C108 article

Purging that sentiment d'incomplitude

Why collect? It's hard to find a full answer, but Peter Murray tackles the question.

 

Patrick Hennessy: The silent room, oil on canvas, 84.5 x 74 cm; from the Father McGrath bequest; courtesy Crawford Municipal Art Gallery

Collecting art can bring joy, pleasure, interest and enlightenment to those fortunate enough to be able to follow this privileged pursuit. The feeling of satisfaction at acquiring a highly-regarded work of art links to a deep-rooted human instinct. However, collecting art can also be a curse, bringing with it expenditure beyond means, sacrifice of friendships and burdens of responsibility. Art collectors start out as masters of the universe, but often end up as servants of the insatiable appetite they have created, their later years spent in frustrating battles, attempting to secure the long-term future of the their collection. In some ways, collecting resembles a dance, with gallery owners, auction houses and buyers locked in a highly formalized, choreographed world. Museums have more freedom to break free from this two-step, but endure criticisms from both the buyers and vendors of art when they do, and risk the loss of the goodwill that brings collections into the public domain.

Collecting art reflects the interests of contemporary culture and also personal taste. Art buyers in Ireland have tended to be conservative, their personal taste in conformity with public norms, concerned as much with the value of art as with artistic merit. Because of this, patterns of collecting Irish art have not changed greatly over the past century.

The landscapes of Paul Henry that sold well from the Dublin Painters Gallery on Stephens Green in the 1920s find contemporary expression in painters for whom landscape remains an abiding interest. Many of these paintings are outstanding works of art, but as Lucy Lippard pointed out in a recent lecture in West Cork, "Landscape painting is not intellectually provocative. We're not allowed to see for ourselves." For Lippard, photography represents a way to make art that is more instantly accessible to all sections of society. To be sure, more galleries in Ireland are showing, and selling, lens-based art, including photography, but this work is often driven by aesthetics rather than thought-provoking ideas. The market for abstract art has developed steadily, although there is clearly more interest in semi-decorative expressionist abstraction than in harder, more minimalist works. Abstract painters like Richard Gorman, who don't play the expressionist game, know that they are limiting the market for their work.

For those artists who have placed their practice beyond the reach of the art market, what concerns collectors is of little concern to them. However, such art is comparatively rare in Ireland where, since the 1920s, the market for paintings and sculptures and other traditional art forms, in spite of one or two periods of economic depression, has remained strong. Dublin has good commercial and semi-commercial galleries, as do, to a lesser extent, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. Even during the war years, with luxury goods in short supply, sales of paintings by Jack Yeats and Daniel O'Neill from the Victor Waddington Gallery in South Anne Street were healthy. Likewise, with Leo Smith's Dawson Gallery, the predecessor of the present-day Taylor Galleries, works by Nano Reid, Mary Swanzy and Norah McGuinness sold well. The Kerlin Gallery, set up in Dublin in the mid-1980s, shows younger established artists such as Dorothy Cross, Mark Francis and Kathy Prendergast. However, even newer galleries, such as the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery or the Blue Leaf Gallery, manage to survive and thrive alongside the older established enterprises.

Barrie Cooke: In good time for Monsieur Ingres, 1968, oil on canvas, 153 x 153 cm; from the Father McGrath bequest; courtesy Crawford Municipal Art Gallery

It would be true to say that there has been a boom in art collecting in Ireland in recent years. This boom is extending steadily into the art of previous centuries. The recent resurgence of interest in eighteenth-century Irish landscapes, for long an overlooked area of art collecting, is reflected in the current high prices being achieved for works by Thomas Roberts, George Barret and other artists whose bucolic golden landscapes portrayed a settled world, while even during the lives of those artists, the real world of rural Ireland was being convulsed by unrest and revolution. This resurgence of interest in eighteenth-century art is driven also by the fact that there is now money in the economy that was not there twenty years ago, surplus cash that is being fed into the restoration of a number of country and town houses. Some of these houses have become veritable National Galleries in miniature, their collections framed and displayed in period interiors with impeccable (and expensive) taste. As the tradition of Roman houses with galleries was revived in the eighteenth century by newly rich landowners anxious to establish a pedigree, so also the newly rich of recent years have invested in art as an adornment of their own restored Georgian homes and offices. Somewhat down the spectrum there is art collecting simply as an extension of shopping, paintings being treated on the same level as suitable furniture, carpets and fabrics.

Theories on collecting are difficult to develop and sustain because the motivations that drive collectors are so varied. It's unsafe to generalize, but it seems that the dedicated collecting of art is connected to a search for power and that lying at the heart of this extraordinarily wide-ranging activity is an atavistic or morbid impulse, deep-rooted and possibly beyond objective analysis. René Gimpel, founder of the gallery in London that represents Louis le Brocquy, in the early twentieth century referred to a 'sentiment d'incomplitude', meaning the driven need to own and control. A similar theory, based on the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, places collecting at the heart of an attempt to control what she termed 'the Other'. This analysis would explain the nineteenth and early-twentieth-century fascination with portraits of women - for the most part commissioned, purchased and regarded by men. It also explains the popularity, particularly in France and Britain during that same period, of scenes of life in, for example, Morocco or India. However, to be fair, collections of art in Ireland reflecting simplistic attempts at sublimated 'possession' are rare enough, unless a deep-seated urge towards land ownership be taken into account. Over the past millennium, Ireland has been for the most part a colonized, rather than a colonizing country, and the political radicalization stemming from this has created in turn a niche market for art with a radical stance.

Another generalization, not unconnected to that preceding, is that art collecting is largely a male preserve. In asking for the names of leading art collectors in Ireland, few women are mentioned. Marie Donnelly, Norma Smurfit and Dorothy Walker spring to mind, but for every woman there seems to be a queue of men - mostly business and professional people - hungry to enter this competitive field of action and acquisition. Some do so with intelligence and acumen, others with the frightening efficiency of a vacuum cleaner.

A third generalization on art collecting, and one equally fraught with possibilities of contradiction, is that this is an activity confined to the rich, or the well-off. Hard on the heels of the lawyers, doctors and architects come the skilled manual workers, including cabinet-makers, plumbers and electricians, buying and bartering their way towards building up creditable art collections. However, it is clear that the expense of acquiring art, let alone displaying it, is not an activity for those on low incomes. Exceptions, being remarkable, tend to confirm the view that collecting art is a practical way, as it has been for centuries, for well-off people to define their status and position in society. That said, what is remarkable is the degree of generosity shown by private collectors in making works available for loan exhibitions in public museums.

For a country of its size and population, Ireland has a surprising number of high-quality art collections which have evolved over the years from being private collections to forming part of the national patrimony. Aside from the high-profile Chester Beatty collection of Oriental Art, now located in Dublin Castle, and the Beit Collection housed at Russborough House and the National Gallery of Ireland, there is the Hunt collection in Limerick, the Butler collection at Kilkenny Castle, the Derek Hill collection in Donegal and smaller art collections such as that bequeathed in recent years by Fr. McGrath to the Crawford Gallery in Cork. The University of Limerick has recently accepted the O'Malley collection of twentieth-century Irish art, while the Vaughan Bequest of Turner watercolours in the National Gallery is an important national treasure. Tax concessions introduced in recent years have aided in the transfer of works from private hands to public museums, but too much of this activity is focused on the five national cultural institutions based in Dublin. With many of the most important private collections of Irish art now being assembled by families living in counties such as Kerry, Clare, Tipperary and Laois, and with decentralization now a key government policy, the benefits of a more balanced system of tax concessions are clear. Too many private art collections of Irish art, such as the William and Joan Roth collection which forms the major part of Christie's Irish art sale this year, are still being dispersed rather than being acquired by museums. Hopefully in future years, the attractions offered to private individuals to bequeath or present their collections to the state will be such as will tip the balance in favour of the public good.

Peter Murray is Director of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork