Brian O'Doherty (4 May 1928 – 7 November 2022) was an Irish-American

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

, writer, visual artist, and academic. He lived in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for over 50 years, serving as an art critic for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and NBC, as well as an editor for ''

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...

''. He used a number of

alter ego An alter ego (Latin for "other I", " doppelgänger") means an alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original personality. Finding one's alter ego will require finding one's other self, one with a differen ...

s, including Patrick Ireland.

Early life and education

O'Doherty was born at

Ballaghaderreen Ballaghaderreen () is a town in County Roscommon, Ireland. It was part of County Mayo prior to 1898. It is located just off the N5 National primary road. The population was 1,808 in the 2016 census. History As of 1837, the town was recorde ...

County Roscommon "Steadfast Irish heart" , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Roscommon.svg , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Ireland , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = Connacht , subdi ...

in 1928, and grew up in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

.Ciarán Benson (2011)
No sad imperialist of the aesthetic self
''The Dublin Review of Books'' 17 (Spring 2011). Archived 3 June 2014. He studied medicine at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland ...

, and did post-graduate work at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and at the Harvard School of Public Health. .n.(1 June 1997)
Brian O'Doherty: University Professor of Fine Arts and Media Southampton College of Long Island University
Long Island University. Accessed January 2014. In 1957, O'Doherty spent a year working in a cancer hospital before devoting himself full-time to the visual arts. Speaking of his experience after Harvard:

Career

In the 1960s, O'Doherty was an art critic for the ''New York Times.'' He commissioned

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...

to write his "Death of the Author" essay for a special edition of ''Aspen'' magazine in 1967. He was also an editor of ''

'' and an on-air art critic for NBC. In his mid-career, O'Doherty began signing his work under the name "Patrick Ireland" in reaction to the

Bloody Sunday Bloody Sunday may refer to: Historical events Canada * Bloody Sunday (1923), a day of police violence during a steelworkers' strike for union recognition in Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia * Bloody Sunday (1938), police violence agai ...

killings in

Derry Derry, officially Londonderry (), is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland and the fifth-largest city on the island of Ireland. The name ''Derry'' is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name (modern Irish: ) meaning 'oak grove'. The ...

in 1972. For many years, O'Doherty was an influential member of the senior staff of the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

; first as director of the Visual Arts Program, and subsequently as director of the Media Arts Program, where he was responsible for the creation of such major public television series as '' American Masters'' and '' Great Performances''. He authored numerous works of art criticism, including his books ''American Master''s and ''Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space'' (1976), a series of essays first published in ''Artforum''. In the latter book, he discusses and invents the term for the contemporary gallery space. He also wrote novels: ''The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P.'' (1992), the 2000

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United King ...

-nominated ''The Deposition of Father McGreevy'' (1999), and ''The Crossdresser's Secret'' (2014). He had a

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

at Dublin's Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in 2005. On 20 May 2008, in recognition of the progress for peace in Ireland, O'Doherty ceremoniously buried his alter ego at the

Irish Museum of Modern Art The Irish Museum of Modern Art ( ga, Áras Nua-Ealaíne na hÉireann) also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. Located in Kilmainham, Dublin, the Museum pr ...

in Dublin, and resumed being called by his birth name. In 2018, at the age of 90, O’Doherty was the subject of three exhibitions celebrating his work in his native Ireland, including the restoration of the room sized “One Here Now” installation he created at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cork in 1995-96. In ''The modern art collection, Trinity College Dublin'', David Scott writes that:

Much influenced by
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
he is an essentially interrogative artist, constantly questioning artistic conventions and the assumptions on which we base our aesthetic judgements.

Personal life and death

For more than 30 years, O'Doherty was married to

art historian Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

and former chair of the Art History department at

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

Barbara Novak Barbara J. Novak (born 1929) is an American art historian. She was the Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History at Barnard College from 1958 to 1998. Biography Novak was born in New York City in 1929. She grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens ...

. He lived and worked in the United States. O'Doherty died at his home in New York on 7 November 2022, at the age of 94.

References

External links

at Ubuweb {{DEFAULTSORT:Odoherty, Brian 1928 births 2022 deaths 20th-century Irish painters 21st-century Irish painters Irish male painters Irish sculptors People from County Roscommon 20th-century sculptors 21st-century sculptors Irish expatriates in the United States Alumni of University College Dublin Irish art critics The New York Times writers Art in America editors 20th-century Irish male artists

Early life and education

Career

Personal life and death

References

Further reading

External links