Part of Aidan Hickey’s Ulysses series, which was exhibited in Zurich, at the UB Law, as part of the exhibit “James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Law” (April 15 to May 18, 2025).
“With a motley group – some living, some dead – Stephen and Bloom arrive in Nighttown. This huge episode has its own dramatic, three-act structure – hence the triptych. Since student days I wanted to paint a triptych in the manner of Max Beckmann. (That’s him in the tuxedo, top right, panel 3.)
But the demands of Joyce’s phantasmagoria were incompatible with the monumental dignity of Beckmann’s figures. So, I turned to his contemporary, Otto Dix, whose nightmare visions are nicely in tune with Joyce’s Circe.
Stephens final rejection of his Mother and the Church – inside the brothel and leaving it – is underpinned by real religious terror, which echoes the Hell of Hieronymus Bosch. Thus, Dix and Bosch became the main influences.”
Aidan Hickey