Louis Le Brocquy: The Naked Irish Emperor

At the end of February 2006, I saw a documentary on Louis le Brocquy. He was the richest most celebrated Irish artist of the last 50 years. Due to the Celtic Tiger and collectors who are concerned to look patriotic, his prices are outrageous. In 2000, over one million was spent on a 1950s canvas. Had Le Brocquy been born anywhere else he would have starved on his talents. However, he was Irish and in a country bursting to the rim of world-class writers and musicians he was one of the few old artists of any merit. So ipso facto he was rich and celebrated. To list all the artists he had ripped off to fuel his art would be tedious. In the documentary, he was quick to name a few, but also deadly silent on the key influences - Cézanne, Picasso, Fautrier, Wols, Giacometti and Bacon. The documentary was larded with literary references and illusions - the kind of crap that goes down so well in Ireland where writing was still king. The Poet of the Bog Seamus Heaney cropped up to eulogize every ten minutes - Heaney loved bogger art - the kind of art that relates to an Ireland that died about fifty years ago. Le Brocquy had talent and handled paint with some sophistication. And he could draw with some level of seriousness. But his art was passionless, stilted, plagiarized, and studied into mediocrity. The influences were too obvious, and Le Brocquy added nothing new in terms of subject matter, passion, or design. The list of French and English painters of the 1950s that were better than him would be a long one - Giacometti, Bacon, Freud, Auerbach, Stael, Dubuffet, Wols, Atlan, Fautrier, Sutherland - and this at a time when American Artists were supreme. That said, I had never heard a bad word spoken about Le Brocquy as a man. He seemed a supreme diplomat and smoothie - the kind the middle class ladies who lunch adore - an artist with no balls, who is polite and adds just a dash of colour - but not too much colour - that would be impolite.