Fionna Barber – författare

This companion contains new and innovative writing on Irish art and its history, from c. 1800 to the present day.This book critically engages with Irish art in a period linked to key events in Irish history, beginning with the Acts of Union between Britain and Ireland (1800–01)) and the significant social and cultural changes that resulted. The book also provides a precedent for a focus on the significance of art in relation to other subsequent key historical events such as the early twentieth‑century struggles for independence or the role of political conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s onwards and its aftermath. Key themes covered include tradition and innovation; upheavals of history; place, location, and artistic formations; Irish art and the wider world; and embodiment and identity. The book expands the critical discourse around Irish art over this period, both within Ireland and beyond, and encourages the potential for future scholarship in fields and periods not covered.This book will be of interest to scholars and students working in art history, Irish studies, and colonial studies.

Art in Ireland since 1910 is the first book to examine Irish art from the early twentieth century to the present day. In this highly illustrated volume Fionna Barber looks at the work of a wide range of artists from Yeats and le Brocquy to Cross and Doherty, many of whom are unfamiliar to audiences outside Ireland. She also casts new light on Francis Bacon and other figures central to British art, assessing the significance of their Irishness to an understanding of their work.From the rugged peasantry of the Gaelic Revival to an increasing diversification of art practice towards the end of the century, Art in Ireland since 1910 tracks the forces that emerged and developed within a context of a range of very different social and political forces: not just the conflict in the North, but the emergence of feminism and migration as two of the factors that contributed to the unravelling of entrenched concepts of Irish identity. Barber looks at the theme of diaspora in the work of Irish artists working in Britain during and after the 1950s, suggesting parallels with similar issues facing artists from other former British colonies, from India to the Caribbean. She chronicles a period that culminated with art practice and the sense of Ireland as a nation that would have been unrecognizable to its people a hundred years before.Richly illustrated, Art in Ireland since 1910 is essential reading for anyone interested in modern art, Irish Studies and the history of Ireland in general.