A Bigger Picture
J had the day off yesterday so we decided to go to the Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. Having not been to an exhibition for ages I've now managed two in a week! This is one of those *big* exhibitions with queues, crush, rooms we couldn't even get into and all the things we normally hate, but was it worth it? Most definitely yes! I've never really come into contact with many of Hockney's paintings apart from the very famous ones so I really wasn't prepared for the scale of the exhibition or the size or the incredible colour of the paintings. Although there were some old works it's not a retrospective exhibition and many of the pictures were done specially for it and the space he knew the exhibition was going to occupy.
As I overheard one woman say "it's a good job the paintings are large" because the whole place really was packed but I think my mouth fell open the moment I stepped through the door. We were confronted by four paintings made up of eight segments each of "Three Trees near Thixendale" in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. They were just three trees standing in an ordinary Yorkshire landscape but the colour, vibrancy and the way he caught the light of the different seasons was stunning. It felt like a hymn to the Yorkshire countryside and made the ordinary spectacular. The whole exhibition really was a feast of colour and light. Apart from the Thixendale trees the other enormous paintings made up of different canvases that really worked for me were ones of a tunnel of trees, again through different seasons, and Woldgate Woods. One of the Woldgate Woods pictures which I particularly liked (and can't find a reproduction of) showed the woods on a November morning just as the sun was breaking through the mist and the moment was so perfectly caught that you could nearly feel the November damp on your skin. I heard someone say you could almost walk straight into the painting and it was true.
One of the main features of the exhibition was "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, in 2011" which was made especially for viewing in the main exhibition hall. There was one giant canvas and 52 smaller ones which almost turned it into an art installation, but the main talking point was the fact that the pictures had been created on an iPad. There was one particularly annoying man who I kept hearing pontificating in every room I went into who was bemoaning Hockney's use of the iPad and the prints certainly didn't have the depth of paint, but as a means of catching the moment and the light it worked very well.
There were film installations as well but those were the rooms we couldn't get into and didn't try. On Monday in the British Library everybody shuffled round politely and waited while people finished looking in detail at the manuscripts (OK, I ground my teeth a few times at how long some people were taking, but I ground them politely) but in the Royal Academy people pushed, shoved and were generally rude! I almost felt like going into commuter mode at times and sticking my elbows out sharply, but I managed to retain some of Monday's politeness and didn't!
We came out pretty much stunned by the pictures, but not by the people!
As I overheard one woman say "it's a good job the paintings are large" because the whole place really was packed but I think my mouth fell open the moment I stepped through the door. We were confronted by four paintings made up of eight segments each of "Three Trees near Thixendale" in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. They were just three trees standing in an ordinary Yorkshire landscape but the colour, vibrancy and the way he caught the light of the different seasons was stunning. It felt like a hymn to the Yorkshire countryside and made the ordinary spectacular. The whole exhibition really was a feast of colour and light. Apart from the Thixendale trees the other enormous paintings made up of different canvases that really worked for me were ones of a tunnel of trees, again through different seasons, and Woldgate Woods. One of the Woldgate Woods pictures which I particularly liked (and can't find a reproduction of) showed the woods on a November morning just as the sun was breaking through the mist and the moment was so perfectly caught that you could nearly feel the November damp on your skin. I heard someone say you could almost walk straight into the painting and it was true.
One of the main features of the exhibition was "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, in 2011" which was made especially for viewing in the main exhibition hall. There was one giant canvas and 52 smaller ones which almost turned it into an art installation, but the main talking point was the fact that the pictures had been created on an iPad. There was one particularly annoying man who I kept hearing pontificating in every room I went into who was bemoaning Hockney's use of the iPad and the prints certainly didn't have the depth of paint, but as a means of catching the moment and the light it worked very well.
There were film installations as well but those were the rooms we couldn't get into and didn't try. On Monday in the British Library everybody shuffled round politely and waited while people finished looking in detail at the manuscripts (OK, I ground my teeth a few times at how long some people were taking, but I ground them politely) but in the Royal Academy people pushed, shoved and were generally rude! I almost felt like going into commuter mode at times and sticking my elbows out sharply, but I managed to retain some of Monday's politeness and didn't!
We came out pretty much stunned by the pictures, but not by the people!