100 artworks have been chosen for this beautifully illustrated book to represent each year from 1916-2015. They trace the story of Ireland’s creative output from the revolutionary period until today.
The story that emerges through these 100 works is not one of artists gradually finding their place of honour in the republic. Especially in the visual arts it is, on the contrary, a story of never-ending argument, of works that are disliked, rejected, fought over, even painted over. Instead of the artists supporting the state and the state supporting the artists, it is a case of the artists challenging and upsetting the community and the community looking warily at the artists. This is what makes Irish art, at its best, so edgy, so embattled and so vital.
They were compiled by the Royal Irish Academy in partnership with The Irish Times. The visual artworks were chosen from the RIA’s research project the five volume publication, Art and Architecture of Ireland. Most artists and writers featured in the series have been profiled in the RIA’s Dictionary of Irish Biography which outlines the lives at home and overseas of prominent men and women born in Ireland, north and south, and the noteworthy Irish careers of those born outside Ireland.
Fintan O'Toole is a columnist and literary editor with The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. He has written books on Irish history, politics, society and culture. He has been awarded the European Press Prize 2017 and the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2017.
Catherine Marshall is a curator and art historian. She lectured in art history at Trinity College Dublin, the National College of Art and Design and University College Dublin. As founding head of collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art she curated exhibitions of outsider art from the Musgrave Kinley Collection, exhibitions of Irish art in China, USA and the UK and throughout Ireland with the IMMA National Programme, and was curator to the Engagement project, which brought together artists from the Kilkenny Collective for Arts Talent, Callan, with artists from widely differing mainstream practices for a series of exhibitions 2013-21. She co-edited Art and architecture of Ireland, vol. 5, Twentieth century (2014) and Janet Mullarney (2019). She is an active member of Na Cailleacha (Na Cailleacha.weebly.com). In 2019 she was recipient of the first honorary doctorate in the History of Art from University College Dublin.
Dr Eibhear Walshe is a senior lecturer in the School of Modern English at University College Cork. His biography Kate O'Brien A Writing Life was published by Irish Academic Press in 2006 and he edited Elizabeth Bowen: Visions and Revisions for Irish Academic Press in 2008 He was a section editor for The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Volume 4 (Cork University Press, 2002); a contributor to the New Dictionary of Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) and guest edited The Irish Review in 2000. His other publications include the edited collections, Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O'Brien (Cork University Press 1993), Sex, Nation and Dissent ( Cork University Press:1997), Elizabeth Bowen Remembered (Four Courts Press: 1999) and The Plays of Teresa Deevy (Mellen Press: 2003.) He co-edited Representing the Troubles (Four Courts: 2004) with Brian Cliff, Molly Keane: Centenary Essays (Four Courts: 2006) with Gwenda Young, and Imagination in the Classroom (Four Courts, 2012) with Anne Fogarty and Eilis Ni Dhuibhne. His memoir, Cissie's Abattoir, was published by Collins Press in 2009 and he edited Elizabeth Bowen's Selected Irish Writings for Cork University Press in 2011.Oscar's Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Ireland was published by Cork University Press in 2012 and A Different Story: the Writings of Colm Toibin was published by Irish Academic Press in 2013. His first novel The Diary of Mary Travers was published in 2014 by the Somerville Press.
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