Northern Ireland 1968–1988: Enter an Art Historian in Search of a Useful Theory

Abstract

Publications and museum or art-gallery displays have tended to separate the visual images related to the Northern Ireland troubles into illustrations of history, works of art and media imagery. These distinct categories to some degree reflect the growing specialisation of art workers in Europe from the late eighteenth century onwards. But in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict visual images patently cut across such distinctions. Fine art works have direct political and therefore historical impact; media images use and are used by the producers of popular emblems; visual styles are held in common by all categories of imagery. The perpetuation of the separate history illustration/artwork/media picture categories when dealing with Northern Ireland imagery is therefore attributed to the formal and informal training of British and Irish historians and art historians. An alternative theoretical basis for examining the images related to the Northern Ireland conflict is suggested, in which those images are seen as parts of visual language codes, whose constant use and re-use simultaneously adds further layers of meaning to them, ensures their real impact on social, political, economic and religious developments, and modifies the overall visual language of their producers/users. This approach is related to the work of German and Austrian art-historians and their successors, American media studies focusing on the links between institutional organisation and visual style, anthropological analyses of ritual symbols and recent sociological use of linguistic theory.