This book is to coincide with the National Gallery's exhibiton of the same name. With chapters from leading Irish historians, including Roy Foster, Tom Dunne and Raoisain Kennedy, 'Creating History' delivers fascinating assessments that situate the Easter Rising and Ireland's claim to independence through the historical significance and aesthetic value of Ireland's major artistic works.

The first book devoted to Irish performance art and the first attempt at a history of this art form in the north and south of Ireland, this book brings together contributions by prominent Irish artists and major academics. It features rigorous critical and theoretical analysis as well as historical commentaries that provide an absorbing sense of the rich histories of performance art in Ireland. Presenting diverse visual documentation of performance art practices, this collection shows how performance art in Ireland engaged with--and in turn influenced and led by--contemporary performance and live art internationally. Copublished with the Live Art Development Agency.

A sweeping survey of the arts of Ireland spanning 150 years and an astonishing range of artists and media This groundbreaking book captures a period in Ireland's history when countless foreign architects, artisans, and artists worked side by side with their native counterparts. Nearly all of the works within this remarkable volume--many of them never published before--have been drawn from North American collections. This catalogue accompanies the first exhibition to celebrate the Irish as artists, collectors, and patrons over 150 years of Ireland's sometimes turbulent history. Featuring the work of a wide range of artists--known and unknown--and a diverse array of media, the catalogue also includes an impressive assembly of essays by a pre-eminent group of international experts working on the art and cultural history of Ireland. Major essays discuss the subjects of the Irish landscape and tourism, Irish country houses, and Dublin's role as a center of culture and commerce. Also included are numerous shorter essays covering a full spectrum of topics and artworks, including bookbinding, ceramics, furniture, glass, mezzotints, miniatures, musical instruments, pastels, silver, and textiles.

Irish art of the early Christian era is justly celebrated. So, too, are the individual contributions of artists such as Jack B. Yeats. What is perhaps less widely accepted is the existence of a continuing and developing tradition of Irish art from the earliest times to the present day. Bruce Arnold traces the complex evolution of Irish art through three millennia, showing how it has drawn on Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Mediterranean and other diverse sources. As the story unfolds, Arnold repatriates Irish artists who are frequently regarded as 'English'--including William Mulready, Daniel Maclise and James Barry--and shows how Irish painting and sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork and architecture together form a rich and distinctive cultural heritage.

"The work and career of the celebrated artist Harry Clarke is inextricably linked to the complex nature of early-twentieth-century Irish culture and of modernism. This beautifully designed and fully illustrated book assesses how Clarke and his studios responded to public and private commissions in glass and in illustration. Clarke's contribution is analysed in the context of the quest for a cohesive identity by the new Irish Free State and situated within international art and design movements. The book examines the complex relationship between visual art and literature that lies at the heart of Clarke's contribution to post-independence society in Ireland. Its scholarly essays highlight the impact of patronage, public reception, advertising, propaganda, war and memory on Clarke's work, placing it within a larger political, artistic and cultural context. Essential reading for art lovers and scholars alike, Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State will appeal to anyone interested in the arts of Ireland, and the history and development of early- to mid-twentieth-century visual and material culture"--Inside front flap.

An historical review of Irish art brings into view the many gifted artists who have been linked to foreign traditions

London-born and reared, Art O'Brien's journey from wealthy electrical engineer to leader of Irish militant nationalism in London was, by any measure, quite extraordinary. This book uses the life of O'Brien (1872-1949) as a central axis on which to construct an analysis of Irish nationalism in London from 1900 to 1925. O'Brien was a member of the Gaelic League, Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain. He also established a prisoner relief organization and had significant involvement in gun-running for the 1916 rising and the War of Independence. Appointed London envoy of Dáil Éireann in 1919, he was a close confidant of Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, and Éamon de Valera, and was a mediator in various peace initiatives between the British and Sinn Féin during 1920 and 1921. Yet, despite his extensive contribution to the Irish revolution, little is known of O'Brien's activities. Based on rigorous research in British and Irish archives, this book recounts the vital contribution O'Brien made to the prosecution of the Irish revolution. It also recounts the hitherto little-known story of Irish cultural, political, and militant nationalism in London between 1900 and 1925.