There's nothing new under the sun. You can be sure artists have been borrowing from the work of other artists since the first faltering lines were daubed on the cave walls of some Palaeolithic settlement. Yet the anxiety of influence is rife. Influence has a bad name, largely due to the modernist cult of originality which, in our postmodernist wisdom, we know is a myth. Newton was much closer to the mark when he modestly pointed out that if he saw further it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. For the National Gallery of Ireland's new exhibition, some 30 contemporary artists were invited to perch on the shoulders of the giants whose works form the permanent collection.
What they saw, and the prints they were thus inspired to make, forms the substance of "Art Into Art: A Living Response To Past Masters" which opens at the gallery from Wednesday. The show's obvious precursor is Paul Durcan's Crazy About Women. That came about when the then assistant director, Brian Kennedy, picked up on Durcan's interest in painting and invited him to write a book of poems in response to specific pictures in the collection.
The result was a runaway - and very funny - success. This time around, artist Geraldine O'Reilly had a similar idea: why not get a number of artists to make a print in response to a particular work from the collection, then exhibit the results in the gallery? It's interesting to see which past masters are popular with young contemporaries. You might expect that artists would be drawn to Joshua Reynolds's wildly camp portrait, Charles Coote, 1st Earl Of Bellamont like bears to honey, but only one was tempted. In his book, Paul Durcan imagined Charles waiting, leaning on his swordstick in his white satin suit and tassled pink cloak, for his lasagna to heat in the microwave in the gallery restaurant, for "The Earl of Bellamont is a man who does not care". Here John Kindness, whose work is known for its humour, couldn't say no. It was "the first image that really drew my attention, and three visits later I came back to him . . . Coote is a bird of paradise and not the dull little water fowl his name suggests. Today he could only by a character from an opera or a contestant in the `Alternative Miss World' competition."
Predictably enough, though, the most popular choice, taken up by three artists, is Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ, for three widely divergent reworkings. Robert Russell recreates a detail, the flash of light on armour, a fold of red fabric, in a striking, virtuoso quotation of a fragment of the composition. Felim Egan takes on board the scholarly and scientific detective work that went into the painting's rediscovery and authentication, drawing on minutely detailed cross-section photographs of the canvas to produce a dark, dreamy abstract. Michael Cullen re-does the composition with an unexpected air of carnival. His exuberant display of bright colours in rhythmic patterns looks almost abstract, but given a few moments resolves itself into recognisable shape - except that all the main roles in the drama are now played by clowns.
The German painter Emil Nolde, whose expressionist work was denounced as degenerate and in some cases physically destroyed by the Nazis, also crops up three times as a source, but two different pictures are involved. Taffina Flood picks up on the vivid, intense colour of his oil painting Women In The Garden, while both Niall Naessans and Carmel Benson respond to his beautiful watercolour Rain Over A Marsh: "It caught my eye like a gem sparkling in the watercolour room," Benson remarks. Naessans's beautifully executed etching, with its intricate cross-hatching, transposes the scene to a slab of Irish bogland with the rain beating down from an unyielding grey sky, brilliantly capturing a holiday atmosphere that many will find only too familiar.
Several artists managed to find sources that merge seamlessly with their customary preoccupations. Gwen O'Dowd's paintings have always hinged on a dynamic view of landscape as a realm of huge, natural forces. She lights on one of the largest and most dramatic images in the gallery, Francis Danby's The Opening Of The Sixth Seal with its shock-horror sublime effects, depicting a flood of lava presaging Judgement Day. "Raw nature versus diminutive mankind," O'Dowd says, and her response is elementally simple. In a powerful, volcanic image, a column of molten red fractures a deep black ground and bursts to the surface.
Victorian narrative painting meets realism in Henry Jones Thaddeus's The Wounded Poacher, which pictures the hapless man back in the safety of his cottage being nursed by, presumably, his wife. Dorothy Cross edits down the image to two circular fragments: his anguished face and his hand on his thigh, making the drama a much more ambiguous affair. Alice Maher's Magdalene, inspired by a medieval image of the saint's assumption, is a hair-figure. The symbol of her carnal excess has "grown miraculously to become a garment covering her repentant body. Its animal-like wildness however, still connects it to the realm of the senses."
Cliona Doyle takes one of the strangest pictures in the gallery, Samuel Dixon's surreal, obsessively observed juxtaposition of A White-headed Parrot, Tortoise-shell And Rock Underwing Butterflies, An Oak Beauty Moth And White Muscadine Grapes and uses it as a licence for her own, entirely characteristic Camellia Japonica And Butterflies. There is, though, a certain common ground, for the strength of Doyle's beautiful studies of plants is their combination of botanical exactitude and graphic flair.
No artist borrowed more liberally or inventively than Picasso. "When there's anything to steal, I steal," as he candidly put it. William Crozier pays him a heartfelt compliment with his carborundum print, inspired by Picasso's Still-life With Mandolin. Gracias Por Todo, he calls it, cheekily: "Thanks for everything". But all the same he doesn't take on Picasso at his own game and put him through the stylistic blender. He aims instead to produce "a childlike, humorous fake" a modest homage.
There is always the risk that the National Gallery will be classified as simply a repository of old art by dead artists. In fact, developments within the gallery, the way the collection is presented and mediated, ensure our understanding and interpretation of the art of the past is constantly evolving. Projects such as "Art Into Art' and Crazy About Women up the ante that bit more, acknowledging that the collection is a living influence on living art and artists.
The interaction of old art with new is clearly desirable, and one obvious way to promote it is through an artist-in-residence scheme, along the lines of the one successfully operated by London's National Gallery. Director Raymond Keaveney is well aware of the benefits, and acknowledges that it's on the cards just as soon as resources permit. In the meantime, there's "Art into Art".
Art Into Art: A Living Response To Past Masters can be seen at the National Gallery of Ireland from May 20th to August 19th. Ad- mission is free. A full colour catalogue with an introductory essay by Dr Frances Ruane will be available at a price of £9.95.