Magazines are an integral part of any library. If you want to know what it was like to live at a given period, what the topics for debate were, who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out’, then look at the magazines.
In terms of an art magazine, look at the illustrations as well as the articles and reviews. Are they familiar to you or not? Have the artists whose works are depicted vanished from history, or are they still very much present? What about the writers? Are they at the start, middle or end of their careers? If at the start, have their views changed much over the years, or not? And what about the reviews of exhibitions? They certainly tell you what reviewers thought about the work at the time, but do these views still hold?
Don’t forget about advertisements. They are a good guide as to what was being shown at the time, often are accompanied by illustrations, and they tell you what galleries were exhibiting at any given period.
A few caveats to bear in mind. Some historians have written books which are entirely dependent upon what they have found in magazines. This is dangerous, as I know from my own experience. Critics, writing in haste, frequently get names and dates wrong. Although I was born in Belfast, an article published about me claimed that I was born in Derry. In the London magazine Art Monthly, a gallery placed an advertisement to promote an exhibition catalogue written by me, the only problem being that the catalogue was never written!
Another problem with magazines is that, often, writers are paid by galleries to write positive articles on an artist, with the connivance of the magazine’s editor. You need to work out which writers you can trust to give an unbiased opinion.
Introspect magazine number 1 December 1975
However, in effect, magazines are snapshots of times past. They enable you to travel to the past, as if you had stepped into Dr Who’s Tardis and disembarked at one particular year.
The magazine I wish to look at now is Introspect, an annual review of the visual arts which ran for three issues only, the first being at the end of 1975. It has been written out of art history. It was edited by the artist Patrick Pye, who believed that artists were often much better writers on art than were art critics.
Not surprisingly, artist writers dominated the issue, with Pye writing the editorial, two articles by sculptors Oisin Kelly and Michael Biggs, five articles by painters Louis Le Broquy, Campbell Bruce, Patrick Hickey and Northerners T.P. Flanagan, and Roy Johnston, as well as articles by critics such as Cyril Barret S.J. (a specialist on Op Art who often wrote for Art Monthly) and Hilary Pyle.
The first issue was in folio format (which allowed for large illustrations in black and white) and consisted of thirty-two pages. At the time, in the Republic of Ireland, abstract art was the order of the day. Pye himself, and many of his friends were figurative artists, although often with abstracting tendencies. However, Pye as editor was no narrow ideologue. Roy Johnston wrote on Systems Art, and Cyril Barret contributed a historical piece on ‘A Machine Art for a Machine Age’.
In terms of scale and ambition, there was no magazine to equal it until the appearance in 1984 of the first issue of the Irish Arts Review.
Introspect magazine number 2 December 1976
There was much other interesting material in this issue. Louis Le Brocquy wrote on Francis Bacon (who much influenced him), both Flanagan and Hickey wrote on drawing, there was an appreciation/obituary of the sculptor Gerda Fromel, and regular features-to-be included an exhibitions roundup (‘Summary of Exhibitions’) and Recurrent Voices which was a short anthology of quotations from modern artists.
Rounding everything off, rather mischievously, were two articles on art education, one by a student at NCAD, and one by the Head of Fine Arts at that institution.
For a magazine produced on a shoestring, and featuring not a single advertisement, Introspect was a remarkable achievement.
Brian McAvera, October 2024
Thanks to the McAvera & Walker Library, we have copies of Introspect magazine in the NI Visual Art Research Library & Archive at the Golden Thread Gallery. NIVARLA will launch formally in February, and items in the rare and special collection such as these editions will be available to view by appointment. We will share more information on how to access and use NIVARLA soon! The Northern Ireland Visual Art Research Library & Archive is supported by the Ampersand Foundation, with many books and archive items donated and on loan from the McAvera & Walker Library.
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