Bradford-born David Hockney, considered to be one of the greatest British artists alive, dazzles with his innovative approach to natural beauty in his stylised landscapes, mostly of his native Yorkshire, in his exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, due to open on Saturday in London.
The exhibition, jointly curated by independent curator Marco Livingstone and Edith Devaney of the Royal Academy of Arts, focuses on oil paintings by Hockney, but includes charcoal and iPad drawings, sketchbooks, photographs and films too.
Hockney, who was invited to hold the exhibition of his landscapes at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2007, was very clear that he did not want it to be a retrospective of his work. He created huge iPad prints of Yosemite Valley in California, a recreation of 17th century French painter Claude Lorrain’s The Sermon on the Mount and a set of paintings of Yorkshire’s Woldgate Woods.
“The biggest artistic influence on Hockney has been Picasso,” reveals Livingstone, adding that Hockney, who had moved to California in 1964, was drawn back to his Yorkshire roots when he moved back for six months in 1997 to spend time with his dying friend, Jonathan Silver.
Hockney was inspired by his stay in Yorkshire to paint the landscapes of his native county from memory, a combination of his daily visits from his mother’s home to his ill friend’s house and his childhood reminiscences.
“By moving to painting landscapes, I am sure at the back of his mind he must have had a small thought about how he would be able to free himself of Picasso’s influence,” said Livingstone, adding that his use of bold and striking colours is “a way of inviting spectators into the personal space of the painting and experience the feeling for themselves.”
Hockney, who has been living and painting in Bridlington, the seaside town in Yorkshire, which time forgot, as the 74-year-old artist likes to say, has been focusing on examining the same place at different times of day and seasons.
“The quality of light in that part of East Yorkshire is close to magical,” says Edith Devaney, adding that Hockney is completely attuned to the changes brought about by time and seasons.
The changes in the Yorkshire seasons, the cycle of growth and variations in light conditions are best captured in the section of paintings on hawthorn blossoms, the ephemeral white flowers, he refers to as “nature’s erection.”
The centrepiece of the exhibition is the huge The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate, East Yorkshire painting made up of 32 separate canvases surrounded by 51 iPad drawings of the transition from winter to spring on one small road.
The exhibition has many paintings by Hockney where he has used his oft-repeated grid, dividing a large imposing painting into multiple smaller canvases to give a collage-like image to the painting.
Hockney has carried on this technique, which he developed as part of his early photocollages, to his experimental films on his art too. “The influence of his links to theatre has led to his conviction that his art must be seen and be visible from far, at every level, giving it a grandness very rare to see,” says Devaney.
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