Book 81 - Gayford Martin "Spring Cannot be Cancelled"
Gayford Martin "Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy" (Thames & Hudson)
The book is somewhat falsely advertised though: “It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.”
This gives the impression that the book consists mainly of “their exchanges”, but that’s not true at all. The book is mainly Martin Gayford’s musings and anecdotes about Hockney and art in general, indeed based on their Facetime talks and emails. I’d say the bulk of the text, about 80%, is Gayford’s prose, intersected with fragments of what Hockney said or wrote.
Not that it is fully without problems: the main issue being that Gayford isn’t critical at all, and I think the book would have benefited if he would have given a different viewpoint to some of Hockney’s statements - most notably about Duchamp and about photography.
Another issue is its overall lightness: some parts border on the clichéd - panta rhei, true, but that isn’t very insightful. Gayford is at his best when he simply tries to describe Hockney’s work: “a seamless blend of the sophisticated and the straightforward.”
The book is somewhat falsely advertised though: “It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.”
This gives the impression that the book consists mainly of “their exchanges”, but that’s not true at all. The book is mainly Martin Gayford’s musings and anecdotes about Hockney and art in general, indeed based on their Facetime talks and emails. I’d say the bulk of the text, about 80%, is Gayford’s prose, intersected with fragments of what Hockney said or wrote.
Not that it is fully without problems: the main issue being that Gayford isn’t critical at all, and I think the book would have benefited if he would have given a different viewpoint to some of Hockney’s statements - most notably about Duchamp and about photography.
Another issue is its overall lightness: some parts border on the clichéd - panta rhei, true, but that isn’t very insightful. Gayford is at his best when he simply tries to describe Hockney’s work: “a seamless blend of the sophisticated and the straightforward.”