A bit o’ Irish poetry at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
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That gallery owner Jack Rutberg of Jack Rutberg Fine Arts has a liking for everything Irish has been known for a long time.
Not only has he been the curator for the Ireland’s Galway Arts Festival for 12 years and served as an agent for the Dublin-based artist Patrick Graham, he also has appeared on Irish Radio and Television and been profiled in the Irish Times.
On Thursday, in cooperation with the US-Ireland Alliance, which forges the connection between Irish and American arts, culture, business and political leaders, Rutberg hosted ‘Give Me Your Hand,’ an evening with poetry by contemporary Irish writer Paul Durcan, inspired by paintings from the National Gallery in London. The event, which was visited by many newcomers of the gallery, including composers, screenwriters and actors, was an addition to Rutberg’s current exhibit “Some Assembly Required: Assemblage and Collage.”
It was performed by the two Irish stage, television and film actors, Dearbhla Molloy and Dermot Crowley, who are in Los Angeles at the moment to perform Martin McDonagh’s Irish play “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” opening next week at the Kirk Douglas Theater.
Through the vivid imagination of Durcan and the dramatic performances of Molloy and Crowley, the audience was able to look into the minds of Vincent Van Gogh’s mother in regard to a comment by an art historian on her son’s painting “Cornfield with Cypress” (1889), the daughters of Thomas Gainsborough in the painting “The Painters daughters chasing a Butterfly (1756), or Delilah after a love act in Peter Paul Reuben’s painting “Samson and Delilah” (1609-1610).
Aside from being a literary deluge, Durcan’s imaginative stories addressed modern issues such as AIDS and homosexuality, among others.
RELATED:
Spring arts preview: ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’
Art review: ‘Some Assembly Required’ at Jack Rutberg
Theater review: ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’ at the Mark Taper Forum
-- Simone Kussatz