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  • Seán Keating in Context: Responses to Culture and Politics in Post-Civil War Ireland
  • Ryan Barland
Seán Keating in Context: Responses to Culture and Politics in Post-Civil War Ireland, ed. Eimear O'Connor, pp. 194. Dublin: Carysfort Press. Distributed by Dufour Editions, Chester Springs PA. $49.95 (paper).

Seán Keating in Context reveals much more than a simple biography of the Irish painter. Keating—who was born in Limerick in 1889 and died in Dublin in 1977—was a professional artist, taught at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, and was an energetic member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and its president for twelve years. He was, in fact, a national figure and his controversial opinions often made him something of a lightning rod within the community. O'Connor's volume provides a glimpse of those opinions published in his articles, lectures, and radio broadcasts that cumulatively paint a picture of the status of the arts in a newly independent Ireland.

O'Connor uses primary sources to a clear purpose in putting together a profile of Keating's professional life. The book, she announces, aims to be "a contextual discussion of Keating's articles, lectures, and broadcasts, which are documented in chronological order. "The first half gives a biographical account of Keating's professional career, while the second half compiles long-unavailable, and sometimes never-before-published, writings collected with the help of the Keating family. His work is highly opinionated on what was wrong with the arts in Ireland, and confident about the direction in which he would have liked to take the country.

O'Connor finds one of the major achievements of Keating's life to have been his role as a "cultural commentator." Keating was often highly critical of the establishment within the new Irish government, the Irish school system, and society as a whole, and unafraid to deliver such jeremiads as "Unless we take off our coats and dirty our hands, if need be, we Irish are doomed and damned to the bottomless pit of futility. And we shall have nobody to blame [End Page 157] but ourselves." He spoke forcefully on the subject of the Irish government's support, or lack of support, for the arts, but also criticized the existing systems for development of artists in Ireland, and offered pronouncements on the meaning and direction of Irish art.

Keating's upbringing in Limerick had been middle-class, and he was a product of the same arts education and training that he would later criticize in the 1925 article, Report on the Metropolitan School of Art. The system in place had no entrance examinations and, with organization and proper teaching lacking, he saw Ireland turning out substandard artists. In the larger picture, there was no cohesive Irish style of art. Keating believed that the time was ripe for change that would develop an Irish school of art. His report on the Metropolitan School embarrassed many people—including George Atkinson, the headmaster—and also raised Keating's own profile.

This provocative article appeared during the period when Keating did some of his best-known and politically focused pieces, from 1915 until 1929. His most famous works the paintings of the "Shannon Scheme" (which he did on a freelance basis, rather than by commission) in which the Irish government partnered with the German company Siemens to build the largest hydroelectric plant in the world. The project symbolized the modernization of Ireland, and documenting the project made Keating well known around the country. The Shannon Scheme paintings, in turn, led to large commissions and eventually to a radio series about art.

Putting the lectures and broadcasts into context, the biography portion sets the reader up for the themes and opinions of Keating. Certain topics are repeated, but his passion for art and the vision he displayed is always present, as when he writes, "The formula for making of a good School of Art is 'by Artists for Artists'. A school of Art needs a few Artists, a few students, a registrar, and money in reason. Big buildings, elaborators, expensive apparatus do not count at all." Such convictions are best expressed in his...

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