Maurice Desmond: The Last of the Munster Romantics

This is an unedited version of my profile of Maurice Desmond first published in the Sunday Times Culture Magazine on 12 August 2012.

 

Back in the early Seventies, sitting in Henchy’s pub with the late and much lamented Sean Lucey, poet and professor of English at UCC, talk turned to Maurice Desmond’s work. Lucey memorably referred to him as “the last of the Munster Romantics”. When Lucey used the term romantic it was very much the Romantic poets he had in mind. Poets such as Aogán Ó Rathaille with his elegies for the dispossessed, or the English Romantics such as Wordsworth. A man well versed in poems such as The Prelude saw a link between Wordsworth’s pantheistic universe (a world of malevolent nature, of looming cliffs and clutching vegetation), and the dark, existential landscapes of Maurice Desmond.

Back then Desmond did appear the very model of the Romantic artist. His dress was uniform like in its strict adherence to black or dark blue. The moody ensemble capped by the shoulder-length black hair, solidly based on a pair of substantial black boots, and often accompanied by the swagger of a long, black leather coat. Cork’s own man in black. And like the Romantic poets Maurice Desmond was much possessed by death. For many years the suffering of those embroiled in the Second World War – especially those who died at Auschwitz and Treblinka, influenced his work. He created visual elegies and adagios that suggested the very earth and sky were stricken by man’s cruelty and inhumanity. This was more than pathetic fallacy. Desmond felt deeply about these matters. He found troubling Theodor Adorno’s declaration that “after Auschwitz it is barbaric to write poetry”. But he overcame his artistic hesitancy abiding by Adorno’s subsequent assertion that “perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream”.

 

Desmond’s work was not always thus. When he lived on Sherkin Island in the Sixties he produced a series of golden nudes and later there were waterfalls and Byronic figures set against dark landscapes. You would never describe him as having had a bright palette but the images were more Romantic than tragic. As time passed his vision has grown darker. In his latest show Flanders Fields, running in the Vangard Gallery, Macroom, until the 8th September, Desmond’s concerns move back from the Holocaust to the horrors of the Great War. Over the past number of years he has visited the sites of some of its bloodiest battles, the killing fields of Ypres, Passchendaele, and the Somme. He also immersed himself in the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas and Siegfried Sassoon. Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est had a particular resonance for him. It nailed the myth that it is sweet and noble to die for your country. It is ugly, grotesque and painful. And a whole generation suffered this fate thanks to blinkered politicians and incompetent generals.

 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

 

Wilfred Owen

 

These encounters with poetry and place have inspired a suite of paintings that capture the pain, anguish and desolation of those terrible times. In Flanders Field light is crushed between the bloodied earth and a black sky. You can see vague hints of chaos and destruction in the bottom half of the painting, black streaks against the blood soaked earth. A pink mist rises over the gory field, then a band of watery light topped by the doom- laden sky. These paintings cost Desmond an expense of spirit. His attitude to the exhibition is not one of achievement or exhilaration but rather one of relief. He has got it off his chest. The paintings may not be as direct as Goya’s Disasters of War, or the Great War etchings of Otto Dix but they possess the same tragic power.

 

There is something essentially tragic about all of Desmond’s later work. This is particularly true of this Flanders Fields exhibition. The paintings have a real brooding presence; you encounter them rather than see them, as you do Mark Rothko’s later work. They may seem dark and troubling initially but give them time and you will find solace in them. Nietzsche wrote about this phenomenon in The Birth of Tragedy:

 

"The metaphysical solace (with which, I wish to say at once, all true tragedy sends us away) that despite every phenomenal change, life is at bottom indestructibly joyful and powerful."

Like Greek tragedy, like the music of Mahler, or Shakespeare’s King Lear, the paintings of Maurice Desmond provide the tragic encounter that results in this metaphysical solace.”

 

In a thoughtful opening speech to the exhibition, Peter Murray, director of the Crawford Gallery, spoke of Desmond’s “existential landscapes”. He compared Desmond’s work with that of Francis Bacon (also inspired by horror at what man is capable of) and Dan O’Neill; and pointed to interesting parallels with the French artist Pierre Soulages. Murray also noted the introduction of verticals into Desmond’s normally horizontal universe. These verticals are crosses and blasted vines – evidence of the carnage of the Great War. He also saw the “ghost of destruction rising from the ground”. In tackling this theme an added resonance for Desmond may have been the connection with his late partner’s work. Deirdre Meaney died suddenly in France around 10 years ago, amidst the poppies that were her favourite artistic theme. The evanescence of all life and love is captured in a moving poem The Chateau written by Theo Dorgan about their relationship after Deirdre died:

 

Look with me to the door. Breathe in my mouth and press my lips,

My poppy lips. Remember me, such a rich and true life as we made,

Be proud of me as I have been proud of you, remember these poppies,

This lush and darkening field, this oncoming starry rush of night.

 

Theo Dorgan

 

 Henchy’s pub in St. Luke’s is a shrine to the art of Maurice Desmond. There are prime examples of his work hanging all around the pub, accompanied by a couple of pieces by Deirdre Meaney. More than frequently the creator of this work can be found sitting beneath them enjoying a pint of Beamish. Desmond is a witty and articulate companion, with strong opinions on matters political and artistic. On more than one occasion he has been denied entry to Henchey’s for some infraction of the code of conduct that governs this fine Cork establishment. He languishes outside while the paintings console us for his absence. Being denied entry is a recurring theme in Desmond’s life. Despite being one of Cork’s best-known artists, with sell out shows, and a long, and illustrious career there, he is barely known elsewhere. The late Jim O’Driscoll, owner of one of the best contemporary collections in the country (now dissipated through auction) had dozens of pieces by Desmond. His work hung amongst the Le Brocquys, O’Malleys and Croziers that O’Driscoll collected. The merchant princes, doctors, and lawyers of Cork prize his work. But outside Cork, the Irish art establishment is benignly indifferent. He had a couple of successful shows in the Hallward Gallery (now closed) in Merrion Square in 1995 and 1998, and occasional pieces in group shows. Otherwise he has not registered on the Dublin art scene – unlike such Cork artists as Dorothy Cross and Eilis O’Connell. He has never shown at the RHA. After one rejection, this fiercely proud man refused to submit again. The Academy’s loss as well as his. There have been a few efforts to get him into Aosdana, initiated by his southern peers, but these have been defeated by the Dublin/NCAD/RHA nexus that guards entry as fiercely as Cerberus guards the gates of Hell. But Dublin’s loss is Cork’s gain. The Rebel County has always gone its own way, oblivious to the currents of fashion in the capitol. Artists are also regarded differently in Cork. Its standing army of poets, musicians and painters figure prominently in the daily life of the city. People such as Ricky Lynch and Thomas McCarthy are respected contributors to its cultural wealth. An artist can feel appreciated and fulfilled without ever leaving. Years ago I asked John Taylor of Taylor Galleries why he hadn’t shown Desmond’s work. A lot of his Cork clients would have been admirers. Taylor’s response was that “Maurice is a Cork artist”. At the time that seemed a slur, suggesting that he is a provincial artist, but now I see the truth of it. The sensibility is different down south. While Dublin and the Irish art establishment looked across the Irish Sea to the UK or across the Atlantic to the US, Cork has always been more involved with what’s happening in Europe, in France and Spain particularly. The merchant princes that built the city favoured commerce with the Continent, and so do its artists and art lovers. Peter Murray’s perceptive reference to Pierre Soulages, and the more intuitive forms of expression favoured by movements such as Tachisme, place Desmond’s work in the mainstream of European art, outside the Anglophile consensus that dominates elsewhere in the country.

 

Desmond is a very independent man. He has never been an Arts Council grant sniffer, or wanted that cushy teaching job, or played the networking game. He followed Schopenauer’s dictum “do not degrade your muse to a whore”. Art to him is a vocation, not a job. When the conceptual artists, the video jockeys, and the slap dash charlatans have gone with the winds of fashion, Desmond’s work will endure. Get on the road to Macroom, stop at Quinlan’s high-class craft emporium, climb up the stairs to the Vangard Gallery and behold the work of a European master.

Maurice Desmond