Did the art bubble reflect the boom?

Though the peculiarly Irish art market was distorted, gallery building projects and ideas provided positives, writes AIDAN DUNNE

DAMIEN HIRST, wasn’t he the 1990s star of Brit Art? Well, that was his decade, creatively, but coming into this century he attained undreamt-of financial success, becoming a brand name as the contemporary art market boomed. Then, in September 2008, he organised a giant sale of his work at Sotheby’s in London just as Lehman Brothers collapsed and the international financial system unravelled.

Against all the odds, Hirst’s sale was fantastically successful, but with its uncanny timing it did mark the end of an era. As if to prove the point, his reputation has suffered since. His foray into painting has been pummelled by critics, and his legal pursuit of a younger artist – for appropriation – has left a sour taste. The party is over.

Did the growth of the Irish art market, which flourished on the back of the property bubble and lasted slightly beyond Hirst’s landmark sale, reflect the international boom? Yes and no. Christie’s and Sotheby’s had been active in the Irish art market anyway. Their increased interest was understandable given there was money to be made, but it is salutary to note that the market for Irish art was, and remains, Irish. Local auction houses thrived during the good times. Go back 15 years and it’s fair to say that Irish art was undervalued. Looking at what happened in the Irish art auctions during the last decade, it’s easy to conclude that the market became distorted, with too much money chasing too little in the way of quality.

INTERNATIONALLY, the secondary art market – chiefly the auction houses – had been progressively moving into the primary market, traditionally the preserve of dealers and galleries, and that happened here too. The market for contemporary Irish art at auction is conservative, even insular, in its taste. This leaves it vulnerable to local anomalies, such as the price bubbles over the decade that look problematic in the long term. More encouragingly, commercial galleries enjoyed some good years and managed to significantly develop a new generation of art buyers. Whether they can hold onto them in these difficult times is another question.

For Irish artists it was a good decade in many ways. Commercial and public galleries; the Per Cent for Art Scheme, which guarantees an arts component in publicly funded projects; and improvements in travel and communications meant more opportunities and, in many ways, a wider, more demanding creative environment. It’s significant that, boom or no boom, many young artists and curators managed to explore alternatives to a purely commercial model of arts practice, via community-based projects (Seamus Nolan, for example) and other non-commercial projects (such as the venue thisisnotashop).

Retrospectives and survey exhibitions are important punctuation points in any artist’s career, and public galleries have, on the whole, been attentive to this aspect of their job. A selective roll-call of such shows is impressive: Robert Ballagh, Patrick Scott, Sean McSweeney, Cecil King, Hughie O’Donoghue, Willie Doherty, Gerard Byrne, Richard Gorman, Janet Mullarney, Nick Miller, John Shinnors, Paul Henry, Patrick Ireland (now Brian O’Doherty), Sean Shanahan, Jack Donovan, Dermot Seymour, Diana Copperwhite, Martin Gale, Eithne Jordan, Ronnie Hughes, Tadgh McSweeney, Anne Madden, Louis le Brocquy, John Noel Smith, Barrie Cooke, James Coleman, Mark O’Kelly, William Orpen, Dorothy Cross, Stephen Brandes, David Crone, Charles Tyrrell, Bernadette Kiely, Makiko Nakamura, Tony O’ Malley and Connolly Cleary.

The unprecedented success of Tate Modern in London, which opened in 2000, vividly demonstrated the popularity of contemporary art and its infrastructural importance.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma), approaching its 10th anniversary, had a more difficult start to the decade. After a bitter boardroom battle, its first director, Declan McGonagle, resigned in 2001. The mood of acrimony made the search for a successor quite difficult, but the appointment of Enrique Juncosa early in 2003 was auspicious for the museum, leading to a string of tremendous solo shows by international artists. Juncosa’s openness, his international experience and contacts have been a boon for Imma.

However, it’s a pity that the museum didn’t manage to procure its mooted new gallery building during the past few years. Now it will have to await a significant economic upturn at the very least.

There were many significant building projects delivered throughout the decade, though:

UCC’s Lewis Glucksman Gallery was a major cultural addition to the city when it opened towards the end of 2004; Letterkenny’s Regional Cultural Centre, which opened in the summer of 2007, is an amazing resource for the county, and has pursued an ambitious exhibition and education programme; and Carlow’s Visual Centre for Contemporary Art, which opened earlier this year, is a bold regional undertaking – with national ambitions – under any circumstances.

Dublin’s City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, fared well. The Francis Bacon Studio opened there in 2001, and in 2006 the substantial new wing, designed by Gilroy McMahon, was unveiled. This doubled exhibition space and incorporated a dedicated Sean Scully Gallery, housing paintings donated by the artist.

In 2002, the National Gallery of Ireland opened its Clare Street extension, the Millennium Wing, with an Impressionist exhibition. The Chester Beatty Library began the decade by opening for business in its new home in Dublin Castle.

The Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery was very successfully remodelled in a year-long building programme. It reopened late last year. Add in various other openings, extensions and refurbishments – such as Trinity’s Science Gallery, the Farmleigh Gallery and the NCAD Gallery – and it’s fair to say that the visual arts received a substantial infrastructural injection during the decade.

Most of these projects are very much a matter of laying the groundwork for future use and development. It’s also true, however, that delivering on their promise will be extremely challenging in the immediate future.