William Murphy

DUBLIN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES 10 BURLINGTON ROAD

March 20, 2023 by infomatique

PHOTOGRAPHED 18 MARCH 2023

I must admit that I have never paid much attention to this building until I realised that it was home to the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) School of Theoretical Physics.

In April 2021 two Modern Movement buildings of the early 1970s were added to the Record of Protected Structures. One of these is no. 24 St Stephen’s Green by Michael Scott and Partners; the other is the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) School of Theoretical Physics at no. 10 Burlington Road by Stephenson Gibney & Associates.

The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) is a statutory independent research institute in Ireland. It was established in 1940 on the initiative of the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, in Dublin.

The institute consists of three schools: the School of Theoretical Physics, the School of Cosmic Physics and the School of Celtic Studies. The directors of these schools are, as of 2022, Professor Denjoe O’Connor, Professor Tom Ray and Professor Ruairí Ó hUiginn. The institute, under its governing act, is empowered to “train students in methods of advanced research” but does not itself award degrees; graduate students working under the supervision of Institute researchers can, with the agreement of the governing board of the appropriate school, be registered for a higher degree in any university worldwide.

Following a comprehensive review of the higher education sector and its institutions, conducted by the Higher Education Authority for the Minister for Education and Skills in 2013, DIAS was approved to remain an independent institute carrying out fundamental research. It appointed a new CEO, Dr Eucharia Meehan, formerly director of the Irish Research Council, in the summer of 2017.

After becoming Taoiseach in 1937, Éamon de Valera investigated the possibility of setting up an institute of higher learning. De Valera was aware of the decline of the Dunsink Observatory, where Sir William Rowan Hamilton and others had held the position of Royal Astronomer of Ireland. Following meetings with prominent academics in the fields of mathematics and astronomy, he came to the conclusion that astronomy at Dunsink should be revived and an institute for higher learning should be established. The institute was and is modelled on the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, which was founded in 1930, and theoretical physics was still the research subject in 1940. The School of Celtic Studies owes its founding to the importance de Valera accorded to the Irish language. He considered it a vital element in the makeup of the nation, and therefore important that the nation should have a place of higher learning devoted to this subject.

DIAS was founded on the direction of the Taoiseach, under the Institute for Advanced Studies Act, 1940 As set out in its legislation, ‘the functions of the Institute shall be to provide facilities for the furtherance of advanced study and the conduct of research in specialised branches of knowledge and for the publication of results of advanced study and research.’

Welcome

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RED CARDINAL BY JOHN BURKE

March 20, 2023 by infomatique

PHOTOGRAPHED ON BAGGOT STREET 18 MARCH 2023

In the past I have joked about the excessive number of red metal sculptures on the island Ireland and that many people often refer to them as “red metal yokes” but this sculpture is in a different league as it has artistic merit.

When I first saw this I thought that it was named “Red Cardinal” because of the colour but when I saw the captured images today I realised that it looks like a Mitre [headdress]. In the Catholic Church, ecclesial law gives the right to use the mitre and other pontifical insignia (crosier, pectoral cross, and ring) to bishops, abbots, cardinals, and those canonically equivalent to diocesan bishops who do not receive episcopal ordination.

The red steel sculpture “Red Cardinal” was designed by John Burke. It was erected in 1978 on the James Street side of the Bank of Ireland in Baggot Street Lower.

John Burke (11 May 1946 – 11 December 2006)

Burke studied at the Crawford School of Art and Design in Cork and at the Royal Academy of London. He spent most of his career in the Cork area and for a time taught at Crawford, where his students included Eilis O’Connell and Vivienne Roche.

Burke was a founding member of Aosdána in 1981.

Note: Yoke. In Irish slang, the word ‘yoke’ doesn’t have anything to do with eggs. Instead, it’s another way of saying ‘thing’. So if someone in Ireland sees an object that they’ve never seen before, they will commonly be heard to ask, ‘What’s that yoke there?

MERRION SQUARE PUBLIC PARK THE DAY AFTER SAINT PATRICKS DAY

March 20, 2023 by infomatique

WELL WORTH A VISIT

Merrion Square Park sits at the centre of one of Dublin city’s most beautiful Georgian squares. The park has been restored to its historical layout. It also has a playground and sculpture trail. The Houses of the Oireachtas (the Irish Government), the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland sit along the west of the square.

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.