When it comes to art of an unsettling nature is there a disconnection between our intellectual position and our aesthetic response? asks Brian McAvera.

In a recent issue of US-based Éire-Ireland Mary Cosgrove wrote, intriguingly, about Ernie O’Malley, Republican hero, political activist and on occasion cultural commentator. O’Malley, following AE, seemingly disagreed with the Modernist notion of the moral superiority of art for art’s sake wanting an art that reflected the Irish social and political situation.