With the Warhol exhibition scheduled to run until March 22nd, the Irish Museum of Modern Art already has an interesting line-up of events ready for 1998. Perhaps the highlights will be the William Scott show - a large one, it seems - scheduled for July 21st-November 1st; this will be followed immediately by Hughie O'Donoghue, who runs until mid-February, 1999. Scott was well-known in Dublin during his lifetime but curiously, the only large-scale exhibition of his work was at the Hop Store a decade ago. Born at Greenock in Scotland, but basically Northern Irish, he gained international fame as an abstractionist in the postwar era and was given a large retrospective show at the Tate Gallery in 1972. O'Donoghue, who recently settled in Ireland, has won a European reputation while still in his 40s and his recent exhibition in Munich - a major art centre - made a heavy impact on German viewers.
The RHA Gallagher Gallery shows the AIB Collection from January 11th, but interest should be particularly strong in the work of the German painter, Karl-Horst Hodicke (February 19th-March 16th). A much-respected figure in his own country, he is a little older than the Wild Ones, who won such publicity a decade ago. A major exhibition from the British Council, Art Of The 1950s, opens in July. The list of names includes Ben Nicholson, Alan Davie, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Keith Vaughan, Bryan Wynter, Terry Frost, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, Victor Pasmore, Sandra Blow and in fact about every English artist of calibre in the postwar decade. Later in the year will come retrospectives by Derek Hill and William Crozier, both respected older painters and both well known here. The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, which has been gathering a real head of steam over the past two years in particular, will feature the Northern Ireland painter, Rita Duffy, from February 12th to April 5th. Duffy is known as a "gutsy", raw artist with a strong social conscience and has a solid following.
Janet Mullarney, the Italian-based Irish sculptor, will have a major exhibition there later in the year (probably October), and in midsummer the Hugh Lane plans what, hopefully, will become an annual event - an exhibition very tentatively labelled Young Irish Contemporaries, which will be exactly what it says. The Douglas Hyde Gallery, currently mounting an exhibition by Bill Viola, has an ambitious event lined up for next summer which will be curated by John Hutchinson, the gallery's director. It is to be called Hungry Ghosts and will feature works (to be borrowed) by many heavyweight names in contemporary art.
Shows I would like to see next year:
Patrick Caulfield, in my opinion the best of the English painters of the 1960s, has never shown in Dublin. Caulfield has Irish blood and is well-disposed to Ireland. Has anyone ever asked him to exhibit here?
We have had a glut of German New Expressionists and the Berlin Wild Ones. What about German art's grand old man, Bruno Goller (born 1901) or, from a younger generation, Klaus Fussmann? (By the way, Goller was once included in ROSC).
Though Sidney Nolan and the great names of his generation have departed, contemporary Australian art is reported to be vigorous. What about a big, representative show of it? In my opinion, Susan Rothenberg is easily the most gifted painter thrown up by American New Expressionism in the 1980s. She paints big and bold. What about her?