Final brush with death at Kilmainham for artist's alter-ego as life overtakes art

PATRICK IRELAND was laid to rest early yesterday evening in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

He had enjoyed a productive 36-year career as an artist, but it all came to an abrupt halt when his alter-ego, Brian O'Doherty, decided the time had come to reclaim his birth name. In 1972, in a ceremony at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin, O'Doherty undertook to work as "Patrick Ireland" until the British military presence was removed from Northern Ireland.

He was based in New York at the time and the name-change was, he said, "an expatriate's gesture in response to Bloody Sunday in Derry".

Given the success of the peace process, he had come to feel that his alias had become Patrick Ireland OBE (Overtaken By Events).

On his birth, O'Doherty, masked and dressed in white, was doused in green and orange pigment by fellow artists Robert Ballagh and Brian King before an audience of 30 invited witnesses.

Rather more than that number were on hand to mark Ireland's demise and O'Doherty's rebirth at IMMA. The audience was composed of relations, artists, curators, writers and friends from several countries including Italy, Germany and the US.

Born in Co Roscommon in 1934, O'Doherty studied at Trinity College and Cambridge Medical School. He worked as a doctor prior to his departure for New York in 1957. Already pursuing a dual life as artist and medic, he gravitated towards art.

An admirer of Marcel Duchamp, O'Doherty embraced conceptualism and became a central figure in the development of conceptual art in the US. He is a polymath of dizzying range, however, and no single discipline has captured him entirely.

Editor of the periodical Art in Americafor several years, he has worked a great deal in education and his essay Inside the White Cubeis a classic of contemporary art theory.

In addition, his novel, The Deposition of Father McGreevy, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000. Patrick Ireland is not his only alias. There are three others - Sigmund Bode, Mary Josephson and William Maginn - all adopted for different reasons. His questioning of identity parallels the critique of all sorts of artistic conventions that characterises his work.

The art historian Michael Rush, a former Jesuit priest, conducted the secular ceremony at IMMA during which an effigy of Patrick Ireland, incorporating a "death mask" made by American artist Charles Simonds, was interred.

Poems were recited in several languages and Irish artist Alannah O'Kelly contributed a vocal performance. "We are burying hate. It's not often you get the chance to do that," said O'Doherty.