Playing with the past

Louis le Brocquy is 90 this year and his new show at Gimpel’s is merely one of four current celebratory exhibitions. (The others are at Tate Britain, The National Gallery of Ireland and Galerie Jeanne-Bucher in Paris.) He once wryly observed: ‘I’m aware that my age and vulnerability could be mistaken for some kind of authority.’

While the Gimpel show of his latest work does not in any way claim authority it also fails to exhibit any vulnerability. The whole subject of homage versus imitation could spark a book and here he gives us four homages to Manet’s ‘Olympia’ — which after all is not only an independent masterpiece but also a homage to Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’ and has echoes of both Giorgione and Ingres. Of course it’s a universal subject, and le Brocquy brings to it a vigour and a freshness of approach which enable this timeless temptress to seduce our contemporary eyes.