DISCUSSION about modern art in Ireland is rather like reading a Russian novel, but instead of the Maximovich and the Miximovich and the Muxomovich the participants seem to have variations of the name pronounced magonigle. Possibly it was fear of the sons of gonigles which caused only conigles to reply to what I was saying about the Glen Dimplex awards before Christmas. Luke Clancy, when he touched upon the subject of modern art more recently, elicited a somewhat larger response; which is more that somewhat irritating.
But theatre we are. Luke quoted one gonigle - Ciaran - on the subject of what is art. "Since the days of the Impressionists all the perceptions about art as it was then known and believed in have changed so much. Nobody seems to have settled down and faced the facts about contemporary art practice. It is intellectually an impoverished argument to say: `A child smearing his face with chocolate is that art?' Under certain circumstances it might well be because the whole thesis and antithesis what after the Impressionists was that what is not art also is art. Once the critics had got it wrong, nobody was in a position to state absolutely, unequivocally, what is that art is. it becomes a matter of shifting perceptions."
What is Art?
if that is the case, if nobody can say what is art, and nobody can say what is not art, what the hell have we spent some £25 million building, sacking, and rebuilding again the Royal
Hospital Kilmainham for? If it is just a question of shifting perceptions, why on earth should such shifting perceptions be given a home at such vast expense by the State? If a child's face can be smeared with chocolate, and by certain judgments the outcome is considered art, why have a gallery for it? We clearly cannot prise the infant's face from its little skull and mount it in a frame and hang it on a wall on the old Royal Hospital Kilmainham, no matter how tempting the prospect; should we not just heave a philosophic sigh at the ephemeral nature and the universality of this thing we call art, to be witnessed in every home in the land containing a child under the age of four, and turn again to the works of the great masters?
The gonigle called Ciaran quoted from the era of the Impressionists, who were reviled in their time, as another gonigle called Declan pointed out that Constable was ridiculed by the existing establishment. This line of argument is all very well but soon Constable was the establishment; then Turner, and so on, until the Impressionists "themselves became the norm. But there is something about all these artists which modern artists, with their fleeting devotion to chocolate epidermis cannot :match. They are cherished; their works are collected and adored; to enter the Musee d'Orsay in Paris is to enter a temple of civilisation which celebrates the human spirit and the human intelligence, which draws on recognisable intellectual traditions of a millennium, which has lucid intellectual purpose and which calls upon enormous physical talents based on something which used to be called draughtsmanship - though no doubt some bright PC spark has re termed it draughtspersonship.
Post sculpturalist Sculpture
Now. Let us go back to the diary which prompted the gonigle called Declan to have a go at me. Referring to what I termed post-sculpturalist sculpture - a rather nice phrase, I thought: nobody noticed it - I cited the works of Janine Antoni, described in the Irish Museum of Modern Art catalogue as follows:
"(It) is based on converting everyday bodily rituals such as eating, bathing and mopping and the materials associated with them - chocolate, soap, dye - into sculptural processes. . . In 1993 her lard and chocolate cubes installation Gnaw was one of the most memorable exhibits in the Whitney Biennial. . . in which . . . Lick and Lather . . . was one of the most acclaimed works . . ."
No, no, I cannot go on. There is more of this stuff about using her body parts as an art tool and so on. And personally, I am perfectly prepared to accept that this kind of stuff is indeed art, and no doubt many, many learned articles can be written about it, and scholars and critics can argue till the gonigles come home.
But this is not to say that the State should give a home to it in the old and magnificent Royal Hospital Kilmainham. However, since society lives in awe and terror of the modern art school, and politicians are terrified of a gonigle sniffing that they are intellectually impoverished, few people challenge the position of modem art; people dare not speak. their minds for fear of ridicule.
Memorably Ridiculed
Even to mention the popularity - or lack of it - of modern art is to invite two observations; one, that the Irish public is notoriously under educated in matters of art, and two, that one is sounding just like William Martin Murphy, so memorably ridiculed by Yeats when he questioned whether or not anybody would benefit from a particular sum of money being spent on an art gallery.
Now, I don't mind being called intellectually impoverished, as one gonigle clearly intended. If to call the hours I have spent in the Musee D'Orsay as among the happiest of my life makes me intellectually impoverished, so be it. But I do know that modern art, as defined by all the gonigles going, is so elusive that it cannot properly be galleried. Let it occur then in some place less resoundingly unmodern than the unforgettably RHK, which was most certainly not restored so that its doors could then be blocked to provide hanging space for the forgettable; let us, as William Martin Murphy might have said, get value for our money.
It is about 80 years since he made that remark; it is just 80 years since the Irish soldiers of the 10th (Irish) Division, fresh from Gallipoli, found themselves in the forgotten Macedonian campaign. Dr Patrick McCarthy will give a lecture on the Irishmen who are remembered today only by the bawdy Cork ballad, So right away, so right away, So right away Salonika right away me soldier boy, at Griffith College at 8 p.m. tonight.