Big, bold, surprising: this is the Modern way

With over 250 works by 180 artists, The Moderns at IMMA glories in the variety, spectacle and sheer fun of modernism, writes ARMINTA WALLACE

WHAT MAKES a piece of art “modern”? Is it a certain “look” that has to do with line, shape and colour? Or does it have more to do with the state of mind of the artist – or, come to think of it, the viewer? A new exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art hopes to get us talking about all this, and plenty more besides.

The Modernsis a massive undertaking. With more than 250 works by 180 artists arranged over both wings of the gallery as well as a ground-floor space, it's a cornucopia not just of paintings, sculpture, photographs and architectural drawings but also films (including one, called Film, by Samuel Beckett) first edition of books, and music by Irish composers from Frederick May to Gerald Barry.

The exhibition was jointly curated by Imma's director Enrique Juncosa and head of collections Christina Kennedy. "We don't think an exhibition like this has been done before in Ireland, with such a variety of materials brought together," Kennedy says. "It's a bold step. But it's a first step. We see the exhibition as a starting point. We're not defining, or tying anything up with bows. Rather, we want to emphasise that nothing was made in isolation. Art doesn't happen in a vacuum – and nothing is linear. Everything is affected by what's going on around it." Such an approach is, in itself, strikingly modern. And it guarantees The Modernsis full of surprises.

First up: a selection of photographs taken by none other than the playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw. “For me, these are quite a find,” Kennedy says. “The people at the Gallery of Photography came across them at the London School of Economics, of all places. That’s where his archive is.” Shaw had aspirations to be a painter, and liked to carry a camera around with him, just in case. One photo shows a naked George Bernard Shaw peering down into what looks like a box Brownie. In another he reclines – clothed, thankfully – on a sofa.

The next two rooms are devoted to the Irish women who were central in bringing “modern” art to a reluctant Irish audience: Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone and Eileen Gray. Jellett’s move into pure abstraction caused something of a scandal in the Ireland of the early 1920s, not least in the pages of this newspaper.

“It was met with scorn and ridicule, I’m afraid,” says Kennedy with a delighted smile. In the centre of the room, a circular plinth looks for all the world like an avant-garde white kitchen table but is, in fact, destined to hold an Eileen Gray rug which is coming on loan from Collins Barracks. Around the corner we find a cluster of Gray’s furniture: a cabinet, a tallboy, a lamp and a gorgeous red chair.

"The cabinet was in her own apartment on the Rue Bonaparte in Paris. The doors pull out, but they also pivot; there are hidden drawers; and the two pieces come apart, just in case you might want to move them. It's made of sycamore wood with steel handles. This would certainly be one of my favourite pieces in the whole show. Her work is so witty."

Around another corner there'll be a projector showing the film Man of Aran, followed by a room full of paintings by Jack B Yeats. "This is my favourite," says Kennedy. " Ball Alley, on loan from the Hugh Lane. It was painted in 1927. I suppose I just love the emptinessat the centre of it – which would appeal to me, being interested in art of an abstract character. It's in the middle of a game and the handball players have paused. But you're aware of these sightlines passing between them — there's obviously some sort of silent exchange going on."

Another kind of exchange comes from the presence of a large canvas by Oskar Kokoschka, on loan from the Tate in London. “So often Yeats and Kokoschka are compared, but we don’t often have the opportunity to look at a Kokoschka,” Kennedy says.

In the next room, a collection of early work by Paul and Grace Henry is juxtaposed with a series of black-and-white photographs from the National Photographic Archive.

“You might ask, how are these connected? Well, they’re from around the same time. Henry’s Achill paintings became synonymous with Ireland, and in the early days of the Free State, the west was regarded as the ‘true’ Ireland. His pared-back vision, with its limited tonal palette, is what gives the paintings such strength. But just look at the emanation of light from this photograph of O’Connell Street. It’s by an anonymous photographer from the Irish Independent, marking the Eucharistic Congress of 1932. Ardnacrusha had just been built, and street electrification was just coming though.”

These are just the tip of the early-20th-century iceberg. Also on offer in the East Wing gallery: a social realist room dominated by a huge painting of Dublin dockers, followed by a dreamy surrealist room, all bright colours and mad subject matter; a selection of work by the Ulster Unit painters from the time of the Emergency; sculptures by Henry Moore, portraits by Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, and a tiny, exquisite Paul Klee.

The West Wing gallery, meanwhile, brings the exhibition through to the late 1970s. There’s a room dedicated to Tony O’Malley and the school of St Ives, and another with a selection of fabulously eye-catching kinetic pieces from the Gordon Lambert collection.

"And this room," Kennedy declares, "is one of my favourites. It's based around artists who developed different types of processes." Patrick Scott soaked his canvases to get this wonderful blurred effect; for her spectacular 1960s Mountain Sequence Red, Anne Madden put her canvases on the floor, poured paint on and then angled the canvases, moving the paint like a flow of lava. Another spectacular Madden, Bloody Sunday, is at the heart of the politics and pop art display in the West Ground Gallery.

With its 20th anniversary coming up next year, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that with this enormous layer-cake of an exhibition, Imma is showing off – glorying in the variety, spectacle, relevance and sheer fun of modern art. "Well, there's a strong educational aspect to The Moderns," says Kennedy. "We don't want art to be hidden away. We'd like to allow for study and contextualisation. For new ideas to come out. We're leaving it open for people to see what affinities and overlaps are there – if, indeed, there are any."

The Moderns opens on October 20th and runs until February 13th (East Wing), March 13th (West Wing) and April 3rd (West Ground Gallery). imma.ie

1 Louis le Brocquy

Anne, from his 1957 Presences series: a portrait of his wife's spine, pretty much, glowing wraith-like in a glorious splurge of shadows and whites.

2 Scott Tallon Walker

Model of the Goulding summer house in Wicklow, poised in anti-gravity magnificence out in thin air over the Dargle river.

3 Jesus Rafael Soto

Elegant 3D kinetic mobile that shimmers and moves even when it isn’t moving – for a horrible moment I thought I’d walked right into it.

4 Francis Bacon

Portrait of Muriel Belcher, her face in almost cinematic meltdown, her feet plunging into a dark-green deep that might be a carpet, or the sea, or the abyss.