ARTS AND MUSIC IN SOUTHERN IRELAND
For a small country, Ireland has made an enormous contribution to the world in terms of arts and music, which shall be explained in this post.
The early history of Irish visual art begins with early carvings found at sites such as Newgrange and Bronze Age artefacts, particularly ornamental gold objects, Celtic brooches and illuminated manuscripts. During the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, a strong indigenous tradition of painting emerged, including figures such as John Butler Yeats, William Orpen, Jack Yeats and Louis le Brocquy.
The Irish tradition of folk music is also widely known. In the middle years of the 20th century, young people tended to look to Britain and, particularly, the United States as models of progress and jazz, and rock and roll became extremely popular. During the 1960s, and inspired by the American folk music movement, there was a revival of interest in the Irish tradition. This revival was inspired by groups like The Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers and Sweeney's Men and individuals like Seán Ó Riada.
In the History of Irish visual arts from 3300 BC to present, there are key stages in the History of visual arts. We will describe them:
- Newgrange (3300 BCE)
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| Newgrange tomb |
The Art during the Bronze Age and Iron Age
Between the periods from 3000 to 1200 BC there is evidence found from the Beaker culture, named like this because of the shape of its drinking vessels. In this era, the Irish craftsmen developed a growing metal industry, with gold, bronze and copper objects. The Iron Age in Ireland that goes from 1500 to 200 BCE was characterized by the production of iron tools and weapons that was heavily influenced in its final centuries by the Celts. It was these Celtic designs that would inspire the next three major achievements in Irish visual art.
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| Pretie Crown |
Celtic Metalwork and Stone Sculpture
The country became an uninterrupted development of Celtic art and crafts. This, because of its geography, that prevented the colonization by Rome, although it had a lot of trade with Roman Britain. This situation led to an unbroken tradition of Celtic culture which has its own oral, historical and mythological traditions.
The tradition of metallurgical craftsmanship and carving skills of the Celtic culture was the responsible of the second great achievement of Irish art: a series of artefacts made for profane and later Christian customers and also a series of monumental stoneworks. For example, the Petrie Crown (100 BC – 200 AD) and the granite Turoe Stone, a pagan sculpture (150-250 BC).
Impact of Christianity on Irish Art
After the fall of Rome and the start of the Dark Ages, The Church selected Ireland as a base for the spread of Christianity and around 450 AD sent St Patrick in the role of missionary. He succeeded and this led to the establishment of monasteries, which acted as centres of learning and scholarship in religious and profane subjects, this paved the way for the next great goal in Irish visual art.
- Illuminated Manuscripts (650-1000)
The 3rd great achievement was the production of a series of illuminated manuscripts, with illustrated biblical texts, decorated with panels of Celtic-style, all executed with precision and sometimes decorated with precious metals like gold and silver.
These biblical treasures gave rise to a gradual renaissance in Irish art (also called Hiberno-Saxon style or Insular art), which spread through the monastic network to Iona, Scotland, Northern England and the Continent. By the 12th century, there was no Royal court in Western Europe that did not have an Irish adviser on cultural affairs.
The monasteries continued to play a relevant role in the cultural life of the country into the late 12th century. They invested in religious icons, shrines and processional. From around 750, monasteries also paid for an important program of biblical sculpture which became the next great achievement of Irish art.
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| Illuminated manuscript. Book of Hours Valencia c.1460 |
- High Cross Sculpture (750-1150)
This was the 4th great achievement of Irish art, the religious stonework. During 750- 1150, the Irish sculptors within monasteries created a series of Celtic High Cross Sculptures which were the most significant body of free-standing sculpture produced between the collapse of the Roman Empire (450) and the beginning of the Italian Renaissance (1450). This High Cross sculpture represents Ireland's major sculptural contribution to the history of art. The ringed High Crosses fall into two basic groups. The first group, dating from the 9th century, is decorated exclusively with abstract interlace ornament. The second group consists of crosses with narrative scenes from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
Irish Art Stagnates (1200-1700)
This period resulted in little cultural activity. As a result, Irish art after the Middle Ages underwent five centuries of recession. Since the 12th century, Ireland produced no major contributions to European visual art.
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| Portrait of a Lady seated at a writing table. W. Osborne. |
- Painting: The Rebirth of Irish Art (1650-1830)
This period was of an artistic recovery. In the 18th century many cultural institutions were formed like the Royal Dublin Society (1731) and the Royal Irish Academy (1785). The main area of activity was fine art painting, specially portraiture and landscapes.
The artistic recovery continued into the 19th century with the establishment of the Royal Hibernian Academy RHA in 1823, the expansion of the Royal Dublin Society and the Crawford College of Art, all of these helped to stimulate the fine art infrastructure in Ireland, especially for visual arts like painting.
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| Calves Grazing at Portmarnock. W. Osborne |
The earliest portraitists went unrecorded, except for Garret Morphy (1680-1716) and the lesser known Thomas Bate (1690-1700).
18th Century Landscape Painting
The principal Irish landscape artists were Susanna Drury (1733-70), followed by John Butts (1728-1764) and George Barret, Senior (1732-84).
- Irish Artists Emigrate (1830-1900)
The 19th century Irish art was marked by continual emigration. This was because patronage was scarce, and London with its vastly art market, its art studios and career potential, was still the Mecca for talented Irish painters and sculptors. In contrast, many top Irish landscape painters spent long periods in France, working in rural villages, where they absorbed the methods of the Impressionists.
The causes were the trauma of the Great Famine (1845-50), the continuing political disputes between the arts establishments in London and Dublin, plus the relative lack of commissions in Dublin compared to the commercial promise of London, and the weather of France, all added up to a powerful incentive to paint or sculpt overseas. An indigenous school of Irish painting started to appear.
- The growth of the Indigenous Art (1900-40)
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| The swing. George Russell |
In the two decades following Independence, power within the Irish arts establishment was applied by conservative traditionalists – mainly indigenous group of Irish artists – who resisted the attempts by more broad-minded individuals to align Irish art with 20th century European styles of painting and sculpture.
- The Formation of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (1943)
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| RHA |
Battle between the traditionalists and modernists exploded in 1942, following an outspoken attack on the RHA by Mainie Jellett. As a result, the following year, a number of Dublin artists organized the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA), a new annual forum for painters and sculptors who did not agree with the vision of the RHA. Its mission was to reunite significant work, of no matter what School or manner, by living Irish artists.
Many Irish artists exhibited in both exhibitions. Even so, each represented different points of view. The RHA maintained what it believed to be 'the tradition' while the IELA was open to every new development.
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| IELA |
- Modern Irish Art (1943-present)
Irish art during the four post-war decades was influenced by economic and political events at home. The monotonous 1950s led to more emigration by artists, while the excitement of the mid-1960s rapidly cooled with the start of the 'Troubles' in the North, during the 1970s and 1980s, when politics dominated the headlines.
The Post-modernist Revolution
The 1970s trend towards Postmodernist art was reflected in Ireland by changes in the country's leading art college, the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, then known as the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). A more modern teaching philosophy was introduced, and control was placed in the hands of a board appointed by the Minister for Education and Science. NCAD began to take a lead role in the promotion of contemporary visual arts, such as installation, video, performance and various forms of conceptual art. In the process, traditional forms of representational art were replaced.
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| NCAD |
In 1973, the ruling committee of the IELA decided to hand over to an entirely new committee of younger artists in order to maintain the organization's contemporary impact.
In the 1980s, Irish art had absorbed contemporary art theory. The traditional forms of painting and sculpture were becoming less "aesthetic", more didactic and more satirical.
The 1990s were defined as the "Celtic Tiger", which led to a significant rise in the arts budget. The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) was founded in 1990, as the successor to the Hugh Lane Gallery and in 1997 the Department of Arts established the Per Cent for Art Scheme, in order to raise funds for visual arts in Ireland.
Abstract Art
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| IMMA |
It gained considerably respect after the formation of the IELA - is well exemplified in the monumental works of Sean Scully (b.1945), the geometric abstraction of Francis Tansey (b.1959). In Irish sculpture, abstraction is exemplified by the stainless steel forms of Alexandra Wejchert (1921-1995) and the semi-abstract pieces by Conor Fallon (1939-2007).
Romanticism
It has been an important element in Irish painting, inspiring artists as Paul Henry, Brian Bourke (b.1936) and John Doherty (b.1949).
Nationalism
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| Bog at Evening. Paul Henry. |
If Irishness was a dominant presence in Jack B Yeat's work, political nationalism was key feature of Michael Farrell's Madonna Irlanda (1977), which presented a view of a prostitute Ireland, corrupted by continuing partition and a sense of cultural subordination.
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| Queen Maeve walked upon this trand. William Butler Yeats. |
Colourism has been represented by Brian Ballard (b.1943) and Marja Van Kampen (b.1949); Impressionism by Arthur Maderson (b.1942); Surrealism by Colin Middleton (1910-1983) and Pop-Art by Robert Ballagh (b.1943).
- 21st Century Irish art
The Irish art market rose to new heights. Although the commercial value of top Irish artists had ascended significantly during the 1990s, Francis Bacon smash the world record for the most expensive work of contemporary art (his Triptych, 1976, sold for $86.3 million at Sothebys New York, in 2008), while six other Irish painters passed the million euro barrier: William Orpen, Jack Butler Yeats, John Lavery, Louis le Brocquy, William Scott and James Barry.
These records reflected a surprising but obvious degree of confidence in the value of Irish art, and gave a considerable boost to the market value of less famous artists.
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| Triptych. Francis Bacon. 1976. |
Unfortunately, in 2008, the bubble burst, leaving Ireland's cultural revival under severe financial pressure in the wake of the recent worldwide recession. At present, an estimated 83 percent of Irish creative artists remain dependent upon the income of their partners. The long-term future of Irish art could hardly be brighter, at least when compared to previous eras of emigration and financial struggle.
MUSIC IN SOUTHERN IRELAND
Irish traditional music accords to a definition made by the International Folk Music Council in 1954:
Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the individual or the group; (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
In Ireland, a distinction is made between 'traditional' and 'folk' music, 'folk' music having a wider and sometimes pejorative interpretation; it can refer to 'contemporary' songs with guitar accompaniment, for example. Since traditional musicians call the music traditional music, we might as well call it that too.
Traditional music comprises two broad categories; instrumental music, which is mostly dance music (reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas and the like), and the song tradition, which is mostly unaccompanied solo singing.
Traditional music comprises two broad categories; instrumental music, which is mostly dance music (reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas and the like), and the song tradition, which is mostly unaccompanied solo singing.
The indigenous music of the island is called Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th, and into the 21st century, despite globalizing cultural forces. In spite of emigration and a well-developed connection to music influences from Britain and the United States, Irish music has kept many of its traditional aspects and has itself influenced many forms of music, such as country and roots music in the USA, which in turn have had some influence on modern rock music. It has occasionally been fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres. Some of these fusion artists have gain mainstream success, at home and abroad.
Up to the 17th century, harp musicians were patronised by the aristocracy in Ireland. This tradition died out in the 18th century with the collapse of Gaelic Ireland. Turlough Carolan (1670–1738) is the best known of those harpists, and over 200 of his compositions are known. He wrote in a baroque style that is usually classified as classical music, but his music has entered the tradition and is played by many folk musicians today.
Irish traditional music includes many kinds of songs, including drinking songs, ballads and laments, sung unaccompanied or with accompaniment by a variety of instruments. The polka arrived at the start of the 19th century, spread by itinerant dancing masters and mercenary soldiers, returning from Europe. Set dancing may have arrived in the 18th century.
A revival of Irish traditional music took place around the 20th century. Irish dancing was supported by the educational system and patriotic organisations. An older style of singing called sean-nós ("in the old style"), which is a form of traditional Irish singing was still found, mainly for very poetic songs in the Irish language.Handel arrived in Dublin in 1742 to superintend the first performance of his famous oratorio. The Passerini and Damici families were favourite performers in Dublin at the operas, concerts and oratorios which were then popular.
Among the next generation of musicians was John Stevenson (1761–1833), who is best known for his publications of Irish Melodies with poet Thomas Moore. His works include religious music, odes, operas, songs and symphonies.
In terms of popular music, with the rise in popularity of American country music, a new subgenre developed in Ireland known as 'Country and Irish'. It was formed by mixing American Country music with Irish influences, incorporating Irish folk music. This often resulted in traditional Irish songs been sung in a country music style. Big Tom and The Mainliners were the first major contenders in this genre, having crossed over from the showband era of the 1960s.
The fusion music played a part in Irish popular music later in the century, with Clannad, Van Morrison and Sinéad O'Connor using traditional elements in popular songs. Enya achieved international success with New Age/Celtic fusions. The most notable fusion band in Ireland was Horslips, who combined Irish themes and music with heavy rock.
Groups who formed during the emergence of Punk rock in the mid-late 1970s included U2, Virgin Prunes, The Boomtown Rats, The Undertones, Aslan, Gavin Friday, and Stiff Little Fingers. Later in the 80s and into the 90s, Irish punk fractured into new styles of alternative rock, which included That Petrol Emotion, My Bloody Valentine and Ash.
In the 1990s, pop bands like the Corrs, B*Witched, Boyzone, Westlife and The Cranberries emerged. In the same decade, Ireland also contributed a subgenre of folk metal known as Celtic metal with exponents of the genre including Cruachan, Primordial, Skyclad, Geasa and Waylander.
As a conclusion, we can see that art in Ireland has passed throughout several changes and periods, from Stone Age with the Neolithic stone carvings discovered at the Newgrange megalithic tomb in County Meath; the Bronze and Iron Age where tools and artefacts were made of iron and in the end of this period influenced by the Celtic-style. Later was the creation of illuminated manuscripts with Celtic-style and biblical features. The fourth achievement of Irish art was religious stonework. After that painting had its rebirth, especially portraits and landscapes. After this, many artists immigrated mainly to London because of scarce patronage. Later, all the artists who stayed in Ireland became a major group, mainly traditionalists who resisted all attempts of modernization. Later this “modernization” finally entered the Irish art, slowly how it should be.
In terms of music, the Irish traditional music maintained its protagonism in the 20th and 21st century, despite the globalization of cultural forces. Instead of that, it has influenced country and roots music in the USA. In the 17th century, music was patronised by the aristocracy. It has been many revivals of Irish music to maintain it alive and prosper. Today, it can be heard with different fusions but it has never disappeared. Until our days is present even in modern pop and rock music until today.
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