Reviews
L.A. Figments
A visit to the Hockney exhibit, now en route to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Expecting more of the same, CLAIRE MICCIO ends up finding a portrait of her own.
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- The Vanishing Date (Spoofs & Satire)
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I warn my editor. I don’t read or write art reviews and what I’ve seen of David Hockney, I didn’t like. Moreover, I’m a bad interpreter. Los Angeles is a big part of Hockney’s life and I’ve never been there. I’ve never even been to California.
“All the better,” he says, unfazed. “Because the show goes to L.A. after it leaves Boston. Imagine LA.”
“Yeah, but it’s a retrospective of his portraits, not his landscapes.”
“Then imagine how L.A. will respond to it.”
This doesn’t strike me as a difficult thing to do until I’m on the train with Jacob heading to the museum. I close my eyes and imagine it: a scribble of highways, ghettos, billboards, and sprawl. Swimming pools and palm trees. Fire. A man being ripped from a truck and split open with rocks. Wait, is that fair? The clearest mental footage I have of Los Angeles was shot from a helicopter when I was nine years old and I haven’t made much of an effort to see more.
I ask Jacob what comes to mind when he thinks of LA.
“Cars, highways, vapid Hollywood celebrities. Beck. Bad, expensive fashion. I pretty much think of it as swank villas, Mexico City, and freeways. I don’t really know anything about LA.”
“Me neither.”
“What do you think of?”
“I think of a place in southern California that I have no desire to visit, much less live in. That, and ‘The Heat Is On.’”
* * *
David Hockney Portraits is 50 years of his portraiture, categorized into family, friends, and lovers. The first painting I see past the entrance is Self-Portrait with Red Braces (2003). At this point I remember David Hockney is still alive and realize that every solo-artist special museum exhibition I’ve ever attended featured someone dead. That says something about either museums or me, but I’m not the one to know which.
I weave around paintings and drawings of his family, un-swayed by any, until I find My Parents (1977). On the left, his mother sits upright and face forward in a simple wooden chair. She appears modest, with her hands in her lap, and wears a tender, supportive expression. On the right, his father sits slouched, angled sideways, and absorbed in a book. He looks small and preoccupied. I wonder if David’s homosexuality was ever an issue for them.
Separating his parents is a small, blue, metal storage cabinet. On it sits a stack of books, a mirror, and a vase of tulips, looking as posed and presentable as his mother. I like this painting. It shows incredible skill and confesses a love for its subjects; it is clean, pure, and surprisingly tender.
“I don’t know,” I say, cringing at the phrase that, since graduating college, has become my mantra. Continuing through the exhibit I notice that David Hockney plays with a lot of mediums—painting, etching, drawing, watercolor, photography, lithography, collage—as well as a number of styles. There are certainly patterns between them, often a subject, but I get the overwhelming sense that Hockney can’t, or perhaps won’t, commit. He isn’t possessed or fixated; if he’s prolific, it’s because he has a short attention span. Standing among more than 150 of his portraits, many of them produced in the past 10 years, I think his only fixation appears to be art itself.
Is this why L.A. appeals to him? Is there something about the area that makes an undedicated devotee feel welcome? I need a second opinion.
Jacob is standing across the room, his feet apart and hands clasped, in front of Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969). When I move beside him he cranes toward accidental drips of paint that for some reason Hockney let slide.
“What do you think?”
Jacob makes a raspberry. My hands spring to my mouth. Going to art exhibits with Jacob is fun, but he is a tough one to please.
“He’s good; it’s just that I feel like I feel whenever we go to student exhibitions. There are one or two pieces that I really like, but overall it’s too personal. I mean, it’s not meant for me. These are portraits of people he’s known most of his life and I think that’s great, but where do I fit in? I think all the one-hour portraits he’s done more recently of people he doesn’t know, of studio visitors, are worse paintings—but I like them more than the ones of his friends and family.”
What he says makes sense to me; Jacob doesn’t care for representational art. He likes his art abstract, conceptual, a color field. It can be scientific, funny, or grotesque, but not personal, and never, ever confessional. That would be shameless.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, cringing at the phrase that, since graduating college, has become my mantra. “I sit the fence. I think I like the personal ones more,” thinking of Mum and Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy. “But at the same time there is something off about them. He paints people with this emptiness that I don’t think is fair. They are too posed or stand too far apart. They look anchored, aloof. However, there is one I absolutely love: the self-portrait from when he was 17. Where’s he slouched and turned to the side. Back when he was a round-faced Yorkshire boy with glasses.”
“Why do you like it?”
“Because it’s honest instead of just simple. I think there’s a big difference.”
“What would you call his expression?”
I look at it again. I imagine painting myself at 17. I imagine painting myself now.
“I don’t know,” I say, and shrink.
* * *
Right now I’m working as a florist, and at the exhibit I can’t help but notice Hockney’s use of flowers. In many of his large portraits, a vase of tulips sits somewhere in view. I spot oriental lilies twice but otherwise he sticks to common tulips, often in one color. Nothing variegated, fringed, or flamed. I’m not surprised by his choice. Tulips are clean, uncomplicated flowers with squeaky stems and tidy, bright blooms. No one loves them they way they would sweet peas or a snapdragons and no one hates them either. They fit well in his paintings; they add a little color and form without a lot of character.
Her friend stood in the foreground while she took the photo. When the guard approached she told him she forgot her flash was on. Once he walked away, she and her friend switched places. When I point out this out Jacob rocks back on his heels, shrugs, and looks around. “I’ve been eavesdropping on a lot of people in here and I think we’re the only two people who don’t think that everything he does is wonderful. But I also don’t get the sense that anyone here is particularly a fan of his work.”
I scan the room nervously, wary of staring.
“What gives you that impression?” I ask.
“I don’t know, the guy who flutters his hands at each piece and then gasps. Or the woman who keeps posing her friends and taking flash photographs.” Sadly, I admit to seeing her. Her friend stood in the foreground, mimicking Hockney’s subject, while she took the photo. When the guard approached she told him she forgot her flash was on. Once he walked away, she and her friend switched places, and again the flash popped brightly.
Jacob shrugs again. “Maybe I’m wrong. I just don’t feel like people are reacting. They’re more interested in Seeing The Work of A Famous Artist.”
“Maybe you’re right. In a way, that’s what got me in the door. I mean, I can’t say that I care for his work but I’m grateful to walk into a gallery and not see oversaturated photographs or paintings of sad girls with big eyes.”
Jacob laughs. “I think I’d like him more if he’d kept with one way of painting, or at least one medium, for more than a year. It’s hard to get into when he’s all over the place.”
“Yeah, though I’m happy he kept with the same subjects for most of his life, like Celia Birtwell. It’s interesting seeing her age and become a mother through paintings and drawings.”
Jacob nods, peeks at his cell phone, then gives me a kiss. He has to get back to work. I, on the other hand, have the day off, and nowhere to be and nothing I want to be doing, so I take a seat in front of Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy and start worrying about everything I don’t know. Maybe California “gets” Hockney. Or maybe they get that there’s nothing to get; he just holds a paintbrush well, I don’t know. What I do know is this: his style, whatever it is, doesn’t speak to me. I don’t see people as clearly as he depicts them, and I’m not sure I want to. Right now, nothing in my life feels so pure or empty.
“All the better,” he says, unfazed. “Because the show goes to L.A. after it leaves Boston. Imagine LA.”
“Yeah, but it’s a retrospective of his portraits, not his landscapes.”
“Then imagine how L.A. will respond to it.”
This doesn’t strike me as a difficult thing to do until I’m on the train with Jacob heading to the museum. I close my eyes and imagine it: a scribble of highways, ghettos, billboards, and sprawl. Swimming pools and palm trees. Fire. A man being ripped from a truck and split open with rocks. Wait, is that fair? The clearest mental footage I have of Los Angeles was shot from a helicopter when I was nine years old and I haven’t made much of an effort to see more.
I ask Jacob what comes to mind when he thinks of LA.
“Cars, highways, vapid Hollywood celebrities. Beck. Bad, expensive fashion. I pretty much think of it as swank villas, Mexico City, and freeways. I don’t really know anything about LA.”
“Me neither.”
“What do you think of?”
“I think of a place in southern California that I have no desire to visit, much less live in. That, and ‘The Heat Is On.’”
David Hockney Portraits is 50 years of his portraiture, categorized into family, friends, and lovers. The first painting I see past the entrance is Self-Portrait with Red Braces (2003). At this point I remember David Hockney is still alive and realize that every solo-artist special museum exhibition I’ve ever attended featured someone dead. That says something about either museums or me, but I’m not the one to know which.
I weave around paintings and drawings of his family, un-swayed by any, until I find My Parents (1977). On the left, his mother sits upright and face forward in a simple wooden chair. She appears modest, with her hands in her lap, and wears a tender, supportive expression. On the right, his father sits slouched, angled sideways, and absorbed in a book. He looks small and preoccupied. I wonder if David’s homosexuality was ever an issue for them.
Separating his parents is a small, blue, metal storage cabinet. On it sits a stack of books, a mirror, and a vase of tulips, looking as posed and presentable as his mother. I like this painting. It shows incredible skill and confesses a love for its subjects; it is clean, pure, and surprisingly tender.
“I don’t know,” I say, cringing at the phrase that, since graduating college, has become my mantra. Continuing through the exhibit I notice that David Hockney plays with a lot of mediums—painting, etching, drawing, watercolor, photography, lithography, collage—as well as a number of styles. There are certainly patterns between them, often a subject, but I get the overwhelming sense that Hockney can’t, or perhaps won’t, commit. He isn’t possessed or fixated; if he’s prolific, it’s because he has a short attention span. Standing among more than 150 of his portraits, many of them produced in the past 10 years, I think his only fixation appears to be art itself.
Is this why L.A. appeals to him? Is there something about the area that makes an undedicated devotee feel welcome? I need a second opinion.
Jacob is standing across the room, his feet apart and hands clasped, in front of Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969). When I move beside him he cranes toward accidental drips of paint that for some reason Hockney let slide.
“What do you think?”
Jacob makes a raspberry. My hands spring to my mouth. Going to art exhibits with Jacob is fun, but he is a tough one to please.
“He’s good; it’s just that I feel like I feel whenever we go to student exhibitions. There are one or two pieces that I really like, but overall it’s too personal. I mean, it’s not meant for me. These are portraits of people he’s known most of his life and I think that’s great, but where do I fit in? I think all the one-hour portraits he’s done more recently of people he doesn’t know, of studio visitors, are worse paintings—but I like them more than the ones of his friends and family.”
What he says makes sense to me; Jacob doesn’t care for representational art. He likes his art abstract, conceptual, a color field. It can be scientific, funny, or grotesque, but not personal, and never, ever confessional. That would be shameless.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, cringing at the phrase that, since graduating college, has become my mantra. “I sit the fence. I think I like the personal ones more,” thinking of Mum and Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy. “But at the same time there is something off about them. He paints people with this emptiness that I don’t think is fair. They are too posed or stand too far apart. They look anchored, aloof. However, there is one I absolutely love: the self-portrait from when he was 17. Where’s he slouched and turned to the side. Back when he was a round-faced Yorkshire boy with glasses.”
“Why do you like it?”
“Because it’s honest instead of just simple. I think there’s a big difference.”
“What would you call his expression?”
I look at it again. I imagine painting myself at 17. I imagine painting myself now.
“I don’t know,” I say, and shrink.
Right now I’m working as a florist, and at the exhibit I can’t help but notice Hockney’s use of flowers. In many of his large portraits, a vase of tulips sits somewhere in view. I spot oriental lilies twice but otherwise he sticks to common tulips, often in one color. Nothing variegated, fringed, or flamed. I’m not surprised by his choice. Tulips are clean, uncomplicated flowers with squeaky stems and tidy, bright blooms. No one loves them they way they would sweet peas or a snapdragons and no one hates them either. They fit well in his paintings; they add a little color and form without a lot of character.
Her friend stood in the foreground while she took the photo. When the guard approached she told him she forgot her flash was on. Once he walked away, she and her friend switched places. When I point out this out Jacob rocks back on his heels, shrugs, and looks around. “I’ve been eavesdropping on a lot of people in here and I think we’re the only two people who don’t think that everything he does is wonderful. But I also don’t get the sense that anyone here is particularly a fan of his work.”
I scan the room nervously, wary of staring.
“What gives you that impression?” I ask.
“I don’t know, the guy who flutters his hands at each piece and then gasps. Or the woman who keeps posing her friends and taking flash photographs.” Sadly, I admit to seeing her. Her friend stood in the foreground, mimicking Hockney’s subject, while she took the photo. When the guard approached she told him she forgot her flash was on. Once he walked away, she and her friend switched places, and again the flash popped brightly.
Jacob shrugs again. “Maybe I’m wrong. I just don’t feel like people are reacting. They’re more interested in Seeing The Work of A Famous Artist.”
“Maybe you’re right. In a way, that’s what got me in the door. I mean, I can’t say that I care for his work but I’m grateful to walk into a gallery and not see oversaturated photographs or paintings of sad girls with big eyes.”
Jacob laughs. “I think I’d like him more if he’d kept with one way of painting, or at least one medium, for more than a year. It’s hard to get into when he’s all over the place.”
“Yeah, though I’m happy he kept with the same subjects for most of his life, like Celia Birtwell. It’s interesting seeing her age and become a mother through paintings and drawings.”
Jacob nods, peeks at his cell phone, then gives me a kiss. He has to get back to work. I, on the other hand, have the day off, and nowhere to be and nothing I want to be doing, so I take a seat in front of Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy and start worrying about everything I don’t know. Maybe California “gets” Hockney. Or maybe they get that there’s nothing to get; he just holds a paintbrush well, I don’t know. What I do know is this: his style, whatever it is, doesn’t speak to me. I don’t see people as clearly as he depicts them, and I’m not sure I want to. Right now, nothing in my life feels so pure or empty.
—Published May 22, 2006
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