Omnibus – A master of his art

CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED, but one of the attributes I admire most in anyone is skill. There is great pleasure in seeing, as I have recently, a delicately made joint in a simple wooden shelf, so fine that it cannot be detected by touch. Or a piece of ironwork, forged and wrought into something both beautiful and functional. [private] In no area in recent years has technical skill become less evident than in art. Ingenuity yes, philosophical complexity perhaps, esoteric navel-gazing often, but sheer mastery of technique and material is unfortunately something that is no longer necessary to produce works of art. As a rank amateur, who never got beyond painting a leaf or a repeating pattern for the old Leaving Cert art exam, I am always ready to listen to an explanation of what a particular piece of modern art means, and how it was constructed. I really do try to keep an open mind. But I cannot deny the part of me that wants to experience what Sir Herbert Read called 'the shock of pleasure' on seeing a work of art. That doesn't happen very often, but on Saturday I spent a very pleasurable afternoon indeed in the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) Gallagher Gallery on Ely Place in Dublin, just off St Stephen's Green. The main exhibition there is a retrospective of the work of Carey Clarke, a past president of the academy, who was born in Donegal in 1936. His was a name I knew from portraits of Dr Garret FitzGerald and our own Tom Murphy, but only vaguely. So it was a revelation to see an extensive collection of works ranging in time from the 1960s to the 2000s, in space from a suburban Dublin garden to the Dead Sea, and in subject from still lives through portraits to magnificent land- and townscapes. You experience the exhibition first on the ground floor, where a large room is ringed with paintings and one or two drawings. On turning left the first wall holds a series of still lives, many of which combine flower and old master elements, like 'Still life, fragility' in which an orchid in a terracotta pot overhangs a classical sculpture of a head. The head recurs further on in a pair of paintings in the same frame entitled 'Elegy for our time'. In each, a book open at a poem stands behind a glass vase. Beside this is the marble head, but one eye is painted realistically, and from this trickles a bloody tear. It is a very striking work, and was painted with remarkable prescience in 2004. Ironically, it is part of the Bank of Ireland collection. Further on are some portraits, including those of Garret and Tom Murphy. Perhaps it is another sign of the times that the part of the wooden name plate on the Murphy portrait which says it was presented by Ansbacher Bank has been partly broken off. One of the perennial subjects for art is the passage of time, and what I take to be an allegorical pencil study of the artist's mother depicts her on the right of a table on which sit various classical objects, while on the left sits a young woman who may or may not be the subject in her early womanhood. The mother holds a skull on her lap, and is pointing at the younger woman as if to state 'this is how I was'. On the upper floor a painting entitled 'Timespan' gives the same message. One the left is a self-portrait of the artist as he was in London in 1960, on the right another as he is in Dublin in 2010, and in the centre a third depicting the artist in his studio, reflected in a convex mirror. It is a virtuouso piece of draughtsmanship, reminding me of another of my favourite Irish painters, Robert Ballagh. Ballagh springs to mind in another work on the upper floor, a roofscape over Dublin framed by the porthole-like window of some high-rise building. To return briefly to the passage of time, it can clearly be seen on the upper floor: on turning right into another large room, the visitor encounters first paintings from the 1960s, mainly landscape, in a rougher, much less detailed style than the later work. A portrait of a young woman, 'The Yellow Sweater' shows her sitting in a wood and canvas director's chair. Later sitters are posed in a fine inlaid armchair. There is a superb old master-style portrait of the artist's mother. The landscapes are most impressive. There are views of Mediterranean harbours, with the intense blue and sandstone colours that make you feel the sun beating on your back; there is the suburban garden mentioned earlier; there are views of Connemara and of the Dead Sea; church doors in Italy and a tobacco barn in, presumably, the USA. An early morning view of the Piazzetta San Marco in Venice, reproduced higher up the column, is achingly beautiful. Words can never adequately describe a work of art, but there is time for you to see this wonderful collection for yourself. The exhibition runs until February 26, and if you have an hour or three to spare in Dublin, I urge you to visit it. â€â€ David Burke [/private]