ART-PRESENTATION: Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland
Brian O’Doherty was born in Ireland in 1928 and is now based in New York. When he left Dublin in 1957, O’Doherty was a qualified medical doctor and emerging artist, and is now renowned as an artist, writer, critic, television host, filmmaker and educator. One of the pioneering generation of conceptual art. With his essay “Inside the White Cube” from 1976 Brian O‘Doherty became a key figure in the discourse around the presentation of contemporary art.
By Efi Michalarou
The exhibition “Institutional Work, Institutional Critique” is a small retrospective of artist and writer Brian O’Doherty, also known under the pseudonym Patrick Ireland. O’Doherty has been influential in establishing one of the most frequently used metaphors to describe the modern exhibition space: the “White Cube”. He noted that “a gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for building a medieval church, [in which] the presence of the odd piece of furniture, your own body, seems superfluous, an intrusion” (1976). In his writings, O’Doherty comments on and sharply analyses the sometimes strange logic of the gallery space. He does so in critical, philosophical and humorous ways: an artist’s finely tuned prose. Brian O’Doherty is working in several disciplinary contexts: as programme director of the National Endowment for the Arts, leading theorist of institutional critique (Inside the White Cube), art critic (he was editor of Art in America), TV presenter, medical doctor and literary writer. He is also well-known for his box-shaped journal edition “Aspen 5+6” (1967). During the “Irish Exhibition of Living Art” at the Project Arts Centre in 1972, Brian O’Doherty, in a performance before 30 invited witnesses and assisted by artists Robert Ballagh and Brian King, undertook to sign his artworks Patrick Ireland “until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights”. That commitment, often seen as controversial, was described by O’Doherty as “an expatriate’s gesture in response to Bloody Sunday in Derry”. After 36 years of making art as Patrick Ireland, O’Doherty reclaimed his birth name with the symbolic burial of his alter ego in the grounds of IMMA on the afternoon of Tuesday 20/5/2008. The burial was a gesture of reconciliation to celebrate the restoration of peace in Northern Ireland. “We are burying hate, it’s not often you get the chance to do that”. Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland e anticipated many now current concerns, especially art writing and art(istic) research. His thinking takes a systemic perspective and embraces the paradox. It can be recognized in the single-minded pursuit of both institutional work and institutional critique, (art)work both inside and outside the white cube, and reflections in and on word and image. He sits in the most fruitful place: between all the stools – and he has grappled with what it may mean when those working experimentally in and with art find themselves there.
Info: Curator: Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Van Abbemuseum, Bilderdijklaan 10, Eindhoven, Duration: 24/11/19-2/2/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://vanabbemuseum.nl
