A living legacy of Irish art

At the time of writing, perhaps, but there has been at least one casualty (Phil Kelly) in the meantime – which is in the nature of things and, in the long run, there will of course be more.

There are other differences between O’Bryne’s dictionary and the others. One is the inclusion of colour illustrations of the artists’ work. “All the artists or their representatives were invited to submit a number of images,” he notes, but the results are variable. This doesn’t really matter too much in an age when the availability of colour printing technology is usually complemented by the accessibility of documentation on the internet. Rather than depending on a printed source as being comprehensive, one can use it as a signpost towards further sources of information. O’Byrne also includes lengthy CVs for each artist, usually lists of exhibitions. These are probably unnecessary.

Another difference emerges when he refers, casually, to “the 200 artists selected”. This immediately strikes an ominous note. It would be well nigh impossible, not to mention indescribably tedious, to try to include all the 3,500 or so individuals he reports as registered on the Visual Artists Ireland database, but given the strength and diversity of the artistic practitioners that fall within the book’s scope, 200 seems distinctly inadequate. Maybe double that figure would bring you somewhere towards an overall view.

“Perhaps some readers will be dissatisfied with the eventual choice of 200 artists included,” he writes, and perhaps they will, it’s an easy line of criticism, but it would be beside the point. Without doubt, everyone included in the book should be there. Indeed, O’Byrne is to be praised for a number of inclusions that are not particularly obvious but important, such as Amy O’Riordan. The problem is that there are many more who should be included, as well, at least if he wants to hold on to the “dictionary” part of the title. If something is called a dictionary you expect it will be, at least to some extent, comprehensive and inclusive.

That is certainly true of Snoddy’s volume, which is exemplary for its meticulous scholarship and its careful neutrality. Like Strickland, it is also tremendously readable, and the same holds for O’Byrne. Snoddy drew extensively on reviews and other documentary sources and, as O’Byrne notes, these days there are not only many more artists but also a vast increase in the published commentary on what they are doing. O’Byrne’s individual entries, each a short essay, are lively, informative and empathic, but he doesn’t shy away from adverse critical comment and thankfully steers well clear of producing a purely celebratory coffee-table volume.

It’s only fair to enumerate some of the notable absences, though.

They include Anne Tallentire, important as an artist and a major influence on younger Irish artists as a teacher and for the nature of her work; Belfast-born Siobhan Hapaska, who is a significant international figure, shows regularly at the Kerlin Gallery and is soon to be the subject of a major survey show in Belfast; Alastair MacLennan, a significant presence in Irish and international performance art since the mid-1970s; Aideen Barry, for some time one of the country’s foremost performance artists and sculptors; Susan MacWilliam, long one of Ireland’s leading artists, she represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale and has an extraordinarily rich body of work to her credit; among the younger generation of painters, Kevin Cosgrove certainly stands out for the exceptional, sustained quality of his work and his ambition. That group is just the tip of a large iceberg.

Among those who have settled here from abroad and made significant contributions to the Irish cultural fabric one might mention George Potter, Makiko Nakamura, Jackie Nickerson and Finola Jones. Most of the artists mentioned here have made major contributions within their discipline. And this is an offhand, nothing like comprehensive list.

O’Byrne acknowledges that the numerical limitation is a compromise. “Although not making any particular claim to comprehensiveness,” he writes, “within its specific format the present volume can be judged a more extensive account of contemporary Irish art than any previously attempted.”

The problem with this reasoning, apart from calling the book a dictionary, is that pretty much everyone mentioned above has not only been part of the dense network of influences and interconnections that is Irish art, but has also built an estimable body of work unique to themselves. You leave someone out and you miss part of the pattern but also something distinctively individual.

O’Byrne alludes to this himself when he looks at the overall picture. Does the book provide “evidence of collective features that can be used to identify Irish art as distinctive . . ? To which the answer must be no.”

All of the artists he includes are defined as Irish in a loose sense, “thereafter they span a broad spectrum of styles and media. It is diversity rather than similarity that brings them together.”

Survey books on contemporary Irish art seem doomed to conditional welcomes or outright criticism, as with Roderic Knowles’s useful, ambitious 1983 publicationContemporary Irish Art and Dorothy Walker’s sadly unevenModern Art in Ireland . TheDictionary of Living Irish Artists is substantial, beautifully produced, good to look at and richly informative. It’s just a shame about that “dictionary” in the title.