Reluctant Memoir

A fierce and honest autobiography from Ireland's most successful and controversial living artist, Robert Ballagh, explores his life and work, including his portraits of writers, politicians, and fellow artists, and his self-portraits documenting his own aging.

Format: Hardback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 20 September 2018
Publisher: Head of Zeus

A fiercely honest and unvarnished autobiography from Ireland's most successful and controversial living artist, Robert Ballagh has achieved an international reputation as a Pop artist in the late 1960s and 70s. With little formal artistic training, he triumphed in his field despite often formidable hostility. His work was also strikingly topical and political, playing with classic images by Goya or Delacroix to express outrage about the situation in Northern Ireland.

However, it is his series of realistic portraits of writers, politicians, and fellow artists that have won him lasting fame. His subjects include Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett, James Watson, Francis Crick, Harold Pinter, and Fidel Castro. And his remarkable self-portraits unsparingly document the process of his own ageing.

This memoir is also a story of Ireland over the past sixty years, its violence, hypocrisy, and immobility as well as its creativity and generosity. Ballagh's work is a testament to the power of art to challenge and transform society, and his memoir is a powerful and inspiring read for anyone interested in art, politics, and the human condition.

Weight: 838g
Dimension: 237 x 184 x 39 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781786695314