host of lesser political and social persons give a dubious splenndour to the RHA., the academicians give a much smaller party. It is an afternoon affair, traditionally called 'Varnishing Day', and I remember, years ago, when artists used to come with paint and brushes and pots of varnish to put in the finishing touches.
They do so no longer. But they do gather around the teatable and drink cups of tea. And their little fingers stick sharply out. And they munch upon deliicate sandwiches filled with scrambled egg, and cucumber, and salad. And they talk over the current art news, who's in, who's out, who's buying this year, who's painting well, and who badly. .
The truth about each of them would be a massive affront because it would be an assault on the very bedrock of their self-confidence: this is that the tyranny of convention decrees that the first essential is to do this year as near as posssible as was done last year. If Desmond Carrick or James Nolan or Henry Healy were to depart from that ruling, even to paint better pictures, they might run the risk of some kind of immolation more fearful than the burning fires of Hell ittself. And so the predictability becomes an anchor of stability that fixes them, and the RHA as a whole, firmly in the same place each year.
And yet one cannot dismiss them because of this. Indeed, within the shackles of repitition, diverse abilities and skills seem to be struggling to get out. Desmond Carrick, Henry Healy, James le Jeune, James Nolan, Thomas Ryan, Carey Clarke and Kitty Wilmer O'Brien, to name off a good measure of the very heart and soul of the Royal Hibernian Academy - its most loyal and dedicated members - all paint with' a skill and lustre, an actual command of technique, a sense of style, that induce tears of frustration at how badly the end-prod uct emerges.
Carrick, as a painter, has a voice of his own; his overall palette is indepenndent of anyone else in Irish painting today. And yet, with apparent enthusiasm, he manages to lock the manacles of convention - predictable landscapes handled in predictable and tired ways firmly on to his hands and eyes each year. And this kind of self-defeat is the rule rather than the exception.
It has been a kind of critical connvention with the RHA to identify those artists or works which redeem the show each year, either by sheer ability, or oriiginality, and to use them as Punch's truncheon to belabour everything else in sight. One is tempted by a solid Norah McGuinness, two well executed Patrick Hennessy's, a couple of portraits by Ed ward McGuire, a little Jack Cud worth, a very attractive Charles Brady (he is the only artist to exhibit both' with the RHA and Living Art). But to follow this temptation is to emphasise still further the tyranny, and to imply even greater difficulty in escape.
About thirty per cent of the exhibiition is unworthy of selection, and this includes the work of academicians. A more rigorous discipline, combined with a more rigorous self-discipline, is what is first needed. Then there must be a recognition of the chains by which so , many who show works are held. Then I greater courage among individual painters, whose capacities are so poorly deployed.
Redemption does not come from outside. It is not achieved when good artists show up bad ones. It is impossible if there is no recognition of failure, of the heavy hands of dead generations and dead ideas resting on the efforts of the living. But assuming that somewhere within the RHA, now under a new President in David Hone, there is at least a spark of concern to the effect that all is not quite right, as well as an accepptance of responsibility from within the hearts of the 46 gentlemen and ladies with whom I took tea on the afternoon of June 15, then at our next meeting there is just the possibility that the tyranny of reality will have replaced, in a small way, that of convention .•