3-camera movie of A Bigger Exhibition
Before A Bigger Exhibition closes at the de Young, Hockney travels to San Francisco to make a movie of the installation. With three video cameras mounted on a trolley-like tripod, he wheels his way through the show capturing three different perspectives of the exhibition in one pass.
Painting portraits in Hollywood
Hockney continues painting four-by-three-foot portraits of individual sitters in varied full-length poses but always in the same chair. He calls these “twenty-hour exposures” because each sitting takes six to seven hours on three consecutive days.
Paintings of groups
He moves on to paint groups of people in his studio as they move about, chat, and look at art. Pieces of furniture are included—chairs, tables, [NESTED]easels—as well as works of art on the walls.
There’s a weird spatial thing going on which seems to me to be about the center of the picture, not the edges. In these groups, there’s general perspective for the room but also for each person, because I’m looking at them .... If a figure is close to me, I am seeing his face head on, but also looking down at his feet. So you are moving in to view just that one individual. Then, you have to turn to look at another person .... You make space through time, I think. And the space between where you end and I begin is the most interesting space of all.
Photographic drawings
Hockney shifts to another medium, digital photography, to explore these group scenes, collaging as many as 200 digital photographs to create a single multi-viewpoint image. A figure might appear more than once in the composition, as if their movement within the studio space has been tracked. Hockney calls these time-based works “photographic drawings.”
Paintings of dancers
Having completed group pictures portraying friends and acquaintances, Hockney next invites a group of dancers to pose for a series of paintings. These paintings, particularly those in which dancers are placed against an abstract background, often reference the work of Henri Matisse.
The very first picture of the dancers was of them stood in a circle; it was okay, but they weren’t moving, they weren’t dancing. I got them to go round in a circle, then I would say stop, and draw one and I slowly built it up. Now I’ve moved out of the room and put them in a landscape—on top of the world, really.
Exhibitions
Solo
- The Jugglers, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA (Jan 21–Apr 20).
- Hockney, Printmaker, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK (Feb 5–May 11); catalogue.
- The Arrival of Spring, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, UK (May 8–Jul 12); catalogue.
- The Arrival of Spring, L.A. Louver, Venice, CA, USA (Jul 10–Aug 29).
- The Arrival of Spring, Pace, New York, NY, USA (Sep 5–Nov 1); catalogue.
- Some New Painting (and Photography), Pace, New York, NY, USA (Nov 8, 2014–Jan 10, 2015); catalogue.
Group
- Art and Yorkshire: From Turner to Hockney, Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, UK (Apr 12–Oct 12); catalogue.
- Ludwig Goes Pop, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (Oct 2, 2014–Jan 11, 2015); catalogue.
- Pop to Popism, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (Nov 1, 2014–Mar 1, 2015); catalogue.
- Bare Life: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and others – London artists working from life, 1950–80, LWL-Museum for Art and Culture, Domplatz Münster, Germany (Nov 8, 2014–Feb 22, 2015); catalogue.
Publications
Publications
- David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Pace Gallery, New York.
- David Hockney: Some New Painting (And Photography), Pace Gallery, New York.
- David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Annely Juda Fine Art, London.
- Hockney Printmaker, by Richard Lloyd, London: Scala Arts & Heritage.
- Hockney: The Biography—Volume 2, 1975-2012, by Christopher Sykes, London: Century (Random House).
Film
Film
- Hockney, 113 min., Blakeway Productions, directed by Randall Wright.
