David Hockney at the Royal Academy.
Since I wrote about the Lucian Freud retrospective - about which I was ambivalent - I thought I really ought to write a bit about the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy - about which I was wholly positive. Indeed, positively ecstatic. (The Freud show included a portrait of Hockney, for which he sat for 130 hours. Freud repaid in kind - though he only sat for a couple of hours for Hockney…)
I think I was so positive partly because I didn’t think I really liked Hockney very much. I was familiar with some of his work from the 1960s and 70s: pop art, bold colours and lines, somewhat naieve, perhaps.
I also knew of his photomontages - stitching together photographs from different perspectives to create a new whole (which my brother last week pointed out made something very like a cubist image).
The early in the RA show are a couple of rooms which place Hockney’s earlier work - including pop art pieces - into the context of landscape painting. Stunning composite images of the Grand Canyon - paintings made up of multiple canvases show the relationship to his photomontages. The details in his composite paintings reminded me of Howard Hodgkin - bold strokes and splodgy marks.
The bulk of the show features work from the last twenty years when Hockney started painting his native Yorkshire, much of it from the last decade. He has been very prolific. Working in a variety of media, he has created coherent series of pictures. They are full of life despite often being about decay (and, perhaps, death) - vibrant paintings made on a large scale.
They are physically impressive. The repetition is fascinating - Hockney returned to the same spots time and time again, sketching and painting the same scenes in situ. The changing seasons and the movement of light emphasise passage of time - there is a feeling of mortality from many of the pictures. They are full of nature and life - and very beautiful.
The very first room of the show features four monumental (multiple) canvases of the same copse. They have been positioned so they can be seen from other rooms - indeed, the whole show has been very cleverly organised and curated: the design reinforces the art.
The last rooms feature video and computer-based art. The videos are stunningly beautiful: shot using multiple cameras, they are linked to the multi-canvas works and the earlier photomontages. Hockney obsessively videoed the subjects he painted - the videos are simply different representations of the same scenes. (There is also a video shot by Hockney from several different angles of dancers in his studio choreographed by Wayne Sleep - it too is very beautiful:it feels highly personal and magical, as if Hockney is sharing something very private with those crowding the exhibition.)
The computer work is fascinating: very detailed large scale works, created using an iPad, apparently. They too are beautiful. There are many examples of Hockney using an iPad as an electronic sketch book, those works being the size of an iPad screen. The large work are on a wholly different scale: they are large, dark, brooding pictures of Yosemite. It is hard to envisage how they were created on an iPad and scaled up to create the work seen.
I love this exhibition. It is large, matching the scale of the work: it took a couple of hours to do it justice. It was very engaging and enveloping. And the pictures are beautiful.
(The RA site has a gallery of pictures - a small selection those on display.)
I think I was so positive partly because I didn’t think I really liked Hockney very much. I was familiar with some of his work from the 1960s and 70s: pop art, bold colours and lines, somewhat naieve, perhaps.
I also knew of his photomontages - stitching together photographs from different perspectives to create a new whole (which my brother last week pointed out made something very like a cubist image).
The early in the RA show are a couple of rooms which place Hockney’s earlier work - including pop art pieces - into the context of landscape painting. Stunning composite images of the Grand Canyon - paintings made up of multiple canvases show the relationship to his photomontages. The details in his composite paintings reminded me of Howard Hodgkin - bold strokes and splodgy marks.
The bulk of the show features work from the last twenty years when Hockney started painting his native Yorkshire, much of it from the last decade. He has been very prolific. Working in a variety of media, he has created coherent series of pictures. They are full of life despite often being about decay (and, perhaps, death) - vibrant paintings made on a large scale.
They are physically impressive. The repetition is fascinating - Hockney returned to the same spots time and time again, sketching and painting the same scenes in situ. The changing seasons and the movement of light emphasise passage of time - there is a feeling of mortality from many of the pictures. They are full of nature and life - and very beautiful.
The very first room of the show features four monumental (multiple) canvases of the same copse. They have been positioned so they can be seen from other rooms - indeed, the whole show has been very cleverly organised and curated: the design reinforces the art.
The last rooms feature video and computer-based art. The videos are stunningly beautiful: shot using multiple cameras, they are linked to the multi-canvas works and the earlier photomontages. Hockney obsessively videoed the subjects he painted - the videos are simply different representations of the same scenes. (There is also a video shot by Hockney from several different angles of dancers in his studio choreographed by Wayne Sleep - it too is very beautiful:it feels highly personal and magical, as if Hockney is sharing something very private with those crowding the exhibition.)
The computer work is fascinating: very detailed large scale works, created using an iPad, apparently. They too are beautiful. There are many examples of Hockney using an iPad as an electronic sketch book, those works being the size of an iPad screen. The large work are on a wholly different scale: they are large, dark, brooding pictures of Yosemite. It is hard to envisage how they were created on an iPad and scaled up to create the work seen.
I love this exhibition. It is large, matching the scale of the work: it took a couple of hours to do it justice. It was very engaging and enveloping. And the pictures are beautiful.
(The RA site has a gallery of pictures - a small selection those on display.)