On The Town:Painters walked through "corridors of colour" when they viewed the work of Anne Maddenat the opening of her retrospective in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma) in Dublin this week.
"This is a glorious evening to have Anne Madden turned into corridors of colour, into alleyways of delight. I've known Anne a long time - she is totally fearless, she paints big, she'll tackle anything," said the New York-based Irish artist, Brian O'Doherty, aka Patrick Ireland, who declared the show open.
"She'll also say anything, and she does," he added, explaining that "the only time Anne approached me in high dudgeon was when I changed my name to Patrick Ireland.
'Don't you know that Ireland is a woman?' she said. So I shrank away, suitably gelded."
The retrospective follows Madden's journey as an artist, O'Doherty explained to those who had gathered in the foyer of Imma. "It's a passionate journey," he said, urging guests to go upstairs to view "the record of Anne's quest . . . How few of us artists are given the time to stay alive in the work, to ride those waves." Her work "knocked my socks off", he added.
"The exhibition is like a confirmation of the work of Anne," said Enrique Juncosa, the show's curator and director of Imma.
"The museum has got a few early works from the 1960s and 1970s. It was only when I saw the new work that I thought we should make this exhibtion."
"She's painting at the height of her powers," said Patrick Murphy, art adviser to the President and to the Office of Public Works, who was at the opening with his wife, Antoinette. "I have met critics over the years who claim she is a better painter than Louis [le Brocquy, who is Madden's husband], who is very different in style. I wouldn't make that claim, but I would claim that she is a serious Irish artist. She is a sincere and dedicated artist."
As well as Madden's family (husband Louis and their sons, Alexisand Pierre), other artists in attendance included Lorraine Wall, Hughie O'Donoghue, Ruth McDonnell, Maria Simonds-Goodingand Bernadette Kiely, whose own exhibition, Real and Apparent,will open at the Taylor Galleries next week.
• Anne Madden: A Retrospectivecontinues at Imma until Sun, Sept 30
Heaney's bond with Poland sealed
Anew bond between Nobel literature laureate Seamus Heaneyand Poland was forged at a special event in Dublin this week.
"This new bond does not come out of the blue," said the poet, on his election to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. "I have been reading Polish poetry and learning from it and writing about it since I first opened Czeslaw's anthology in 1971." The great Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, was "the daddy of us all", he added, explaining how, when he was in Berkeley, he came across an anthology, Post-War Polish Poetry, edited and translated by Milosz and published by Penguin in 1970, which "opened a gate into that marvellous field and set me on a path that has lead to this Polish honour in this Polish embassy".
"And that reading and writing have produced some of the richest rewards in my life as a writer and a person - not least among them my many visits to Krakow, where the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded almost 200 years ago."
He thanked Prof Andrzej Szczeklik, vice-president of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, who was at the private ceremony with his wife, Maria,to present the academy's membership documents to the poet. Heaney is also patron of the Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation, which was founded last year.
"We are really very honoured and delighted and pleased to have Prof Seamus Heaney as a member of our academy," said Szczeklik.
"There is a special sense of his poetry [in Poland], because there's a kind of romanticism, both in Ireland and in Poland," said the Polish ambassador, Tadeusz Szumowski, who hosted the event.
Poles love Heaney's work, he added, for "his romantic approach to life, to destiny . . . the people are thinking in a similar way".
In the earl's footsteps
Atroupe of actors is currently preparing to tread the boards of ancient places around Ireland and beyond, following in the footsteps of the Earl of Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, to commemorate the Flight of the Earls 400 years ago.
The Ouroboros theatre company will perform Brian Friel's play, Making History, in Donegal Castle where O'Neill lived), at Rathmullen Fort (which was the earls' point of departure) and at Drumcondra Castle where O'Neill married Mabel Bagenal in 1593). This week the company launched its rogramme and met the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, at Drumcondra Castle, where St Joseph's School for the Visually Impaired is now situated.
"The venues are magnificent," said Ouroboros stage manager Margaret O'Donoghue.
The tour begins at Charlesfort in Kinsale, on Sunday, July 8th, recalling the fateful Battle of Kinsale in 1601.
Another performance will take place at Clonmacnoise in Co Offaly, where O'Neill stopped on his way to Kinsale. The company will also play in Rome, Paris and Louvain.
"He was a complicated individual, way before his time," said actor Denis Conway, artistic director of Ouroboros, who plays the role of O'Neill. "He knew that the English Reformation's influence on Ireland was inevitable and there was no point fighting it, that we should have accommodated it - but we did end up fighting it."
The tour "will be fantastic", said Conan Sweeny,who plays Red Hugh O'Donnell in the play.
[ www.ouroboros.ieOpens in new window ]
A lean, mean Viking machine
They gathered near Croppy's Acre on the River Liffey in readiness for the homecoming. As the evening sun dipped low, guests to the National Museum, Collins Barracks, thought again about the Vikings and their sea-faring times. "It is the homecoming of an amazing old ship," said Dr Pat Wallace, the museum's director, at the opening of the special Sea Stallion: Dublin's Viking Warship Comes Homeexhibition this week.
"It's an emotional evocation of a ship.
This is a major cultural event for the city of Dublin," said Dr Wallace. "It's a ghost of a ship coming home to port. It's a ship which sailed out of Dublin, the finest warship of its own age, maybe crewed by Dubliners, now she's coming home."
Raghnall Ó Floinn, head of collections at the National Museum, added that "nobody has sailed a ship this size for 1,000 years".
The Sea Stallionis an exact replica of a Viking warship which was made in Dublin in 1042. Almost 30 years later it was scuttled in the mouth of the fjord of Roskilde. Centuries later, in 1962, it was excavated. Now the ship has been replicated and it begins its return voyage to Dublin tomorrow.
"It's so narrow. It's got a beautiful rise at the bow," said Damien Offer, manager of the Malahide Marina, after his visit to Roskilde recently. "You'd know it was built to do a job of war. It's very businesslike.
It's like a stallion. It's not a yacht finish.
It's rugged."
Agreeing with him was John Meade, whose company will lift the 100-metre ship out of the river and place it in Clarke Square in the heart of Collins Barracks when she arrives in August.
Prof Donnchadh Ó Corráin, who opened the exhibition of artefacts, film footage and charts on the reconstruction and the excavation at Collins Barracks, said that "it's most important that we see what our fellow Europeans think of the medieval period . . . There ain't nothing silly about the Middle Ages. These were superb ship engineers."
• Admission to Sea Stallion: Dublin's Viking Warship Comes Homeat the National Museum, Collins Museum, is free. To track the journey of Sea Stallion, visit www.seastallion.dkor visit www.museum.ie