Public Art

TONEHENGE BY EDWARD DELANEY AT ST STEPHEN’S GREEN

March 22, 2023 by infomatique

ACTUALLY A STATUE OF WOLFE TONE

About twenty or more years ago I was standing here when a tour guide arrived with a group of tourists and when asked why the park was named Stephen’s Green the guide explained that it was named in honour of Stephen Green the famous Irish patriot. I really hope that the tourist did not leave Dublin believing that this was a statue of Stephen Green rather than Wolfe Tone.

At the Merrion Row corner of St. Stephen’s Green you will find a bronze statue of Theobald Wolfe Tone, the leader of the 1798 rebellion. Flanked by monoliths, it was immediately nicknamed ‘Tonehenge’ by the local population.

In 1964 the architect Noel Keating and the sculptor Edward Delaney won a competition to create the Wolfe Tone monument at the corner of St Stephen’s Green. That year Delaney was selected to make the Thomas Davis memorial on College Green.

Tone stands alone in front of a collection of granite monoliths, which prompted the nickname Tonehenge. It should be noted that there is a companion piece, the Famine Memorial, located just behind the granite pillars.

Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone (20 June 1763 – 19 November 1798), was a leading Irish revolutionary figure and one of the founding members of the United Irishmen, and is regarded as the father of Irish republicanism and leader of the 1798 Irish Rebellion. He was captured at Letterkenny port on 3 November 1798, and he died sixteen days later for reasons that are disputed.

TONEHENGE BY EDWARD DELANEY AT ST STEPHEN'S GREEN 005

TONEHENGE BY EDWARD DELANEY AT ST STEPHEN'S GREEN 004

GEOMETRIC REFLECTIONS BY MICHAEL BULFIN

March 19, 2023 by infomatique

YELLOW METAL SCULPTURE AT MIESIAN PLAZA

The plaza contains the sculptures Reflections by Michael Bulfin and Red Cardinal by John Burke.

Miesian Plaza (formerly known as the Bank of Ireland Headquarters) is an office building complex on Lower Baggot Street, Dublin. It is designed in the International Style, inspired by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, particularly his Seagram Building.

It was designed by the firm Scott Tallon Walker, one of the founders of which, Robin Walker, studied under and taught with Mies van der Rohe, though the building was chiefly designed by partner, Ronnie Tallon. Dublin City Council described it as “one of the most important Modernist buildings in Ireland” and “Dublin’s finest example of the restrained and elegant Miesian style”, and its facade and plaza are protected structures.

Miesian Plaza includes three buildings of four, five, and eight storeys in height, with a central plaza. The two shorter buildings are adjacent to Lower Baggot Street with the 8-story building behind them, minimising its towering effect on the street.

The complex’s facade and plaza were listed as protected structures in 2010. The facade is identical to that on Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building.

Michael Bulfin (born 1939) is an Irish sculptor and visual artist, based in Dublin. He is the son of Irish republican Éamonn Bulfin and grandson of William Bulfin of Derrinlough, Birr, County Offaly. He was educated at University College Dublin and Yale University, Connecticut, USA. He was awarded a German Government Scholarship in 1965 to study at a research laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, German Academic Exchange Service (Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst DAAD). He was chairman of the Project Arts Centre and the Sculptors Society of Ireland, and is a member of Aosdána.

His notable works include Reflections (1975) at the former Bank of Ireland Headquarters on Baggot Street, Dublin, A Walk Among Stone (1988) at Ballymun Flats (the sculpture and flats both since demolished), and Sky Train (2002) at Sculpture in the Parklands.

THE VICTIMS BY ANDREW O’CONNOR IN MERRION SQUARE PARK

March 19, 2023 by infomatique

PHOTOGRAPHED 18 MARCH 2023

The more you examine this sculpture the more detail you will notice and that adds to the initial shock.

When I first photographed this work I thought that it depicted the removing of Jesus from the cross and while I was photographing a young girl asked her mother “is that God lying on a table” but I discovered that it is a lot more complicated that that.

This figurative sculpture, The Victims originated as a part of an unexecuted project for a war memorial for Washington, DC. The artist, Andrew O’Connor, conceived the idea of a huge war memorial in about 1918 and worked on the project until at least 1931. However, no such monument was ever commissioned from him.

The memorial consisted of three sections. The first of which was a group of three figures; a dead soldier strapped to a bier, mourned by his wife and his mother. The figure of the dead soldier is The Victim, inscribed with the words; ‘Naked you came into the world’, the kneeling figure of The Wife with her hands clasped in prayer is variously called The Virgin or Mother of Sorrows. She is inscribed; ‘As cranes chanting their dolorous notes traverse the sky’ which is taken from a translation of Dante’s Inferno. The standing female figure of The Mother of the Hero leans mournfully on her left elbow. The Victim was presented by the family of the sculptor to the Dublin Municipal Gallery (now Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane) in 1947 while the other two figures were presented to the gallery by the sculptor in 1938. As is often the case with O’Connor’s work he produced other versions of some of these figures.

A plaster version of The Victim is in the O’Connor family collection and a version of The Wife is at the Tate Gallery, London. The group would have been assembled with The Victim on a raised plinth, his wife kneeling at his head, his mother standing at his feet. The Victims was installed in 1976 following an exhibition to mark the centenary of the sculptor’s birth at Trinity College Dublin in 1974. It would appear that it was not until 1974 that the three figures were displayed together as originally intended creating this uncompromising figurative representation of the victims of war.

Born in Worchester, Massachusetts, USA in 1874, Andrew O’Connor was the son of an Irish-American sculptor of the same name. Having studied under his father, O’Connor Jr. began working regularly on public monuments and funerary commissions in the United States. In London c.1894-8, he met John Singer Sargent and assisted him on reliefs for his Boston Library decorations.

Andrew O’Connor’s style was formulated by the time he first visited Paris in about 1903 and his earliest work is in the Franco-American style which had become popular in America by 1900.

Unlike the majority of other American sculptors he remained in France and worked from a Paris studio up to 1914. From 1906 on he exhibited annually at the Salon in Paris and at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in 1907. He then returned to the USA from 1914 to the mid 1920s and received numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments including the monument to Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois and the Theodore Roosevelt memorial at Glenview, Chicago.

O’Connor spent his last years in Europe, first in Paris, then from c. 1932 between Ireland and London. He resided in Dublin for the last seven months of his life and passed away at his home at No.77 Merrion Square.

ANNA LIVIA PLURABELLE IS BETTER KNOWN AS THE FLOOZY IN THE JACUZZI

March 17, 2023 by infomatique

ST PATRICK’S DAY 2023

Anna Livia is a bronze monument formerly located on O’Connell Street in Dublin.

Designed by the sculptor Eamonn O’Doherty, the monument was commissioned by businessman Michael Smurfit, in memory of his father, for the Dublin Millennium celebrations in 1988.

The monument is a personification of the River Liffey which runs through the city. Anna Livia Plurabelle is the name of a character in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake who also embodies the river.

The river is represented as a young woman sitting on a slope with water flowing past her. She is familiarly known by the people of Dublin as the Floozie in the Jacuzzi, or the Whore in the Sewer (pronounced hoo-er to rhyme with sewer) among other names. Both nicknames were encouraged by the sculptor himself.

The monument was removed from its site on O’Connell Street in 2001 to make room for the Spire of Dublin.

I have been told that in Birmingham in the UK there is a somewhat similar statue and that the public there have adopted the same nickname for it.

LONELY BRONZE COW AT WOOD QUAY

February 14, 2023 by infomatique

EXILED FROM WOLFE TONE SQUARE

This bronze sculpture of a cow was relocated to Wood Quay while Wolfe Tone Park was being redeveloped and while this may be a more pleasant location I would prefer to have it at Wolfe Tone Park as it was very popular with local children and at its current location no one appears to notice it

Ag Crú na Gréine “Enjoying the Sun” (2003) by Jackie McKenna

Wolfe Tone Park & Street Environmental Improvement Scheme offers a new destination point for all, as an ever-changing civic space where daily life and spectacle collide. The contextual design offers a thriving and inviting multi-use urban space for all ages and abilities, to be treasured by residents, workers and visitors.