The Strange Story of Harry Clarke’s Rejected Stained Glass Window
A 1926 boozy sketch for a commission intended for the League of Nations building in Geneva was declined for being ‘too bacchanalian’
2000_clarke_h.jpg
Harry Clarke, The Magic Glasses, c.1926, watercolour on paper, 38 x 31 cm. Courtesy: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
Harry Clarke’s deep, inky watercolour, The Magic Glasses (c.1926), is boozy and woozy, decadent and dissolute – as perfect as anything the Irish stained glass master and illustrator ever sent into the world. It’s a sketch for a section of a window that was commissioned by the Irish government in 1926 for the International Labour Court, in the League of Nations building in Geneva. After its completion, however, government officials seeking to avoid ‘undesirable public controversy’ rejected it for being too bacchanalian. (The depictions of scenes from contemporary Irish literature that made up the rest of Clarke’s window design were riskier still, reiterating a stereotype that the nascent Irish Free State was loath to circulate.) Clarke died from tuberculosis in 1931, while negotiations with commissioners were still in progress, but his window never made it to Geneva, as the Irish government refused to rescind their rejection of it. In 1988, Clarke’s sons sold it to the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, where its eight panes are now installed and backlit among other ‘propagandist objects’. The eight preparatory watercolours remain in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.
Three men appear in the left background. Clarke himself is a raven-haired Mephistopheles with skin greened by illness and absinthe, tinctures offset by his red cravat. He stands in front of a scene from F.W. Murnau’s film Nosferatu (1922), behind whose gaunt profile peep Oscar Wilde’s wide-set eyes. Figures of isolation congregated in Clarke’s compositions, drafted-in from European literature and expressionist cinema, from poetry and the Ballets Russes. In the foreground is another of his loves: Irish theatre. The unsteady man in the plaid shirt is Jaymony Shanahan, a loose character from George Fitzmaurice’s play The Magic Glasses (1914), who spends his days looking through nine differently coloured magic glasses given to him by a fairy to enable him to see a better version of his life. It is a game of fantasy, imagination and projection that, at the play’s end, kills Shanahan. Seeing images through glass clearly resonated with Clarke and sustained him until his own untimely end.
Isobel Harbison is an art critic based in London. Her book, Performing Image, will be published by the MIT Press later this year.
First published in Issue 197
Harry Clarke，魔镜，1926年，纸上水彩画，38x 31厘米。礼貌：都柏林城市美术馆“休巷”哈利·克拉克的深沉墨色的水彩画《魔镜》（1926年）醉醺醺的、昏昏欲睡的、颓废的、放荡的——就像爱尔兰的彩色玻璃大师和插画家送往世界的任何东西一样完美。这张图是爱尔兰政府于1926为国际劳工法庭委托的一部分窗户，在日内瓦国际联盟大楼中。然而，在完成之后，寻求避免“不受欢迎的公众争议”的政府官员拒绝了它过于疯狂。（描绘当代爱尔兰文学的场景，构成了克拉克其余的窗口设计，但仍然更具风险性，重申了初具雏形的爱尔兰自由州不愿流传的刻板印象）克拉克于1931死于肺结核，而与委员们的谈判则是ST。虽然日内瓦政府拒绝拒绝，但他的窗口却一直没有到达。1988，克拉克的儿子把它卖给了迈阿密的沃尔夫逊博物馆，在那里，它的八个窗格现在被安装在其他宣传对象中。八个准备的水彩画保留在都柏林市美术馆Hugh Lane。三名男子出现在左侧背景。克拉克本人是一只乌黑头发的梅菲斯特菲尔斯，因疾病和苦艾酒而被皮肤晒黑，被他的红领巾抵消。他站在F.W.Murnau的电影《Nosferatu》(1922)的一个场景前面，镜头后面的憔悴的轮廓窥视着奥斯卡·王尔德宽阔的眼睛。从欧洲文学和表现主义电影院，从诗歌和芭蕾舞团俄罗斯，克拉克的作品中汇集了孤独的人物。前景是他的另一个爱好：爱尔兰戏剧。穿着格子衬衫的不稳定男人是Jaymony Shanahan，乔治·菲茨莫里斯（George Fitzmaurice）的戏剧《魔镜》（The Magic Glasses，1914）中的一个松散的角色，他花了几天时间仔细观察一个仙女送给他的九个不同颜色的魔镜，以便他能够看到自己生活的更好版本。这是一场幻想、想象和投射的游戏，在游戏结束时杀死单阿汉。透过玻璃看到影像显然与克拉克产生共鸣，并持续到他自己的不合时宜的结束。发表于弗里兹，197期，2018年9月，标题为“魔镜”。伊索贝尔.哈比森.伊索贝尔.哈比森是伦敦的一位艺术评论家。她的书《表演形象》将于今年晚些时候由麻省理工学院出版。197期，第一期刊登在2018年9月的第197期《图片集》/《哈利·克拉克》FRIZE特稿 ARThing编译
