Fred Conlon was “stone mad”. He loved stone and made it sing. Sadly he came to a late flowering of his talent having spent so much of his productive years working as an Art teacher to support his family.
This was and is common enough among Artists deriving support from a small economic base which supports the individual Artist in Ireland, and indeed other countries too. Teaching often becomes the means by which the rest of the Artist’s contract with life may be fulfilled; often at a terrible personal cost to the practitioner, a cost in terms of energy, vision, and, tellingly, delivery.
Tragically the Artist was overtaken by the destruction wrought by a fatal brain tumour which carried him off at the swell of an incoming tide of his working life as an Artist in stone.
I was fellow student of Fred’s although he was somewhat older than me in the National College of Art and had some affinity with him in that my paternal grandfather came from Cliffony, Co. Sligo. My grandfather came to Dublin to study in the predecessor to the College, the Metropolitan School of Art, and lived with his sister Brigid (my grand aunt) who was Harry Clarke[1]’s Mother.
Conlon’s early years in the National College of Art were dominated by Domhnall Ó Murchachada the sculptor (and Fred’s college mentor), and his art historian wife Mairín Allen[2], as well as the teaching of Dr. Françoise Henry[3] .
I remember Fred listening enthralled as Domhnall Ó Murchadha[4] spoke about the stone masons of Notre Dame, the Abbot Suger[5] of Saint Denis, and the foundation stones of Canterbury Cathedral being by the same hand as those in the abbey of Notre Dame. The “lux continua[6]” of Suger’s writings fascinated Ó Murchadha, Conlon and of course Dr. Henry.
Through their influence Fred also drifted towards ACJF[i] and An Realt[ii]. It was anti-English in tone, and was reflected in the anti-British bias decrying all English Art to the longer term detriment of many students appreciation of English Art as having any value. It was an attempt to counter the politically pervasive influence of the Lemass years and the Arts influence of the Professor of Art History in Trinity College Dublin Anne Crookshank[7], which was gaining ground. It became a struggle of Catholic Versus Protestant Art, and against the Tsunami of Modernism then engulfing the Irish Art world in particular.
It found an echo in Fred’s thinking deriving from his own family’s experience in Western Sligo but one which with time abated. The difficulty was that his mentor and by now friend Ó Murchadha was outside the loop of RHA or Living Art[8] groups, and disliked the head of the Department Fredrïch Herkner[9], and just about tolerated my father[10], but liked Keating[11]. So, the strains which affected and eventually infected the NCA wound their serpent-like way into his working life and his grasp of aesthetics; particularly regarding contemporary sculptors like Henry Moore[12] or Barbara Hepworth[13].
The Author’s understanding of college life is seen through Fred’s eyes and makes some of the summary judgements accordingly without understanding the dynamics which operates in the “back story” as it operated in the college in Fred’s time and the aftermath of Students protests and sit-ins.
I regret that Fred’s work for the Yeats[14] statue in Sligo was not the one chosen, instead of that virtual lampoon of Yeats now in place and known, to the delight of visitors, as “the wank at the bank”, (being placed outside a bank building).
The book comments accurately and tellingly on the stubborn nature of the Artist and his doggedness in all matters, personal, social, pedagogic, aesthetic.
A small number of discordant notes – there is no index, although there is a useful map of the Artist’s later works; the National College of Art & Design only came into existence some years after Fred left its predecessor the National College of Art. The Clonalis family is O’Conor.
The author’s account of the Conlon family’s early years is worthy of a book in itself, that of the small tenant farmer’s struggle in the aftermath of the breakup of the old Estates following the Land Acts in Ireland. It is a threnody of social life and its divisions in Ireland and, not that long ago.
The book is beautifully produced, and I commend it both for its subject and its value as a social document.
Ciarán MacGonigal is an Arts commentator and Advisor. He is currently working on a 20th century history of Irish Art.
“Unravelling the Spiral” (The life and work of Fred Conlon 1943-2005). By Jack Harte. Pub Scotus Press. ISBN 978-0-9560966-1-6. RRP €24-95. pps 182
[1] Harry Clarke RHA 1889-1931; stained glass artist(The Geneva Window; The Eve of St.Agnes etc) Illustrator; founder of the Harry Clarke Studios married fellow artist Margaret Clarke RHA (née Crilley) 1886-1961.
[2] Mairín Allen 1912-1988; Art Historian,writer & Critic; Lecturer in Art History National College of Art ,married to Domnhall Ó Murchachda
[3] Dr. Françoise Henry (1902-1982) Antiquities Scholar, Archaeologist, Author of major works on Celtic Art & the Irish High Cross, Director of the School of Archaeology UCD and Director of the Purser Griffith Art History Courses for many years in UCD.
[4] Domhnall Ó Murchadha Sculptor 1914-1991; Teacher,Head of Dept & Director National College of Art,then National College of Art & Design
[5] Abbot Suger (1091-1151) of Saint Denis; regent of France(1147-49) Advisor to Kings Louis VI & VII of France; also developed the nascent Gothic style
[6] Whilst this refers to the amazing development of Stained Glass in Romanesque Cathedrals under the influence of Suger, it also meant a corresponding development in the technology of Stone to accommodate the soaring windows and meant that Stone had to soar as well and not just act as props for the roof.
[7] Anne Olivia Crookshank b.Quetta India 1927. Author, Professor of Art History University of Dublin. Fellow Emerita TCD.Author & Modern Art polemicist.
[8] The Irish Exhibition of Living Art founded in 1944 by Mainie Jellett,Evie Hone,Lous le Brocquy & Margaret Clarke RHA to counter the power and influence of the RHA. It led to bitter rivalries in the Irish Art World; Keating on one side(RHA)and the modernists led by Norah McGuinness,Le Brocquy,Evie Hone on the other. Amongst an older generation it still persists but as the apples fall from the bough it becomes an historical curiosity.
[9] Fredrïch Herkner RHA (1902=1986)Sculptor,Designer & Ceramacist.
[10] Maurice MacGonigal PRHA (1900-1979)Painter; Professor of Painting National College of Art 1962-72 in succession Se an Keating.President Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts 1964-74
[11] Seán(John)Keating PRHA (1889-1977)Figurative Painter; President Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts 1949-1964.Professor of Painting National College of Art 1938-1963
[12] Henry Moore OM CH FBA(1898-1986)Sculptor
[13] Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)Sculptor
[14] William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)Poet, Noble Laureat
[i] L’Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française founded in 1884
[ii] A Roman Catholic Association which offered its services in Irish and tried for a chaplaincy in the National College of Art at that time.
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