Why do you like DH specifically?
well most of all i admire his relentless playfulness and will to explore, improve, learn. whenever you hear him talk about his work it’s always very clear that his primary motivation is like, this uncorrupted, sincere and completely unpretentious love for making and exploring, which i feel like, that level of sincerity is rare even amongst other artists that i admire. like imagine that you’re one of the world’s most accomplished painters, you’re in like your early 80’s and you discover this thing called the ipad, and that you can draw on it. and just out of a completely sincere drive to explore and learn you put to the side the thing that you’re one of the very best in the world at, oil painting, and spend years learning about this new thing. i cannot imagine a single other artist as acclaimed as him that would do that, most established artists at that level just keep on doing what they’re already amazing at, maybe throwing in drawing or woodcuts every once in a while, but those are still traditional and completely “safe” materials. like can you imagine dumas, borremans, tuymans, karin mamma andersson, fischl, neo rauch, alex katz or anyone else that established in the art world doing what hockney did, making and exhibiting ipad drawings? i sure can’t. and it’s been the same way his entire career, never once has he stood still and just kept on doing what he’s already the best at. whether it be abandoning the type of painting that brought him fame and recognition to move on to new techniques, doing photography, photo-collages, drawing, watercolor, acrylics, pastels, exploring how to use technology to build compositions like in “bigger trees near warter” or “a bigger grand canyon”, abandoning photography and the photographic reference completely to paint en plein air in yorkshire in all seasons, or abandoning painting and creating altogether to spend years researching how early western painters used the technique of camera obscura in their works, practically proving that the technique was used in europe hundreds of years earlier than what was thought before. and all that just because he felt like that was something that was interesting and necessary to learn about.
like, i love, for example, karin mamma andersson too, but her paintings have looked more or less the same since the 90’s, which is also the case for quite a few artists. that’s ok as well, but my point is that the sincere drive that hockney had for learning and exploring just cannot be found in any other artist, which i think is admirable and truly something to strive for.
besides all of that, lol, i think that his work is just simply amazing. the accuracy and concentration found in his lines just cannot be found elsewhere, watching him paint and draw is a true joy. he was completely in control of color, all of his work exude such radiant, vibrant light, his portraits exude presence. i love the way his brushwork varies, sometimes thick, and fast, with lots of visible movement, almost like in action painting, sometimes slow, flat and methodical, sometimes the brushstrokes are just symbols for something else. short, green, identical lines as a symbol for grass instead of going through the trouble of making it naturalistic.
i really could go on forever but on a final note i would just like to say that i think hockney was a one of a kind artist and we should all be grateful to have had him among us, and that his work lives on. if you’re interested in hockney i would recommend the documentaries “a bigger splash” from the early seventies, just when he was making a name for himself with the painting with the same name, also the documentary “secret knowledge” which is what his years of research about camera obscura resulted in, and “a bigger picture” where he talks about painting for about an hour and you actually get to see him paint which is a rare gift.
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