IT IS never easy to export Irish art, though the effort has of course to be made the art world of today is overcrowded and terribly competitive, and changes of fashion and reputation may take place in the blink of an eye. Before the current promotions in Paris, the last major, concerted effort in this field was the Delighted Eye festival in London 16 years ago, which fully justified itself on its own terms, yet somehow did not succeed in denting very deeply the ingrained English lack of interest in Irish art and artists, give or take few notable exceptions.
In the case of Paris, the obstacles are at least equally great, since bringing art there is the equivalent of bringing coals to Newcastle or buckets of water to the Seine. Creatively, Paris is well past its peak as an art capital, but it remains one of the foremost exhibition centres in the world, and it still has a great deal of indigenous talent, even if few contemporary French names make headlines any longer. However, much thought and planning have obviously gone into the Irish exhibitions currently on view there, and it is something in itself to have mounted events inside the Pompidou (James Coleman) and in the old Musee d'Art Moderne.
Probably the most publicised event has been the group exhibition in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which was opened by the President, Mrs Robinson. It should be said straightaway that this has proved a far from ideal space; the ground floor is adequate, but though Oliver Dowling's skills in mounting and hanging are well proven, even he must have found the upper floor almost intractable. It has a very high ceiling, which dwarfed most of the exhibits, and entire areas of wall which are quite unusable. Locky Morris's big installation piece of numerous bladder like shapes in plastic is rather a once off affair, but it does cover a wall effectively and helps to take away the forbiddingly bare look of things.
Ciran Lennon's large abstract pictures show up to considerable effect in these surrounds, thanks to their scale and immediacy and relatively stark vocabulary. Scan Scully is represented by a characteristically big, dourly frontal but impressive painting and by a less interesting small one. The large photographs by Paul Seawright, which make much of their impact through the use of a sharp, closeup focus akin to Photorealism, have a strong presence, and Fionnuala Ni Choisain's elegant, decorative, rather thin blooded type of abstraction registers well. Alanna O'Kelly's video on three simultaneous screens is imaginatively conceived, and - a rare thing - the sound track is relevant and not a mere distraction. Alice Maher, John Kindness, Willie Doherty all manage to hold their own in the vast spaces, though some of the exhibitors seem, quite frankly, rather lightweight, and I thought the exhibition somewhat patchy and inconclusive as a whole. But again, how much of this was due to the shortcomings of the venue?
THE other group exhibition, Language, Mapping and Power, is over on the Right Bank, at the Galerie Nikki Diana Marquardt in the Place des Vosges. This is a smaller but much more unified space, and Liam Kelly, who has curated it, has woven a tight web of conceptual unity. Right on entering, you are confronted by a massive painting entitled Army by Roderick Buchanan and Douglas Gordon, virtually transcribed from a street graffito in Glasgow, and the head on impact of this sets the tone.
Another surprise is Patrick Ireland's room installation involving, cords and wall paint, which may have taken a hint or two from Sol LeWitt but is a colour and space construct of real quality and elegance. It harks back, very effectively, both to Constractivism and to the best geometric abstraction of the 1950s; and it has a predominantly French, or at least Continental ambience which is wholly, fitting. Willie Doherty's large photographs are also perfectly in context, though in a very different sense.
Rita Donagh's reworking of maps, some photographs of "the Troubles" by Richard Hamilton, the interesting paintings of Michael Minnis and the neo Gothic, slightly illustrational eerily atmospheric pictures of Chris Wilson all inhabit different emotional climates, yet hang together in overall unity. Kathy Prendergast's sculptures in chalk, rather resembling a loose stone wall, I found slightly lugubrious. Obviously this is an exhibition with a social conscience, but it is not too preachy or rigidly programmed and the individual artists all have the necessary room and presentation to speak for themselves.
Doherty appears again at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (in happier times, the official modern art museum before the Pompidou supplanted it). Here too he registers strongly, since his work is fully attuned to public spaces and usually carries a topical message or comment.
Nigel Rolfe's videos and films are allotted rooms of their own; they are slow moving and at times self indulgent, but effective enough on their own terms. In one sequence, the camera blunders into a vacant room and searches about despondently, and in another, the (rather hefty) legs and feet of an Irish dancer are examined with almost fetichistic attention as they go through their complicated steps. (Rolfe is also featured, this time solo, in the Galerie Polaris).
These two people compete with a large retrospective of the paintings of Pierre Soulages, a survivor from the salad days of Abstract Expressionism in the period shortly after the second World War. Now in his late seventies, Soulages has passed through various phases since then, but his palette is still dominated by black - which, he says, has fascinated him since childhood. Many recent pictures are included, massive monochrome works which rely mainly on variations of surface which reflect the light in different ways. Some of these large, louring, unaccommodating pictures have genuine power and authority, but there are simply too many of them, and in the end the effect is monochrome in more sense than one. Only here and there are you aware of being in the presence of a modern Old Master. Soulage's paintings of the 1950s and 1960s remain his best; the works which immediately followed this period are distinctly dated, even arid. But he remains a figure to be respected, one of a strong generation in French postwar art which included the late, great Manessier.
THE prestigious Galerie Maeght mounts simultaneous exhibitions by Louis Le Brocquy and Anne Madden - husband and wife, but stylistically a contrasting duo. Le Brocquy's show is called Images Humaines 1966 and is a variation of his now familiar heads - mostly of writers. Here he concentrates largely on a single feature: a gaping mouth (echoes of Francis Bacon), or an ear, eyes, etc. often suggesting a sexual or anal orifice. It goes without saying that all are elegantly painted, but the ideas themselves do grow slightly repetitious when stretched out over several walls.
Anne Madden entitles her exhibition Odyssee 1995-1996 and it is a sustained and impressive one. Odysseus the Voyager is apparently represented by a "boat" motif which recurs in various settings, most of them patterned, semi abstract spaces which also suggest sea and land. This effect could well have been woefully contrived, or even twee and precious, but in practice it is not at all so, and in fact this seems to me the best and most imaginative exhibition by Anne Madden which I have yet seen.
Felim Egan, Mary FitzGerald and Richard Gorman team together at Le Monde de l'Art in the Rue Guenegaud (near the Beaux Arts) in an exhibition which is cool, tasteful, shapely and in general, just a fraction too bland for its own good. Gorman now works in tempera on linen, producing abstract pictures which are handsome, accomplished but not notably original. Egan shows bronze sculptures which have a suggestion of Brancusi, two of his usual elegant, quasi minimal canvases, and a few watercolours.
Mary FitzGerald, who of late has looked like an artist in transition from one style to another, exhibits several constructions in various media, mostly leaning against the gallery walls. For me, somehow, these works do not quite come off or convince, though I would find it difficult to define exactly why. In an adjoining space of the same gallery, Elizabeth Magill plays variations on the theme of a standing female figure and a mattress, besides a series of drawn heads entitled We Like it Here. No heavyweight material here, but fun and well done.
At the Galerie Lahumiere Ciaran Lennon joins forces with Michael Warren - who, incidentally, is one of the few sculptors included in the entire festival. Once again, Lennon leans heavily on the technique of working an almost monochrome canvas into contrasting areas of brushwork, and it is intriguing how close some of his effects come to those of Soulages already mentioned. Warren's leaning wooden sculptures have a rugged, clean cut presence though rather a limited range of ideas formally, and a kind of abstract torso by him in the upstairs gallery supplies a welcome, and vigorous, contrast.
I regret that time and space defeated me in getting to the exhibition by Joanne Johnson, Eithne Jordan and Michael Mulcahy at the Atrium de Chaville. Solo exhibitions scattered about included those by Sean Shanahan, Hector McDonnell, and Susan McCrann (an interesting one at the College des Irlandais). There are still some more events to come, including group exhibition from the Graphic Studio Gallery, and of course the events organised outside Paris are legion.
IN TERMS of putting over Irish culture to Paris, and to regions outside it, the festival seems to me to have done a good and positive job overall. In particular, I heard several French friends and acquaintances praise the production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme, which has been much talked about and visited. Some of the readings, too, appear to have made a genuine impact and the presence of Seamus Heaney was in itself a bonus.
As for the visual area, much hard work and organisation plainly have gone into it, a variety of styles and personalities have been fitted in and suitable venues (no mean task) found for them; but there are considerable gaps and lacunae nonetheless. This is not the whole of contemporary Irish art, nor scarcely even the half of it.
Perhaps it was not intended to be so, and in any case a merely compendious approach would probably be top heavy and self defeating, not to say boring. Better too little than too much! But in view of the title of the festival, visitors to certain of the exhibitions can only be left with the impression that Irish art is neither particularly imaginative, nor particularly characterful, in its own right. The fact is, a good percentage of what is on view is pretty much what you would expect to see anywhere - a proof of the creeping uniformity which seems to have descended on art internationally after the early, intoxicatingly pluralist stage of Post Modernism. No doubt the modern art colleges must shoulder at least some of the blame for this.
Too many of the best, or better, painters in the country are absent - Hughie O'Donoghue, Tony O'Malley, Charles Tyrrell, William Crozier, Sean McSweeney, Basil Blackshaw, John Shinnors, to name the most obvious. In fact, the Taylor Galleries, which represents many of these, is virtually ignored, or perhaps it was too concerned with its impending move. Sculpture is thin on the ground nothing by Carolyn Mulholland, Eilis O'Connell Joe Butler, Conor Fallon, Cathetie Delaney, etc. The area of crafts is more or less ignored, though there are good Irish potters, weavers etc who probably would have welcomed the opportunity, and I don't doubt that Breon O'Casey's jewellery and metalwork would have made a definite impression on the Parisians.
Le Brocquy is virtually the only elder figure included, and he is already known in Paris in any case. An accent on youth is no bad thing, as long as it means opting for talent, and not for topical - or ephemeral - chic, though again I could list various good or promising young people who are absent. But at the very least, these Paris exhibitions have reminded the French that we do have real, contemporary art of our own. This awareness in turn should lead to widening contacts, and perhaps also to the foothold on the Continent which, just now, we so desperately need for our artists.
