Exhibition of the week David Hockney: 82 Portraits & 1 Still Life
Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8090, www.royalacademy.org.uk). Until 2 October
David Hockney is a “relentlessly experimental artist”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. His “restless quest for visual truth” has taken him from pop art to plein-air painting to “cubist photomontages” – and now to this “intriguing exploration of the nature of portraiture” at the Royal Academy. The show brings together 82 identically sized portraits of 79 different people – one subject is painted three times – all posing “in the same elegant chair”. (There’s also one still life; the sitter failed to turn up.) They were all painted in identical conditions at Hockney’s LA studio, over a maximum of three days. And now they are on show as a single work. The subjects range from famous faces (including the comedian Barry Humphries and the textile designer Celia Birtwell) to friends and neighbours, all depicted against blue and turquoise backgrounds. These works showcase Hockney’s “raw instinct for colour” and remind us that, far from being a mere “snapshot” of the sitter, a portrait is an “artefact, a beautiful thing, a dance of colours”. This is a “fascinating” show.
The initial effect is “quite stunning”, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. The paintings seem to “glow from within”, while the “carefully coordinated” colours of the backgrounds and the sitters’ clothes complement each other throughout the exhibition’s three rooms. Yet this “exuberant” first impression “rapidly wears off”; and some paintings are “much better than others”. A likeness of artist Avner Chaim is “crudely painted”, while a painting of former RA curator Norman Rosenthal gives him a “clunky, mask-like visage”. The art critic Martin Gayford, meanwhile, appears as a “detached, journeyman caricature”. The real shame is that the works are disappointingly unambitious, characterised by a “slightly numbing competence”. We know that Hockney can “churn out” paintings like this “practically in his sleep” – and were it not for the “jolting effect” of the colours here, we might well be “nodding off ourselves”.
Hockney’s “extraordinary energy levels sag mildly here and there”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. For the most part, though, these works are “impressively inventive”. The “finest portraits” are those of the sitters Hockney knows best. A likeness of his sister, Margaret, is the “warmest female presence” in the show, while the eyes of his old friend Celia Birtwell are rendered in a “beautiful Van Gogh green”. Hockney has subjected himself to a “mother of a test”. In almost every portrait, he passes it with “flying colours”.