WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 2 December 2019

114 96 Margaret Corcoran (b.1963) AT THE SPAR - TONG, 2004-06 oil on linen signed, titled, dated and with Kevin Kavanagh Gallery label on reverse 39.50 by 59in. (100.3 by 149.9cm) Provenance: Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin; Private collection Exhibited: ‘An Enquiry II Margaret Corcoran’, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, 9 May to 1 June 2019 Aidan Dunne in his review of An Enquiry II, in The Irish Times 18 May 2019, writes: ”Corcoran had previously reworked paintings from the Western tradition in ways that anatomised and questioned their underlying cultural assumptions on beauty, gender and privilege. But An Enquiry marked a development in that, rather than manipulating the imagery – absenting the physical presence of female sitters and leaving vacant, elaborate costumes, or replacing female heads with substitute sig- nifiers such as birds and flowers – the female presence is predominant, and challenging. Subsequently, one of her key works drew on Eduard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, an absolutely stunning, at first glance straightforward painting with surprisingly complex optics that continue to perplex analysts to an almost comical degree. The male customer is glimpsed in a mirror but the subject is the barmaid, and she is at ease in her domain. Corcoran’s protagonist, in her take on the subject, At the Spar: Tong, is behind the counter of a local su- permarket. If Manet’s barmaid is at one remove in that she inhabits a male-dominated setting, Corcoran’s Tong, who looks perhaps Chinese, is to some unknown extent an outsider, but she too is comfortably in charge of her environment.” €10,000-€15,000 (£8,620-£12,930 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 96