Luke Gibbons – The Language of Vision – Winter Brights – Ideas & Influence

Luke Gibbons The Language of Vision: Irish and American Art in the Work of Brian O’Doherty

Winter Brights – Ideas & Influence/Lecture 3 – Wednesday 1st November

7pm Tea, Coffee, Prosecco Reception

7.45pm – Lecture, 8.30pm Q + A

After Hours at the Museum

Join us this October and November to hear some of the most interesting voices in the visual arts sphere in Ireland and the UK, as curators, writers and critics present illustrated presentations in a series of four evening lectures, supported by The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media as part of the Night-Time Economy After Hours at the Museum scheme.

The Language of Vision: Irish and American Art in the Work of Brian O’Doherty

Following the shift of the avant-grade in art from Paris to New York in the post-WW2 era, American art, as promoted by Clement Greenberg, pursued a pure ‘opticality,’ intent on removing all non-visual qualities – literary, social, historical ­– from high-modernist abstraction. Contesting this on the New York art scene, Brian O’Doherty, in both his creative work and critical writings, drew on his Irish background (especially Berkeley and Joyce) to close the gap between word and image, art and the world. Articulating a language of vision, his creative vision sought to reinstate the image back into an expanded cultural field nationally and internationally, beyond the confines of the white cube of the gallery.

Luke Gibbons has taught as Professor of Irish Studies at Maynooth University, and the University of Notre Dame, USA. His most recent book is James Joyce and the Irish Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2023).

The Q + A will be moderated by Niamh MacNally, Curator, Prints & Drawings Study Room at the National Gallery of Ireland