Auction Date:2012 Mar 12 @ 18:00 (UTC+1)
Location:Clyde Hall, Royal Dublin Society (RDS), Ballsbridge, Dublin, ., Ireland
Robert Ballagh - MAN WITH A MAGRITTE, 1973
(b.1943)
oil on canvas; (octaptych)
each of the eight panels numbered, signed in monogram [RB] and dated ['73] on reverse
243.84 by 121.92cm., 96 by 48in.
Private collection
'Portrayal or Betrayal' - an exhibition of portraits of Nicholas Treadwell, Nicholas Treadwell Gallery, London, 1973
Man with a Magritte was painted at a pivotal stage in Robert Ballagh's emergence as an international artist. Earlier in 1972 his first show at the Lerner Heller Gallery in New York was called off at the last moment. He was down to his last £100 and needed to sell a few paintings quickly. The painter Cecil King, an exhibitions officer at the Arts Council, advised him to try the Basel Art Fair, a sort of cultural Spring Show where hundreds of leading European galleries had stands. After four days without making a single contact, he was about to give up. Perhaps sensing his desperation, the Parisian Galerie des Quatre Mouvements agreed to look through his slides of series depicting people looking at paintings by iconic contemporary artists. They promptly offered to buy the lot for £2,500.
Ballagh had chanced upon a style strikingly in tune with the New Realism then coming into vogue while painting a portrait of his collector friend Gordon Lambert standing beside an Albers painting. Now suddenly everyone wanted his work. Aktionsgalerie mounted a sell-out show in Bern, the Isy Brachot Gallery in Brussels followed suit. But first Ballagh accepted an invitation to participate in a group show on the theme of 'Portrayal or Betrayal' at the Nicholas Treadwell Gallery in London. The idea was to provide an interesting comparison of styles of portraiture in the spirit of the 1970s at a time when it was considered aesthetically redundant. Ballagh's acrylic on eight canvas panels show a man in white with a mop of black hair - in fact a portrait of the gallery owner, Nicholas Treadwell - looking at a surreal painting of a shattered window with jagged pieces of glass on the floor between drawn curtains. It is not a copy of an actual Magritte but rather a pastiche, as are all the paintings in this series that would become a virtual gallery of Ballagh's own version of iconic painters who come to define modern art. It uses a panel format; originally developed purely as a means of making large paintings in the small room in a terraced cottage in Broadstone, which he used as a studio up to 1970. Shattered glass would become a recurring motif in Ballagh's visual iconography, most notably in his portrait of the Miami Showband in 1976 and more recently, his 2009 portrait of the murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
The people looking at paintings series gradually developed into Ballagh's own personal examination of modernism. By the time he finished with it in 1975 by painting himself bending down to sign his 1970 homage to Goya's The Third of May he wasn't just signing off from the series, he was signing off from modernism itself and its rejection of all art that preceded it.
Ciarán Carty
Dublin, February 2012
Auction Location:
Clyde Hall, Royal Dublin Society (RDS), Ballsbridge, Dublin, ., Ireland
Previewing Details:
Saturday & Sunday 10-12 March 10am to 6pm
Buyer's Premiums:
| From (Incl.) | To (Excl.) | Premium |
| 0.00 |
Infinite |
20% |
Additional Fees:
Shipping Details:
No Info Available
Payment Details:
No Info Available
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