Prompted by the centennial commemoration of the 1922 Paris Exposition d'Art Irlandais, Seeing Ireland explores the intersection of art and politics in the century that followed.
While the Irish Revival of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century is often associated with literary figures such as Joyce and Yeats, Seeing Ireland's focus on visual arts sheds new light on a pivotal era of Irish cultural and national development. The collection explores the 1922 Paris diaspora congress and its associated art exhibition, the development of an Irish school of art, official visual representations of post-independence Ireland, and the continued intermingling of art and the state in subsequent decades. The Paris exhibition happened at a pivotal moment in Ireland's history, and the administration used Irish art to present for international consumption a self-defined identity of the new state. This collection reflects on that event and on the recent Decade of Centenaries commemoration of the Irish revolutionary period.
Academics and practicing artists alike contribute thought-provoking analyses of the exposition, Irish visual culture, and Irish diaspora politics. The collection ends with an exploration of the constantly negotiated relationship among the state, the arts, and memory.