Seàn Keating: Contemporary Contexts
Resource Pack for Secondary Schools
Section Three: Modernism
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Seán Keating was an academically trained artist who painted images of
modern life around him, seen in his heroic paintings of fighters, politicians and
sportsmen, and in his paintings of the Aran Islands, or his mural work for
Geneva, which he did between 1957 and 1962. He wanted to develop an Irish
School of Art. However, Keating’s era was increasingly marked by a tension
between the more traditional, academic styles of art that emphasized a
realistic depiction of the world and the push of the new modern art styles.
There was growing interest in the development of modernist styles in
continental Europe, as individual artists wanted to picture their values and
experience of the world in completely new and untried ways.
These modern experiments sometimes focused on an attempt to remove the
obvious from images, seen for example, in the work of Mainie Jellett. On other
occasions artists interested in modernist modes of expression turned to the
inner mind, or the unconscious, seen for example in the work of Patrick
Hennessy and Colin Middleton in the exhibition Sean Keating: Contemporary
Contexts.
One of the most influential movements in modern art was Cubism. In Cubist
artworks, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted
form - instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the
subject from a multitude of viewpoints. The Cubist painters did not use
perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. They wanted instead to
emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced and
fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within a
shallow, relief-like space. They also used multiple or contrasting vantage
points.
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This painting is called Abstract
Composition, it was painted by an
Irish female artist called Mary Harriet
Jellett, known as Mainie Jellett (1897
– 1944).
Mainie Jellett was an important figure
in Irish art history, both as an early
advocate of abstract art and as a
champion of the modern movement.
Critics often attacked her paintings in
the early years, but as her career
progressed
there
was
more
understanding of her work. It is
important to remember that although
greatly influenced by Cubism, Jellettt
was an abstract painter. Her work
was non-representational and based
on a theory that she helped Gleizes
to develop called ‘translation and
rotation.’
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While studying at the Westminster School of Art in London in 1917 she met
Evie Hone (1894 – 1955), and together the two Irish art students went to Paris
in 1921 to study with the Cubist painters André Lhote and Albert Gleizes.
Gleizes was an important theorist of the Cubist movement, and his 1912 book
Du Cubisme was, for many years, the most important theoretical study of the
movement. Jellett and Hone’s association with Gleizes lasted over a decade,
and their teacher later acknowledged that he was as much influenced by the
two Irishwomen as they were by him.
Jellett was a deeply committed Christian and her paintings, though strictly
non-representational, often have religious titles or resemble religious icons in
their use of colour. Abstract Composition can be interpreted as three figures
rising from a central base, and may represent the Holy Family or the Trinity.
Like many of the artists, writers, poets and intellectuals of the day, including
Jellett and Hone, Seán Keating was always a fiercely independent thinker
who was not afraid to speak his mind. He remained a devoutly academic
painter, and did not try to use modes of abstraction in his own work. He chose
to continue painting in a realistic style valuing logic and reason over
abstraction or surrealism. Telling the story of the events and people around
him was what mattered to him as an artist. He was very active; he wrote
articles and did broadcasts about the importance of the artist to society. He
also did a lot during his career to try to gain state sponsorship for Irish artists.
It is important to remember too that Keating often showed his work alongside
that of Jellett, Hone and others, in exhibitions all over the country, and in
America.
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Abstract Composition, Mainie Jellett, c.1935, oil on canvas, 104cm x
81.5cm
Collection of Crawford Art Gallery
www.crawfordartgallery.ie
Note: the information in this worksheet is derived from Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA, ‘Celebrating Modern
Life. Seán Keating: Contemporary Contexts’, catalogue essay for the exhibition, Crawford Gallery, Cork,
2012, and further sources therein.