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WORK OF THE WEEK 40 Louis le Brocquy Image of Samuel Beckett
This week Conor Tallon instantly recognised the Image of Samuel Beckett (1994) by Louis le Brocquy....or was it one that looked like it?...It was one night a few years back when Conor spent the night in a studio...as a guest...when he saw it last....the mystery
had to be untangled with the help of Michael Waldron: the Crawford's Assistant Curator...
As Conor slept he was certainly haunted by this stark canvas... where a ghostly head emerges. Sparse hints of blue, red, brown, and green emerge from a deeply lined face and represent the only colours in this field of white. Suggestions of swept back short hair, thin lips, and blank eyes form the main features of the subject’s long, narrow face, which seems to dissolve at the edges.
This is one of the artist’s celebrated Portrait Heads and depicts his friend, the Irish writer and Nobel Laureate, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). Rather than presenting the viewer with a photo-realistic likeness, le Brocquy instead attempts to reveal the inner spirit of his subject. This, by his own admission, is not an act of creation, but one of discovery as he evokes Beckett’s essence.
Speaking with George Morgan in 1992, Louis le Brocquy (1916-2012) noted that ‘Clearly, it is not possible to paint the spirit. You cannot paint consciousness. You start with the knowledge we all have that the most significant human reality lies beneath material appearance. So, in order to recognise this, to touch this as a painter, I try to paint the head image from the inside out.’
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