Paints Occluded Image (1971; A.R. 264), Northern
Image (1971; A.R. 297). Dorothy Walker observes: 'Since the outbreak
of civil warfare in the North of Ireland in 1969, and in the context of
that war, le Brocquy's painting of the anguished individual reached an intensity of expression that carried his work onto an even more
powerful level of art ... Le Brocquy's terrified heads of the early seventies,
with their hand turned palm outwards as if to ward of horror, freeze the
moment of terror in unbearable endurance. Here one actually feels in the
shoes of the door-step confrontation, stricken by the vileness and absurdity
of the person-to-person war. From the political point of view, the paintings
appear on the side of the dead, of the losers of both sides, universal
in their concern for the suffering. The method is gentle, the colours pale,
the mode of expression is played down to pure grief, as moving as Beckett's
simple phrase, "Great trouble... great trouble..." ... A French
critic has written of le Brocquy's "sobriety and control in handling
the terrible".'187 According to the poet and critic Jacques Dupin:
'The apparent expressionism of these paintings signifies nothing more than
their lack, or their refusal, of expression. They reveal an unworldly vertigo,
a muffled spasm, an anguish of the unnamed presence which is diametrically
opposed to the expressionism of cries, of strident colour and tortured
shapes. Expressionism, if you will, but of silence and whiteness, of calm.'188
The artist begins to use the primed canvas as a background from which the
heads emerge. Paints Head with open mouth (1971; A.R. 288) seen
by the artist 'not as a sort of silent scream, but rather as an opening
into the dark space of the interior being.'189 Commenting on the new-found
whiteness, Jacques Dupin writes: 'It does not seem as though a painter
had shaped this head; at most, he helped it to be born, forced it to disengage
itself from the white shadow in which it lay buried ... Visionary mist,
complex of memory and legend, this white expanse which covers the canvas
is itself the core or matrix that engenders the human head. No one could
have invented it; one could only await or desire its coming or its return.
Waiting is exacting work, the incessant work to which this painter had
to submit himself during long years in order to draw, out of the depths,
the flowering of a head (or a torso), the reality of its presence, its
ascent to the light of day.'190 Paints Study of Self (1972; A.R.
302), Image of my Father as a young Man (a.k.a. Distant Head,
1972; A.R. 301). The artist Brian O'Doherty notes: 'Through le Brocquy's
heads, which sometimes appear frighteningly hollow, theissue of identity
and self, the doubling of artist and subject who return to us their joint
gaze, received oneof the most profound examinations in contemporary painting.'191
Paints Image of my Father as a young Man (1971; A.R. 270), the hand
now seen by the artist as intervening between himself and the years of
his father's youth. According to John Montague: 'Perhaps the most personal
of the series of named portraits are those hovering around the idea of
le Brocquy's own father ... Disconcertingly oblique in their tenderness,
they evoke the mystery of parenthood, a succession which haunts us with
its suggestions of difference as well as likeness, and exposes us to the
life process.'192 Exhibition at Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer,
New York (April 1971), Gimpel Fils, London (October 1971): Louis le
Brocquy, thirty-two paintings, including Head (a.k.a. Image
of an elderly man speaking, 1971; A.R. 273), Head with Handprint (1971; A.R. 272). William Packer writes in Art and Artists: 'Centrally
in the pale ground a face is suggested; it has the hazy tones of someone
seen through frosted glass. On top of it are what seem like handprints.
This surreal content is painted in coolly transparent pigment within a
border brushed on the canvas. One senses the evanescent substance of a
shadow expressed without comment in an eloquent economy of means to the
end of mystery, the suspense that continues even when you walk away from
the pictures.'193 Exhibition at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin (October 1971): Louis le Brocquy, fourteen paintings, including Head (1971;
A.R. 294) and Northern Image, 1971; A.R. 297). Bruce Arnold writes
in the Irish Indepenent: 'It is appropriate that the principal one-man
show by an Irish artist during the opening of Rosc '71 should be the Louis
le Brocquy exhibition at the Dawson Gallery. Louis le Brocquy is our most
considerable living painter. He suffers from being something of an establishment
figure in Ireland, the darling of the Arts Council, a good "investment"
for the speculative collector, and an Irish artist with the great advantage
of regular New York and London shows, and the backing of one of the most
respectable London galleries, Gimpel Fils. In these uncertain times, where
art is concerned, this kind of silver-spoon treatment could spell disaster
to a painter. With le Brocquy it does not ... What is at first a startling
and muddled conjunction of paint and subject, with handprints smudging
out facial features and expression, becomes, with work, an absorbing and
satisfyimg experience. These are not easy paintings, nor are they very
pleasant ones. The beautifully wrought canvases (le Brocquy is a superbly
accomplished technician) suspend, in the middle of their cool grey-white
surfaces, faces that scream out with injustice, anguish and pain. There
is no pleasure to be got from the expressions of trouble and torment; but
there is a great deal of reality. And that is what art is about.'194
NEXT
187 Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward
River Press 1981; London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p. 53.
188 Jacques Dupin (trans. John Ashbery), 'The paintings of 1964-1966',
Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981;
London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p. 105.
189 Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, 'Interview with Louis le Brocquy', Louis le Brocquy, The Human Image , le Brocquy Archive, 2002.
190 Jacques Dupin (trans. John Ashbery), 'The paintings of 1964-1966',
Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981;
London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p. 104.
191 Brian O'Doherty, 'Three Notes on Louis le Brocquy's Paintings', exhibition
catalogue, Louis le Brocquy, Human Images. Early and recent works on
paper (Dublin: Taylor Galleries, 10 December 1998 - 16 January 1999),
p. 7.
192 John Montague, 'Primal Scream, The Later le Brocquy', The Arts in
Ireland, Vol. 2. No I (Dublin, 1973), p. 10.
193 William Packer, 'London', Art and Artists (London, October 1971),
p.50.
194 Bruce Arnold, 'Louis le Brocquy' (London, October 25 1971).
|
Head with Open Mouth, 1974
oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm, AR351
Image of my Father as a young Man, 1971
oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm, AR270
|