But is it great art?

Nine thousand years of Irish art and architecture are trapped between the glossy pages of the latest pre-Christmas coffee table extravaganza published by Thames and Hudson. Three able Irish scholars have been pressed into service. Was it necessary?

Sean 0 Faolain remembers a phrase I that Daniel Corkery used to tag on to the . lifelong dissertations that made up his teaching. He would comment, on some work of literature, that it was innteresting. Then he would ask: "But is it Great Arrrt?" At first stimulating to a young man, it soon became boring, and in retrospect is now seen by 0 Faolain as a 'very provincial way of looking at things. The'·progression, from admiration to disillusionment, tells us something about 0 Faolain's wisdom;' something rather different about the ragged cloak that Corkery clutched about his ideas on liter-ature and society.

To his somewhat rigid conncept of a great chasm between "arrt" and everything else, Cor-' kery also applied a fairly rigid nationalism. In the sense that art is just one of many expressions of cult ure , the view is not a bad one; and Irish art, of whatever kind, becomes an expression '01' Irish social history, of identity. of feeling. But it is really only a starting point.'

Ten years ago, when I was writing my own history of Irish art, that was how I felt. It seemmed that the history of a people. the . way they thought' about themselves, could be usefully exxpressed by the visual art successsive generations created. I also felt that the .accepted view d Ireland as a country with a vettbal 'rather than a visual tradition was not only wrong, but absurd' it made Irish culture, by definiition, poorer than almost any other in the world. ..

Ten years have changed things quite a bit. A lot of research, a lot of teachhing, a lot of talking and a lot of writing, have established a credible and credittable output in painting, sculpture, archii·tecture and design.

It is all the more regrettable, then, that my own publishers of ten years ago, Thames and Hudson, should have repeated once again the compendium approach to Irish art and architecture, cramming into about 60,000 words 9,000 years of that part of our culture that is expressed through art and archiitecture.

The. job they have done is beautiful.

It is beautiful in the way a dumb blonde on her way to a film test is beautiful: all dressed up and packaged for fullest immpact. Irish Art and Architecture from Prehistory to the Present is splendidly produced and illustrated. The black and white photographs are full-toned, clear, lavish in number and well printed. There is a glowing quall'ity to the colour which in two instances rather exceeds the arttist's intentions; but again is very impressive.

The writing, in spite of dediication and effort, is subordinate to the packaging. Given the brief, Peter Harbinson copes well enough in 100 pages with the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Early Christian Period and the Norman and later Medieval Gaelic Ireland up to 1600. Homan Potterton does the sixteenth and seventeenth cennturies in just over 60 pages. And Jeanne Sheehy completes the picture in about the same space.

But not one of them is strettched. One guesses that by far the biggest constraint under which all of them worked was that of compression. And while this may be a useful discipline in any kind of book, it serves this one to make nonsense of many serious issues.

Some examples. In any given period ideas are central to art. The relevance of Edmund Burke, as philosopher. ill e ight ce nt h ceru ury art is well known; that the ideas of Cubbism and the Cubist artists in the twenntieth century is equally well known. And I have no doubt that both Potterrton and Sheehy understand them,

But the latter is dealt with in 2.50 words, and mainly in terms of individual works and artists; and the former rates only crabbed and puzzling references.

Although the periods he covers are I enormous, Peter Harbison's approach is I more relaxed, more measured, and connsequently more readable. But even with him the emphasis is on artifacts, the physical appearance, and the evolution of style. He tells us little about people. the growth of ideas, the historical conntext, and the generous fruits of different disciplines and different discoveries coming together to add to the total web of knowledge .. This is . surely the funcction of the archaeologist. Ii is clearly not the most marketable of commodiities to put between the covers of the book.

Irish Art and Architecture from Preehistory to the Present is itself an artiifact, carefully planned and programmed to end up on as many coffee tables as possible, there to lie unread but greatly admired, a veritable monument to the present state of our culture. Daniel Corkery's question is not the important one. We do not need to ask, "Is it Great l Arrrt?" Merely, "Is it necessary? ".