Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu
DAVID HOCKNEY’S ARRIVAL OF SPRING
Royal Academy of Arts 27th March to 22nd August
David Hockney must be one of the – perhaps the – most shown artists of his time.
Since 1963, when the newly opened Kasmin Gallery in Bond Street gave him his first exhibition, he has had more than 400 one-man and 500 group shows. This is the third within a decade at the RA. Could that perhaps have got up the collective nose of Gilbert & George, who resigned as Royal Academicians when they were refused a show?
Hockney is bedecked with honours and has been cited as the most influential British artist ever, and his paintings can sell for even more than the idiocies of Jeff Koons. So when he says that he has ‘never been mainstream’, it is tempting to respond ‘Ah, bless!’
Artists like to be perceived as outsiders and rebels. Hockney’s selfperception has more justification than many in one way. Throughout his long career – he is now 83 – he has been an innovator, keen to experiment with whatever new – and indeed old – technology has offered.
He was one of the first to use acrylic. Since then, he has employed photography, collage, fax, liquid paper, computers, ipads and iphones, many print-making techniques, watercolour, the camera lucida, multi-canvas paintings and multi-camera films. All have fired his enthusiasm.
Some experiments and investigations have been less successful than others: when he discovered watercolour, comparatively late in his career, he showed his first efforts before he had fully absorbed the medium’s particular demands.
On the other hand, while I generally consider artists’ videos of the sort that get onto Turner Prize lists to be dreary time-wasters, the two that Hockney made for his 2012 RA show were both moving and beautiful, especially the one following the seasons in Yorkshire.
For the present show, the season is spring 2019 – specifically in Normandy, where he currently lives. The chosen medium is another new print technique deriving from ipad drawings. These are much more impressive works than those he produced when he first tried ipads a few years back. That’s because of recent advances in the ‘brushes’ app, designed partly by him, and also because he is now both painting and drawing fluently on it, allowing him to work at speed.
The printing process permits largescale reproduction, and every mark is readable. As usual, his colours are very strong, and they are not jarring as sometimes in the past.
There are over 100 works, closely hung in the chronological order of production, thus following the course of his spring. I am touched that a man in his 80s can take me back to the Normandy I discovered at 11.