Modernist Heresies: Irish Visual Culture and the Arts and Crafts Movement

Abstract

This chapter shows how the Irish Arts and Crafts movement introduced a bold new aesthetic in the visual arts that scandalised orthodox opinion. The early years of the twentieth century saw a renewed focus on the applied arts – including metalwork, stained glass, tapestries, and printed materials – designed and made for Catholic churches, state buildings, even domestic patrons. Such art reflected existing tensions between conservatism and innovation, by turns echoing and challenging competing cultural nationalist views. The work of Harry Clarke, Evie Hone, the Cuala Press, and others combined traditional materials, skills, and Irish symbolism with innovative aesthetics and sometimes shocking or offensive scenes of modern Irish life. Though church and state institutions that had briefly supported such cultural nationalist work ultimately came to view it as heretical, the chapter demonstrates the profound influence of such work on Irish visual arts modernism.