Artists in their own light

PROFESSIONAL portrait painting has fallen on lean times. There is still a slightly bedraggled core of academicians who can and do paint "official" portraits in the old sense, but in general the area has been taken over by the camera. This is much cheaper, after all, and to a camera-oriented generation it is more immediate and "real". The camera has also taken over the recording of public events, as well as such domestic areas as weddings, anniversaries etc. The artistic loss involved in all this is probably nil.

Yet there have plenty of great portraitists this century, though very few of them specialised in it. Picasso, Modigliani, Beckmann, Balthus, is only a handful - though a particularly distinguished one - of the many major figures who produced masterpieces in the genre, though with the exception of Modigliani the main thrust of their art was directed elsewhere. But an equally vital area has been the self-portrait, which of course has long roots (look at Durer) but blossomed out particularly in the Romantic Age, and was continued by such proto-Modernists as van Gogh and Gauguin. And though Modernism claimed to be the obverse of Romantic subjectivity, the genre flourished in our century as it had never done before. The self-exploratory, self-examining role it implies is something very central to our post-Freudian age.

Outside a rather limited (but vigorous and varied) section of the National Gallery, there is no wide-ranging, representative portrait collection per se in Ireland. Limerick University, however, has for some years been building up a unique body of self-portraits by Irish artists, living and dead, which stretches back well into the 19th century. Though it has received relatively little publicity - which perhaps can be largely explained by the fact that it is situated so far from Dublin - it is an initiative which has grown steadily in importance. A few years ago (1992) a sizeable and carefully chosen selection from the collection was shown in America, in the gallery of Boston University, where it aroused much interest. It had previously (1989) been shown at the National Gallery in Dublin, the Arts Council Gallery in Belfast, and at the Crawford Gallery in Cork.

The origins of the entire project were almost accidental. A local citizen, John Kneafsey, was an art-lover who encouraged art exhibitions in Limerick; he not only encouraged them but he bought works too, including a number of self-portraits by the artists concerned. Kneafsey was in charge of the local Irish Independent office, and when it closed he moved elsewhere for his retirement. Before going, he offered the self-portraits to Limerick University which agreed to buy them, since it had had a policy of buying art and hanging it in its numerous rooms and corridors.

Self-portraits, however, did not fit obviously or easily into this role. Limerick's dynamic President, Ed Walsh, asked Professor Patrick Doran, a respected historian who looked after art and similar matters in the college generally: "What are we going to do with these?" Neither had a ready answer. Eventually Walsh sent Doran a memo in which he proposed using them as the germ of a self-portrait collection. This was in the early 1980s.

With the help of the National Gallery and the Ulster Museum they got together a group of works, their own and borrowed ones, and held an exhibition of these. After that, in Doran's words, "we really got going." Today the collection as it stands numbers 226 items, but this year's intake will probably prove to be the highest ever - Doran estimates it at about 25 works. He cannot realistically, at this stage, be more precise than that, since many or most of the works are either still unfinished or await the final details of framing etc before the final delivery.

A number have been bought at auctions or from dealers, a few have been specially presented, but the bulk has grown through a special acquisitions policy which, in effect, puts the onus and the choice on the artists themselves. Specially commissioning self-portraits in the usual sense would not only prove prohibitively costly, but probably would not work in any case, since many or most of the artists concerned would not normally produce such things. Probably the nearest they have come to it is to draw themselves in front of a mirror, in their art-student days.

Instead, a small board or group of people - it has at various times included art historians, critics, Arts Council representatives North and South - presided over by Doran, periodically meets and suggests a list of artists worthy of being included/added. These are then invited formally to send in a work, on payment of a small "tee" or sum intended to cover costs. Originally this was so small as to be merely a nominal one, but it has been raised to £250 to cover the cost of materials. In the case of a sculptor, the fee is usually added to considerably, to cover the high cost of bronze and of casting or welding work, or whatever is involved.

No personal pressures whatever are exerted the artist is approached purely on the basis that he or she might wish to belong in what is now a prestigious national collection. Some refuse, some simply ignore the invitation, and others respond positively. There is no question of any rebuff or ill-feeling on either side, since the basis is voluntary and no sense of obligation is involved.

Each year (the next occasion is due in May) the latest crop of artists is invited to a meal and a ceremony in the Jean Monnet Theatre, at which the newly acquired works are shown by enlarged colour slides and they themselves are formally introduced - usually by Paddy Doran himself - before an audience. Most choose the moment to make some sort of statement about their work some prefer simply to appear but say little or nothing, and a few others cannot or do not attend, for various reasons. An catalogue of the new acquisitions is supplied, with biographical data about the men and women who have produced them. But there are more than these relaxed, hospitable occasions; lectures and art history events are sometimes organised including, a few years ago, a seminar on portrait-painting in which both scholars and practitioners spoke

Painting, of course, is not only what it is about. Sculptors are also invited to portray themselves - in fact virtually every category of artist is considered acceptable though obviously conceptualists - while not ruled out - do not fit in so easily. Photographs are considered quite valid, and the collection already includes several. Certain abstract painters have sent in "abstract" self-portraits, which is also considered legitimate even if too many of these would tend to render the basis of the collection almost meaningless. (Curiously enough the late Cecil King, an entirely abstract painter, is represented by a quite conventional self-likeness). Some pictures feature only heads, others heads-and-shoulders, half-length figures and full-length omes.

The late F.E. McWilliam, the leading Irish sculptor of his generation, sent in a straightforward full-length drawing of himself, wholly fitting since "Mac" was an excellent draughtsman in his own right. Other sculptors however, including Melanie Le Brocquy, Imogen Stuart and Conor Fallon have made "heads" in bronze or steel which, however unacademic in approach, are still recognisable likenesses.

THE roll-call of names overall is impressive, and relatively few of the better names in Irish art of the past forty years are absent; Tony O'Malley is here, Basil Blackshaw, Barrie Cooke, the late Patrick Hennessy, Patrick Graham, the late Dairine Vanston (a particularly fine example work in gouache), Stephen McKenna - Irish by ancestry though not by birth. The collection also goes back in time to eminent Victorians such as Norman Garstin. And while it spreads its net to admit abstractionists and even conceptualists, it is equally unbiased in the other direction - academicians and ultra-traditionalists are also welcome, including various Northern artists whose names are almost unknown in the South, or indeed outside the annual RUA exhibitions.

At first the works were hung or placed mainly in an upstairs section of Plassey House, the original nucleus of what is now a massive complex of buildings which seems to grow yearly and inexorably. This was obviously an ad-hoc situation, and though a certain number of works remain there, many are now hung along a specially designed upstairs gallery in the recently built Foundation Building where a full-size copy of Leonardo's Flying Machine hangs from the ceiling, and on the floor below, preoccupied staff members or students can be seen to hurry to and fro. It is a handsome setting, not over-formal, and to walk along it is to have the curious sensation of meeting a lot of people (both living and dead) face to face, but silently.

There is plenty of other art hung about the university, in corridors, on stairways and in open spaces.

There is even art out of doors - including a magnificent welded-steel sculpture by the late Alexandra Wejchert, which can stand comparison with any other big abstract piece in these islands. There will, no doubt, be even more since the big, spacious campus in itself seems implicitly to demand them, and those in charge of Limerick University are a progressive, energetic bunch of people with the ability to make a lot happen in a relatively short space of time.

For a number of years, UL even housed a cross-section of the Hunt Collection in a kind of small inner museum; this year, however, all of that has gone to the newly-opened Hunt Museum. The university has also acquired a full-time art administrator, who is beginning to organise exhibitions in the Bourn Vincent Gallery. Meanwhile, the National Self-Portrait Collection seems certain not only to remain intact, but to grow and grow.