Visits & events
Tuesday 28th February 2012
Royal Academy, ‘David Hockney: A Bigger Picture’
This exhibition celebrates Hockney’s depiction of landscape, particularly his re-engagement with the Yorkshire Wolds. Most of the works were produced between 2004 and 2011 and include oil paintings, charcoal and iPad drawings, sketchbooks and films. Many of these works are being shown for the first time. A carefully selected group of earlier landscape works illustrate Hockney’s long held and constantly developing interest in representing the natural world.
In works made from observation, from memory and imagination, and with the assistance of visual and technological aids, Hockney’s virtuosity across a range of media together with his innovative approach to image-making enable him to powerfully evoke landscape and space – his ‘bigger picture’.
On entering the first gallery of David Hockney’s exhibition you are struck by a sense of symmetry and repetition. After the first initial assault brought about by the sheer size and raw colours of the canvasses you are soothed by Hockney’s explanation of his work (audio guide) and you become aware of the artist’s dedication to replicating the same scene of his Yorkshire countryside through the seasons, over and over again. He wants you to participate and enjoy his art.
He is a flexible artist who is an admirable draughtsman who draws in charcoal and paints in watercolours and oils. However the main gallery was a wonder where he has recently mastered the iPad. With magnificent observational powers and dexterity of hand he has produced stunning pictures for the modern age.
You have to admire this artist for his sheer quantity and enthusiasm in his work, a famous living artist whose exhibition is well worth a visit.
Thanks to Madeline for organising the visit which went off without a hitch with everyone appearing promptly for departures and to Alasdair our coach driver for his friendly, relaxed driving.
Sue & Joe Gray
Tate Britain, ‘Picasso and Modern British Art’
A group of us from NDFAS went together to this interesting and innovative exhibition. I have never really understood Picasso but, with the help of the explanatory captions and the audio guide, he began to make more sense. The exhibition showed his influence on British artists from the early nineteen twenties to the present time.
To have an explanation of the way he shows – in one small drawing – both the profile and portrait of his current lover and, in another drawing, his own profile superimposed on the portrait of another lover, made both of these pictures come alive for me in a way that they had never done before. We also saw the way that African art influenced Picasso (and later Henry Moore) and the way he moved from being influenced by the Impressionists to his early blue period (the iconic Child with a Dove was exhibited). His cubist period moved into surrealism and it was these periods that influenced his early admirers.
The first three rooms were devoted to various individual artists from the Bloomsbury group. Wyndham Lewis, Duncan Grant and Ben Nicholson were shown as having particularly come under his influence, though not always successfully. Their use of collage was the subject of particular comment though it seemed odd to me that under his influence their actual painting seemed to falter and become messy.
It was after his important Guernica, a devastating critique of the Spanish Civil War, that the more significant British artists became influenced by him. The painting was represented in the exhibition by a half size photograph but the drama and pain still came alive and the horror of war (any war) was highlighted in a way that more representational pictures often fail to do.
This painting clearly influenced the dramatic and painful crucifixions of Graham Sutherland and the screaming Popes and mythical and terrified animals of Francis Bacon, both of whom were shown in the later rooms.
His influence on Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth (in my opinion two of the greats of British artists) was, at first, less obvious, but Picasso’s drawings and painting of nudes – where he reduces and transforms them to massive sculptural shapes – has an echo in the deceptive simplicity of their sculptures. The room that had a few of Henry Moore’s smaller sculptures moved me by its calm after the riotous quality of some of the other rooms.
His use of colour and form continue to influence the present day greats, David Hockney being only one of them.
In the final room was one of his beautiful paintings of the Three Dancers (after Botticellis' Three Graces). This, and his Guernica, his constant innovation and experimentation confirm his greatness. Long may he influence British artists.
My thanks to Madeleine Weston for arranging the trip and to Monique Bourne for mother-henning us!
Jane Burke
