"A Bigger Picture" - David Hockney at the Royal Academy.
I managed to make the journey see this much-talked about exhibition at almost the last minute.
Images here.
The impact of the show - and it is considerable - is due to the scale and colour of the work, and to the number of paintings produced in a relatively short period. These features are both a strength and a weakness: a strength in that they demonstrate the vigour and experience of an established colourist, and a weakness in that there is just too much on view, and not all of it is of the highest quality. Indeed, some of the paintings are rather ordinary when considered in isolation. The inclusion of enlarged iPhone & iPad drawings seems to be a typical piece of Hockney showmanship, albeit a logical progression from his long-standing interest in technology & printing. (The question of the enlargement of digital images to such a size is not addressed- by optical means presumably, but how? and how much can it possibly cost to print them?!)
Having said this, it's good for those of us out in the sticks to have a chance to see Hockney's paintings close up, rather than in reproduction. Interesting too, to see his drawings and sketchbooks. The visual inventiveness of works from the 60's (as seen in "Flight into Italy - Swiss landscape") may not be in evidence in the contemporary paintings but you have to admire the man's chutzpah in expending such a mass of colour and canvas on the deeply unfashionable subject of landscape.
For me, the stand-out works (not, as it happens, paintings made specially for this show) were "A Closer Grand Canyon" and an early two-canvas view of ploughed fields containing the best purple I've ever seen . The phrase "vibrant colour" could have been coined for these two paintings alone.
Images here.
The impact of the show - and it is considerable - is due to the scale and colour of the work, and to the number of paintings produced in a relatively short period. These features are both a strength and a weakness: a strength in that they demonstrate the vigour and experience of an established colourist, and a weakness in that there is just too much on view, and not all of it is of the highest quality. Indeed, some of the paintings are rather ordinary when considered in isolation. The inclusion of enlarged iPhone & iPad drawings seems to be a typical piece of Hockney showmanship, albeit a logical progression from his long-standing interest in technology & printing. (The question of the enlargement of digital images to such a size is not addressed- by optical means presumably, but how? and how much can it possibly cost to print them?!)
Having said this, it's good for those of us out in the sticks to have a chance to see Hockney's paintings close up, rather than in reproduction. Interesting too, to see his drawings and sketchbooks. The visual inventiveness of works from the 60's (as seen in "Flight into Italy - Swiss landscape") may not be in evidence in the contemporary paintings but you have to admire the man's chutzpah in expending such a mass of colour and canvas on the deeply unfashionable subject of landscape.
For me, the stand-out works (not, as it happens, paintings made specially for this show) were "A Closer Grand Canyon" and an early two-canvas view of ploughed fields containing the best purple I've ever seen . The phrase "vibrant colour" could have been coined for these two paintings alone.