On The Town: All talk and thoughts centred on James Joyce at the Irish Museum of Modern Art this week. A collection of books, paintings and "many other diverse things", which went on display, "presents together several artists' responses to James Joyce," said IMMA's director, Enrique Juncosa.
Entitled High Falutin Stuff, the exhibition includes, he said, "a very diverse body of works, including very recent acquisitions of works by Sean Scully and Richard Hamilton, and many other diverse things from Michael Farrell to Sidney Nolan and Ferenc Martyn, culminating with the illustrations of Dubliners that Louis le Brocquy did in the 1980s".
Louis le Brocquy, who opened the show, said: "Few writers have evoked the visible world with such intensity as James Joyce. I see this exhibition as a fascinating dialogue. It celebrates the immense influence that the successive works of James Joyce have had on visual artists.
Joycean author and former curator of the James Joyce Tower and Museum at Sandycove, Vivien Igoe, recalled Joyce, who included 168 streets and 224 buildings and offices in Ulysses. Joyce's father "was very wealthy starting off . . . then the father drank all the money . . . they moved 60 times before he went to France," she explained. "He used to do an awful lot of walking."
The painting of The Funeral of Dignam, by Ferenc Martyn, she described as "very evocative of the time of the funeral of Paddy Dignam".
Bernard Gaughran, an importer and marketing consultant, was invited to tell guests they were sipping the writer's favourite Swiss wine, Fendant de Sion, which is mentioned in Finnegans Wake and is produced by Provins Valais.
Richard Gerber, of Western Connecticut State University in the US, loaned a first edition copy of Ulysses to the exhibition. He spoke of his love for all things Joycean.
"I couldn't see very well as a child and I fell in love with Joyce. I identified with the character of Stephen Dedalus," he said. Today he has a 1,500-piece James Joyce collection.
Others at the opening included Ciarán Bennett, curator of A Vision of Modern Art: In Memory of Dorothy Walker, which runs at the museum until Sunday, June 27th; playwright Gerard Mannix Flynn; Eoin McGonigal SC, chairman of the IMMA board; and Emer O'Kelly, of the Arts Council, who had some special gifts, including a first edition of Finnegans Wake in her care at home, ready to be presented to Patricia Quinn the following night on her retirement as director of the council.
High Falutin Stuff is at IMMA until Sunday, August 1st