An illustrated anthology of new critical essays about the Irish illustrator Harry Clarke.
The Irish artist Harry Clarke (1888-1931) is universally renowned in Ireland, but little known in the United States. Clarke’s distinctive vision, drawing from Celtic Revival and Art Nouveau influences, was at once recognizably medieval in its influences and starkly decadent in its modernism. Our hope that this book will allow Irish audiences to learn more about Clarke, while also introducing the range of his work to the United States.
Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State examines works produced at the height of Clarke’s career, the period from 1914-1931. The editors of the book are Marguerite Helmers, Roisin Kennedy, and Angela Griffith. In individual chapters, fourteen authors from Ireland and the United States consider the commercial, artistic, political and religious background for Clarke’s artistry. The authors draw attention to the individuality of the formal content of Clarke’s work and highlight themes such as patronage, public reception, advertising, propaganda, war, and memory, in order to place Clarke within a larger political and cultural context. In particular it will examine the complex relationship between visual art and literature that lies at the heart of Clarke’s contribution to Irish post-independence culture.
All money raised through Kickstarter will be used for the production of the book. This includes high-quality full-color printing on heavy art paper. The three editors (Helmers, Kennedy, and Griffith) are also seeking funding from grants and institutions to cover the printing costs. This is not a self-published book, however; the book will be fully-reviewed and published by the Irish Academic Press in Ireland.
Contributors & Tentative Chapter Titles
Eimear O’Connor, Trinity College Dublin: Harry Clarke And Seán Keating
Angela Griffith, Trinity College Dublin: The Water of Life and Re-imagining ‘Irishness’; Harry Clarke’s Illustrations for Messrs. John Jameson & Sons
Kathryn Milligan, Trinity College Dublin: Harry Clarke and the Dublin Magazine: Involvement, Influence, and Illustration
Jessica O’Donnell, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin: The Eve of St. Agnes
Marguerite Helmers, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh: The Year’s at the Spring: An Artistic Pastiche
Sergio Figueiredo, Kennesaw State University: The Complexity of Harry Clarke’s Illustrations for Goethe’s Faust
Elizabeth Helsinger, University of Chicago: Selections from Swinburne’s Poetry
Jarlath Killeen, Trinity College Dublin: Harry Clarke and the Fairy Tale
Kelly Sullivan, New York University: Harry Clarke’s Natural World
Róisín Kennedy, University College Dublin: The Geneva Window: A ‘Macabre’ Synthesis of Art and Literature
Ann Wilson, Cork Institute of Technology: Early Twentieth Century Irish Catholic Devotional Imagery: The Honan Chapel Windows
Paul Donnelly, Trinity College Dublin: Legacy and Identity; Harry Clarke, William Dowling and the Harry Clarke Studios
Fiona Bateman, NUI Galway: Clarke Studios And The Irish Foreign Missions: Windows With ‘A Very “Irish” Look’ In Africa
Luke Gibbons, NUI Maynooth, Afterword
Harry Clarke & Artistic Visions of the New Irish State will be published by the Irish Academic Press in County Kildare, Ireland (http://irishacademicpress.ie/). Our production plan includes receiving fully revised and edited versions of the chapters by March 1, 2018 in order to launch the book in the Autumn of 2018.
The book will be a fully-illustrated paperback, printed on good art paper, thoughtfully designed.
The only challenge that we foresee is that the editing and design process will take longer than we anticipate, pushing the release date to Spring 2019.