Culture
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In Ireland philosophy rarely features in mainstream discourses. We seem more comfortable in either the narrow empiricism inherited from our former colonial overlords or the lyrical engagement found in poetry. The unflinching analysis of concepts found in philosophical enquiry is not part of secondary educations: it still does not figure as a Leaving Certificate subject. […]
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Robert O’Byrne is an aesthete – possibly Ireland’s only one, a writer specialising in the fine and decorative arts. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them ‘Luggala Days: the Story of a Guinness House’; a biography of Sir Hugh Lane; ‘A History of the Irish Georgian Society’; a ‘Dictionary of Living […]
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Obesity obeisance
By Greg McInerney. Ireland is set to become Europe’s most obese country by 2030 according to figures presented last month by the World Health Organisation as part of their yet to be published Modelling Obesity Project. The proportion of obese Irish men is expected to increase from 26% to 48%, with the number of men […]
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Failing again to find Caravaggio
The RHA’s 185th annual Exhibition. Review by Kevin Kiely The current Royal Hibernian Academy president, Mick O’Dea, highlights the Academy as “exhibiting work that is innovative and representative of the broad spectrum of best practice from here and abroad”. The aspiration is admirable but should you bother to inspect the present show you will reveal […]
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The limits of Aestheticism
Robert O’Byrne and the compromised Beit Foundation. By Michael Smith
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A literary fascism
Yeats’ poetry transcended all his devices. By Frank Armstrong
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Obesity obeisance
Spurious ‘epidemic’ contrived by industry manipulation, junk science and twentieth-first-century angst. By Greg McInerney