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2003-04. Portrait of Bono
The National Gallery of Ireland celebrates the opening of the National Portrait Collection with the unveiling of a specially commissioned work, Image of Bono (20 October 2003). According to this institution: 'The portrait is not only the most important commission yet for the Irish National Portrait Collection, but represents a remarkable crystallisation of contemporary Irish culture. Le Brocquy's work has defined Irish painting since the 1950s, while Bono is arguably the world's best-known citizen of Ireland. The two men are friends and have been admirers of each other's work for many years.'318 Bono and le Brocquy first met at the opening of an Amnesty International office in Dublin in January 1986 while U2 were making The Joshua Tree: 'I have known Bono for something like 20 years' says the artist, 'and I have always greatly admired him - both his considerable intellectual powers, but also a great goodness, in the simplistic use of the word,' later adding 'In the past I have painted an extensive series of interiorised head images of artists such as Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon, WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney whom I see as extraordinary instances of human consciousness. In more recent years, I have made a number of similar studies of Bono, whose spirit and whose radiant energy I admire so much. But a painting destined for the National Portrait Gallery presents a different challenge; to make a recognizable image of Bono's outward appearance, while attempting to portray what I conceive to be the wavelengths of his inner dynamism.'319 Medb Ruane reports in the Sunday Independent: 'Bono's image hits the canvas like stones skimming water, sending ripples through time and space in Louis le Brocquy's new painting of him. Rock's grand master meets art's great master and, in the process, the National Gallery gets to celebrate two unusual men. "Its an unbelievable honour to have one of the world's great contemporary painters do your portrait," Bono says. "If I could have told the 14-year-old Bono - as he wandered the Municipal Gallery in Parnell Square - that his favourite painter would one day do his portrait for the National Gallery, he probably would have believed it. But that's puberty for you".'320 Included in The Rugby Collection Comes Home, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum (2003); Recent Acquisitions to the IMMA Collection, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2003). Exhibition at the Crawford Gallery of Art, Cork, Louis le Brocquy, Procession (October 2003); Taylor Galleries, Dublin (November 2003). Sequence of eight large-scale paintings dating from 1954 to 1992, hung together for the very first time. The series arose, as has been established in this chronology, when the artist re-addressed a small seminal work entitled Riverrun. Procession with Lilies (1962; A.R. 75), alongside a second composition originating in very different circumstances: 'That was in 1953, I remember I was living in London. One day I visited the Matthiesen Gallery in Bond Street. It was exhibiting works from the school of Rembrandt, one of which was by Nicholas Maes [since reattributed to Cornelis Bischopp (1630-1674)] ... Its stilled, interlinked gestures intrigued me, and something indefinable beyond them. Early the following year, I completed the first version of Children in a Wood.'321 Discussing the contrasting connection between the two themes, le Brocquy adds: 'It was not until quite recently that I consciously recognised a relationship between these two youthful processions ... two sides of the same phenomenal coin: one a Joycean charade, a fleeting actuality in a continuous progression of present moments, the other, as I see it, a constant condition of being, a return in the mind to the sensuous magic of childhood, when meaning lay within each hollow tree and time was a measure of eternity ... Having a slow-moving mind, however, I perceived only gradually those hidden elements which since 1954 tentatively drew me to the little Maes painting, drew me behind the joy and beyond the experimental game of childhood into the shadows of presentiment, of human emergence and disappearance, of sound grown silent.'322 'The works in le Brocquy's two procession series', reports Christin Leach in The Sunday Times 'represent an intense exploration of human innocence and experience. The physical presence of the works is impressive, and the opportunity to study the artist's development invaluable.'323 According to the art historian Peter Murray: 'A black and white photograph of children walking along the Dublin quays, having just made their Holy Communion, and a late seventeenth century Dutch painting of Bacchanalian revelries in a forest have become two significant source documents in the history of 20th century Irish art ... These works follow the artist's conscious concern to deconstruct the visible world, his almost scientific attempts to penetrate the nature of what lies beneath outward appearance. Going back to his early training as a chemist, le Brocquy emphasises the nature of experimentation in their making, of letting paint take its own course: "it seems to me that anything worthwhile which occurs in my work has come out of a series of supervised accidents, by the painting answering back." While accident may play an important role, what is clear is that these are paintings of great seriousness of intention, and of execution.'324 Designs Ebb Tide, tufted V'soske Joyce wall rug, commissioned by Cantrell & Crowley architects, Four Seasons, Dublin (2004). Included in A Vision of Modern Art in Memory of Dorothy Walker, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2004); In the Time of Shaking: Irish artists for Amnesty International, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2004); Joyce in Art, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2004); High Falutin Stuff, ‘Artists’ Response to James Joyce’, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2004). The Táin Tapestries are exhibited at Millenium Monument Museum, Beijing, and Shanghai Gallery of Modern Art (2004).325 Conferred Doctorate of Philosophy, Dublin Institute of Technology (November 2004).
318 Press Release, National Gallery of Ireland, October 2003.
319 Eimear McKeith, ‘The master stroke’, Interview, The Sunday Tribune (Dublin, 11 June 2006); and Louis le Brocquy, statement made on the occassion of the unveiling ceremony, National Gallery of Ireland (21 October 2003).
320 Medb Ruane, ‘Le Brocquy gets inside Bono’s head’, The Sunday Independent (Dublin, October 26, 2003).
321 Louis le Brocquy, 'An Interview with Louis le Brocquy by George Morgan', Procession (Kinsale: Gandon Editions, 1996, p. 7. The exhibition referred to by the artist is Rembrandt's Influence in the 17th century (London: The Matthiessen Gallery, February 20 - 2 April 1953).
322 Louis le Brocquy quoted by Dorothy Walker in the exhibition catalogue Images Single and Multiple 1957 - 1990 (Kamakura: Museum of Modern Art, Kanagawa, January 5 - 3 February, 1991. Osaka: Itami City Museum of Art, Hyogo, February 9 - 31 March 1991. Hiroshima: City Museum of Contemporary Art, April 6 - 12 May 1991), p. 95.
323 Christin Leach, ‘Face up to reality’, The Sunday Times, Culture (Dublin October 19, 2003).
324 Peter Murray, 'Eros and Thanatos, Louis le Brocquy's Procession paintings', exhibition catalogue, Louis le Brocquy, Procession, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork; Taylor Galleries, Dublin October - December 2003)
325 Views from an Island; Contemporary Art from Ireland. IMMA, Chinese Cultural Festival, travelled to Millenium Monument Museum, Beijing, and Shangai Gallery of Modern Art (2004).
Bono & le Brocquy National Gallery of Ireland
Unveiling of Image of Bono, 20 October 2003
Photo Dara MacDonaill / Irish Times
Image of Bono (detail), 2003
oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm, A.R.749
National Gallery of Ireland, Portrait Collection
