May the 4th be with you! It’s Star Wars Day and the 83rd anniversary of the publication of Finnegans Wake.
Artist Louis le Brocquy died 10 years ago today. He was known for his Portrait Heads of writers and artists, including James Joyce and his friend Samuel Beckett. "I'm simply trying to discover, to uncover, aspects of the Beckettness of Beckett," he said.
"Van Gogh was mad; but I prefer the word exaltation, exaltation which can merge into madness, perhaps. In fact all great men have had that vein in them; it was the source of their greatness; the reasonable man achieves nothing."
- James Joyce
Vincent was born OTD in 1853
English painter Edward Burra was known for his depictions of nightlife in London, Paris and Harlem between the wars. Thanks to @FinnFordham for noting a possible Joyce connection - see the figure in hat and glasses on the left in Burra's 1931 work Minuit Chanson.
The famous “James Joyce’s Refrigerator” cartoon appeared in The New Yorker OTD in 1989.
The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature by designer Peter Mendelsund and academic David Alworth, new from Penguin imprint Ten Speed Press. There's a chapter devoted to Mendelsund's explorations and ideas for Ulysses and Moby-Dick covers.
William Blake, an important influence on Joyce, was born OTD in 1757. His hammer-wielding creator Los appears in Proteus and the famous line “Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?” echoes his Milton: “I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro' Eternity."