The Front Row: modern times and modern art

Hopefully, the beginning of December will see a reopening of galleries and art spaces. While many venues are providing online access to their collections, it is not the same experience. There are few pleasures more rewarding than being able to wander through a gallery or museum and to spend time pondering a work of art up close and personal.

Regular readers of this column will have heard me refer on more than a couple of occasions to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The inclusion of the words museum and modern might be enough to scare off some potential visitors, but I would urge you not to be deflected. Best known as IMMA, it is quite possibly the most beautiful venue for displaying works of art, and it has the added bonus of being a great destination to while away a few hours.

Set in the magnificent Royal Hospital Kilmainham on the edge of Dublin city, the venue is a former 17th century hospital. The hospital was built as a home for retired soldiers, on the model of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, and was inspired by Les Invalides in Paris, which also has a formal facade and a large courtyard.

Even if you have never visited the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, you will have seen it. Every year on the National Day of Commemoration in July, the President, together with members of the Oireachtas, the Council of State, the Defence Forces, the judiciary and the Diplomatic Corps, lays a wreath in the courtyard in memory of all the Irish people who have died in past wars and on service with the United Nations (UN).

Outside the main building, the grounds include an unmissable early 18th-century formal garden (you must allow time to stroll through this), Bully’s Acre, which was once Dublin’s main cemetery and contains a 10th century standing stone, the cemetery of the old soldiers, the former 19th century stable buildings and the magnificent West Gateway, the work of Francis Johnston.

Paula Rego

If/when the doors of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham reopen in December, you will have a month or so to go and see Obedience and Defiance, a major retrospective – an art exhibit covering an artist’s entire career – by one of the most influential figurative artists of our time, Dame Paula Rego.

Spanning her entire career from the 1960s onwards and comprised of more than 80 works, it includes paintings never seen before and works on paper from the artist’s family and close friends.

Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1935, Paula Rego trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. She is known for her bold and intense paintings, drawings and prints. Rego is particularly known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. She was an exhibiting member of the London Group, along with David Hockney, and was the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in London. She lives and continues to work in London.

Obedience and Defiance was first shown at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes last year and was a huge success. It was the first major retrospective of Rego’s work in England for over 20 years and reflects her perspective as a woman immersed in urgent social issues and current affairs.

The selection of works focuses on the moral challenges to humanity, particularly in the face of violence, gender discrimination and political tyranny. This exhibition addresses challenging subjects.

Ireland is the second stop for the exhibition, since previous retrospectives of her work have been held at Tate Britain, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. She also had a major exhibition in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in 2018, replacing one showing the works of Claude Monet.

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