by For more than 50 years, David Hockney has been a dominant force in contemporary art. A new career-spanning exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art brings the artist back to Hawaii for the first time in many years, with an exhibition of more than 100 pieces in various media documenting Hockney’s journey from the 1970s. 1950 until the years of the pandemic.
“We are drawn to different time periods and we make sure to represent earlier time periods, all the way to later and different media: the photo collages, the drawing photographs and the iPad, the iPhone and other digital drawings,” said Katherine Love. co-curator of the exhibition with Catherine Whitney, director of curatorial affairs at the museum.
Related: No one can make the most of life like David Hockney, but we’re trying harder than ever.
The Homa exhibition is a large, well-organized spectacle, convincingly arranged on walls of bold red, blue and white, taking the audience on multiple journeys through Hockney’s ever-evolving use of visual form. Divided into six sections, it begins with some of Hockney’s early work and progresses to digital paintings he made via iPhone and iPad during the pandemic. One of its organizing principles is the multiple dualities that Love and Whitney observed in Hockney’s work.
“One thing we really wanted to play with in dualities is the idea of interiors and exteriors,” Whitney said. “There is also a sense of stillness and tension, and also of balance and calm. There are so many contrasting binaries at work throughout her career. “He has an incredible way of contrasting opposites in a festive way.”
David Hockney: Perspective Should Be Reversed, Prints from the Collections of Jordan D Schnitzer and His Family Foundation focuses on an idea that Hockney, now 86, has pursued for years: that of reversing perspective as often pursued in art western. This can be seen in his innovative work with Polaroid snapshots, in which he constructed enormous collages from Polaroids, constructing scenes that had countless perspectives embedded in them. For Hockney, this applies more to how we perceive reality than a painting consisting of a single vanishing point. He also talks about Hockney’s love for integrating the latest technology into his artistic production, something the audience can see throughout the exhibition. “Even though he’s experimenting with new technology and always trying new things, he’s always aware of what’s happened in the past,” Whitney said. “And he’s always interested in learning more about the story and incorporating it into his work, like he’s always going further.”
In the painting Perspective Should be Reversed (a typically robust, interreferential festival of individuals from Hockney’s universe, miniatures of the artist’s paintings, and a variety of different vanishing points), Hockney leaves a copy of TJ Clark’s Picasso and the Truth just in front. where it is difficult to miss, indicating the debts he owes to the great Spaniard. In fact, one of the strengths of this show is the skill with which he uncovers many of the artistic links between the two.
“Hockney has been really fascinated by Picasso and how he broke with what was expected in representational terms,” Love said. “Cubism did really experimental work in thinking about using space in different ways. Hockney is really interested in that same idea of how we perceive the world around us.”
As part of the Picasso theme, the Honolulu exhibition includes two Polaroid collages by Hockney, which he pioneered in his ideas of bringing cubism to the photographic realm. “One of the problems Hockney has with traditional photography is that it is done from a static point of view,” Love said. “But humans have the experience of looking around the world: we can move our eyes. So how can you translate that experience into an image? Multiple later works from the 2010s expand on the ideas he pioneered with these Polaroid collages; For example, several of them see the artist honing his collage art into photorealistic offerings in which tables, chairs, and hanging canvases allow Hockney to incorporate countless perspectives, while his other intimate doubles proliferate.
“It’s kind of a constant game with reality,” Love said. “What is reality, what is perception, what is assumed, what is known, what is created? What can I make you see?
Perspective Should Be Reversed also includes a satisfying selection of work that Hockney has made exclusively on iPhones and iPads, using his fingers and a stylus. These include many that Hockney has made of the English countryside over the years, including some of his popular Woldgate works, in which the artist spent months meticulously recording the arrival of spring through dozens of drawings. For these and other late works, Hockney revels in bright, often surprising colors and intricate lines. “Some of the last pieces, those late Normandy landscapes with the rain on the pond, are spectacular,” Love said. “I’m a colorist, so I love anything that’s bright and surprising, and that’s why the Woldgate pieces really surprised me.”
Later works include Landscape with Shadows, a dazzling cubist-inflected feast of colors, textures and perspectives, and Rain on the Pond, which channels a solemn mood and includes countless raindrops that beautifully burst into rings in the titular pond. While not as substantial or innovative as much of the previous work in this exhibition, these pieces are extremely enjoyable and offer a window into the current interests of a major figure in the art world.
Perspective Should Be Reversed is based on the collection of Jordan Schnitzer, scion of a wealthy Oregon family, one of the state’s leading real estate developers, and a longtime arts philanthropist. Schnitzer’s collection of Hockney works dates back decades and the artist is among his largest holdings. “I’m very happy to bring the work here,” Schnitzer said. “The collection allows a museum like this to have access to the best, biggest and brightest of the artist.” In total, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation has helped organize more than 180 exhibitions.
Perspective Should Be Reversed is a true blessing for Honolulu’s vibrant art museum, which has done great work bringing a variety of voices in contemporary art to the center of the Pacific, and should not be missed by island residents or visitors alike. . “This is probably the largest exhibition of prints ever held exclusively by Hockney,” Whitney said, “so it’s very exciting. “It is incredible to show works from 1954 to 2022. We are very excited to have it.”
