Bono makes an appearance

In an effort to make exam papers student friendly, U2 have a habit of turning up on them and it was the turn of higher-level art yesterday, with a question on Louis le Brocquy's image of Bono, said the Independent.

The Irish newspaper did not say what the question on the Leaving Certificate exam papers was but here is what Louis le Brocquy said about his own work:

'In the past I have painted an extensive series of interiorised head images of artists such as Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon, WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney whom I see as extraordinary instances of human consciousness. In more recent years, I have made a number of similar studies of Bono, whose spirit and whose radiant enery I admire so much. But a painting destined for the National Portrait Gallery presents a different challenge; to make a recognizable image of Bono's outward appearance, while attempting to portray what I conceive to be the wavelengths of his inner dynamism.'

Louis le Brocquy (born 10 November 1916) is an Irish painter born in Dublin. Le Brocquy is widely acclaimed for his evocative "Portrait ‘Heads" of literary figures and fellow artists, which include William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and his friends Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, in recent years le Brocquy's early "Tinker" subjects and Grey period "Family" paintings, have attracted headline attention on the international marketplace marking him as the fourth painter in Ireland and Britain to be evaluated within a very select group of artists, alongside Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Francis Bacon.


Full Irish Independent article