David Hockney: Drawing From Life
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Seen the poster for... David Hockney - Drawing From Life at the National Portrait Gallery
When I think of Hockney I think of Los Angeles. I think of sun-tans and 70s flares and hotel pools. His most popular work is in vivid technicolour and oozes a love of American pop culture. The National Portrait Gallery hopes to show a different side to the Bradford-born artist with this exhibition of drawings over a 60-year career.
The first room declares Hockney as one of the country’s finest draughtsmen. Reader, I googled it. “Draughtsman”: a person who makes detailed technical plans or drawings. Some of the best pieces here have the precision of an architect and the emotional range of an artist. Hockney’s portraits of his lover and friend Gregory Evans capture an intimate relationship: his muse’s hair tumbles over the back of a sofa as Gregory lies indolent for the artist - it’s an erotic and humorous portrayal of love when there is nothing else planned for the afternoon. One of the ways the trick is achieved is Hockney’s ability with line: he can make the smallest jot underneath an eye suggest an expression and make his subject pout sensually with just the angle of an upper lip.
We get to see the early Hockney’s development in Bradford and then at the Royal Academy School in London, but are left without an insight into the key moments which made him the flamboyant, extroverted artist he became. His homosexuality is touched on briefly but I found myself wanting to know the full story of his transformation. Another issue is that Hockney’s drawings are presented as if they were always done as an end in themselves. What of all the preparatory drawings he made for his paintings? Next to none of the famous paintings are here so we don’t get that vital context.
Compared to the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the RA (another show about drawing), the National Portrait Gallery exhibition space feels slightly cramped, badly lit and small. The gallery is closing for a colossal three-year renovation at the end of June - I understood why walking around this exhibition.
As well as Gregory, Hockney’s close friends Celia Birtwell and Maurice Payne feature prominently in his portraits. Hockney revisited these subjects last year, with the works in ink forming the final room of the show. When on the Tube, I spotted one on a promotional poster. I thought it was heinous and smiling like a demon. But seeing them in the flesh was quite surprising: having walked through three galleries just before, each devoted to one muse in their youth - Maurice with beautiful hair, Celia a bohemian fashion designer in coloured pencil, Gregory naked with tiny nipples - the final room, with the three of them in their wrinkled old age (the men grumpy and Celia daffy), I couldn’t help but love them. A lovely tribute to a set of friends, rendered in brown ink and inspired by Rembrandt.
More info: here. Tickets: £18 for adults, £5 for under 25s on a Friday. On till June 28th. I thought this was a pretty steep price for a ticket. Even 12-18 were £17. They don't really promote their Friday deal, but it is definitely worth taking advantage of.
Easily missed...
In the Studio with Monet and Rothko at the Tate Modern
In The Studio at the Tate Modern displays works from their permanent exhibition in a set of rooms on the second floor, themed around the space of the studio, and how different artists work within it. Curators have juxtaposed art from unlikely creators to expose interesting similarities. I went along to see Mark Rothko, an abstract expressionist working in 50s New York, alongside French 19th century Impressionist Claude Monet. The first obvious similarity is size, as both Untitled (RED, BLACK, ORANGE & PINK ON YELLOW) 1954 by Rothko and Water-Lillies by Monet are huge canvasses filled with colour. Monet’s waterlilies are seen through a sensual haze. The atmosphere of the painting buzzes with heat and summer. Turn around and the Rothko on the opposite wall, with its strong horizontal line across the canvas, could be of steam over a hot lake, shimmering in the distance. Shifting patterns and fluid water are present in both, just depicted with different levels of abstraction. The room serves as a kind of antechamber to the well-known “Rothko room” it just precedes, and which people enter like they do a church - with hushed reverence.
More info: here. Tickets: Free. On till 22nd March.
What to read, watch and argue about this week
Read: What Happened to D.I.Y. Collages? Collage in the age of Instagram.
Watch: I enjoyed The History of Art in Three Colours so much I interviewed presenter Dr. James Fox. His new documentary came out last week and I'm watching after I finish writing this.
Read: Mark Kermode's review of the much-discussed Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Looks excellent but on at precious few cinemas.