Art Edited by Eddy Frankel
timeout.com/art @timeoutart SHOW OF THE WEEK
David Hockney: 82 Portraits and One Still-Life
IMAGINE SITTING PERFECTLY STILL, locked on the spot, with an old man staring intensely at you, for three days. Sounds uncomfortable doesn’t it? Like a horror movie, or Christmas at your parents’. That’s the commitment you would have had to give the great David Hockney if you’d agreed to sit for one of the 82 portraits on show here. Then imagine the surprise when, after three days sat on your arse, Hockney finally lets you see the finished work – the big reveal, tada! – and… it’s a bit shit. Yeah, deflating. Let’s not mess about, Hockney is one of the
best. He’s a giant of twentieth-century art. His images are among the most iconic of his generation: you can’t talk about modern painting without mentioning ‘A Bigger Splash’, or his contribution to pop art. Hockney, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud: the holy trinity of modern British painting. And Hockney has continued to be a truly brilliant painter into the twenty-first century – his landscape show at the RA in 2012 was a total blockbuster, and his iPad drawings are great. But these, sadly, are not brilliant paintings. Every one of them is, essentially, the same. They’re all the same size, the sitter facing the
Time Out London July 5 – 11 2016
same direction, painted against the same two-tone flat background. A couple of sitters only gave him two days, and one didn’t show up (which explains the one still-life), but that’s still well over 200 days that Hockney dedicated to one thing. It’s a monumental undertaking, a Herculean artistic effort. You have to admire his determination, if nothing else. They’re all hung in the RA in
chronological order, so you can see the progression, the move towards uniformity. What strikes you first is that Hockney knows a lot of old white men. There’s uber-rich gallery tycoon Larry Gagosian, uber-rich
88
WHAT IS IT… The last great master of twentieth-century painting returns with loads of portraits.
WHY GO… Even when he’s not at his best, David Hockney is still better than pretty much everyone else.
à Royal Academy of Arts. Piccadilly Circus. Until Oct 2. £11.50.
banker Jacob Rothschild and uber-rich architect Frank Gehry. There’s a near-endless sea of pink- skinned white dudes in khakis and loafers, like Henley Royal Regatta. It’s basically a room full of unbearable types you’d never want to hang out with. There are some women and non-white people here as well; plenty of artists, curators and museum directors, some family members, neighbours and a few kids too. The thing is, he hasn’t really
captured much humanity in any of these people, just the same blank, flat stare. It’s like he doesn’t care about the sitters or even the result,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94
