"David Fox's portraits "The desired woman" and "The desire to be the woman" had impressed me so strongly that I couldn't resist not writing about them. These paintings were presented in a Bloomsday group show, The Morphing Feminine, and it was a visual artists' reaction to - and possibly - re-reading various aspects of the feminine in James Joyce's novel Ulysses and in the author's life.  

David Fox represents the sense of hyperrealism, and in this spirit, the ambiguity of its characters' genders and sexualities must be seen as realistic portrayals of gender and sexuality in the modern world. Deep dark tones of colors with wide and quick strokes of oil make us feel Leopold Bloom's mood at the moment of his "morphing". The artist focuses on the eyes that are frozen in amazement while Bloom's mouth is parted and his face conveys genuine admiration and fear.

The point is that the male hero of Ulysses evinces a surprising number of traits historically associated with women, so several critics identify Leopold Paula Bloom's personality as androgynous, conforming to be "masculine" and "feminine". David Fox represents transformational or "morphing" portraits of "the new womanly man".  

In my opinion David Fox as well as James Joyce unmasks male anxieties of women's power and Leopold's hidden desire to be the woman, according to the Ulysses this is especially evident in Bloom's unstable relationship with his wife Molly, causing him to 'behave abnormally'.  

 

As David Fox says he's "capturing a theatrical and cinematic representation of Bloom obsessing and then 'morphing' into the feminine" what I think is fascinating and impressive."

[Note from the gallerist: The title of the exhibition, The Morphing Feminine, is a reference to Dr Caroline Elbay's talk at the James Joyce Centre on 4th November 2019:“Throwing Shapes: The Morphing Feminine in Joyce”.]