Madam, - It is not many years since Irish newspapers used to send a sports reporter to review an art exhibition. That, at least, is in the past. However, some journalists insist on writing about matters of which they know little or nothing; art for instance.
In An Irishman's Diary of May 21st, Kevin Myers displays a crass and culpable ignorance, the likes of which I have seldom seen before. He appears to know nothing about art from his elbow to that other part of his anatomy.
In order to give a write-up or plug to a group of figurative painters exhibiting in Dun Laoghaire's Town Hall he wrongly castigates Picasso and abstract art. There is nothing whatsoever remiss or wrong with abstract art. It is as legitimate as any other art form. In fact abstract art was practised in Ireland long before the dawn of recorded history.
Has Mr Myers ever heard of the passage graves at Newgrange which are older than the Pyramids of Egypt? Let us now fast forward a few centuries till we come to the Book of Kells. Has Mr Myers ever heard of the Book of Kells? The Book of Kells is a figurative work embellished throughout with abstract shapes and patterns.
Picasso was a figurative painter; he was never, as it happens, an abstract painter. What planet is Mr Myers living on? - Yours, etc.,
MICHEÁL Ó NUALLÁIN, Belgrave Square, Monkstown, Co Dublin.