Back in the 1970s, Robert Ballagh made a number of Pop Art versions of classical European paintings, applying the comic-book techniques of bold black outlines and flat colour to pivotal works by Goya, Delacroix and David.
In each case, the idea was to comment on events in contemporary Ireland by the invocation of these historical images. Last year, Ballagh says, as boom turned to bust, the image of Gericault's masterpiece The Raft of the Medusakept coming into his head. The painting depicts the wretched survivors of a notorious 1816 shipwreck. Having run their vessel aground through incompetence, the officers commandeered the lifeboats and left the crew and passengers to their fate. "My version today," Ballagh notes, "alludes to the failure of leadership in Celtic Tiger Ireland in economic and regulatory terms. Just like in The Raft of the Medusa, the heedless and incompetent got the lifeboats. The rest of us, like the innocent survivors on the raft, have been left to pay the price." His Pop version of Gericault, measuring some 7ft by 5ft, plus a series of new fine art prints revisiting his earlier re-workings of the classics, are on view at the Gorry Gallery, 20 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 (Mon-Fri, 11.30am-5.30pm, Sat 11.30am-2.30pm) until March 4th.
