David Hockney: Early Reflections

An excellent play on words.  This exhibition of David Hockney's early work (including some preparatory studies) at the Walker Art Gallery is an interesting one.  It brings together four separate episodes in Hockney's work and outside in the foyer of the special exhibitions space is a 16 minute excerpt of the documentary A Bigger Splash (1973) by Jack Hazan.  The episodes are all distinct but they are not incompatible.  'Familiar Faces' focuses on studies for Hockney's portraits, 'On Reflection' looks at studies he produced in California, 'Picturing Poetry' looks at the illustrative etchings for poems by Constatine P. Cavafy and 'In the Mood for Love' presents the beginnings of Hockney's expression, through code and colloquialisms, of his sexuality.  Altogether, the exhibition works well to inform what and who inspired Hockney.

What I particularly like about Early Reflections is the humour that runs through it.  There are photographs of Hockney grinning as he waves a cheque for having won first place in the 1967 John Moores Painting Prize.  I had to chuckle when I read about Hockney's fixation with pop idol of the time, Cliff Richard, and how he would refer to him as Doll Boy - a reference to Richard's 1959 hit Living Doll.  Within the exhibition, this starts with the oil on board paintings We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961) and ends with Cliff (1962).  The former takes its title from Walt Whitman's poem and was also inspired by a newspaper headline which read 'Two Boys Cling to Cliff All Night' - Hockney decided to play about with the headline's actual meaning, choosing to imagine that two young men were clinging to his pin-up rather than a precipice.  The latter work is a combination of brown, grey and blue with a crudely painted, smeared red heart.  It's childish, blatant and fun.

I can't really mention humour without mentioning dress-up either.  Even if you haven't visited this exhibition (it ends tomorrow), you've may well have seen photos on Facebook of friends donned in a gold lamé jacket (with matching bag), blonde wig and chunky frames.  It has to be done, although I wasn't brave enough to wear the wig, particularly as two young people wandered by at the time.

 

Alongside the humour are sobering thoughts.  When Hockney was studying at the Royal College of Art, homosexual acts were illegal in Britain and it's no wonder that in many ways, Hockney's work celebrates the sexual liberty he found in America.  Every part of the exhibition touches directly and indirectly on Hockney's sexuality.  He is said to have been impressed with the way in which Whitman wrote about being gay and he could relate to the descriptions of desire in Cavafy's work.  One of the studies for a portrait in 'Familiar Faces' is for the painting Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968), a depiction of the two long-term lovers.

Although I found the other studies and early works interesting and informative, I am naturally drawn to Hockney's bold portraits.  I love the strong colours that Hockney uses and I was happy to look at these studies but I almost lamented not seeing the finished works.  The sheer scale of them is impressive.

But I did experience that pleasure of seeing a work I've looked at before in a new light.  Peter Getting out of Nick's Pool (1966) - the painting that won Hockney first place in the John Moores Painting Prize - is a painting that I've felt indifferent about but thought was pleasant to look at.  In the context of the studies around it, my response is different.  The bold, sun-lit colours are appealing but the adjacent photograph of Hockney's lover and muse, Peter Schlesinger, which informs the final piece, highlights the desire felt by the artist for the man he has painted.  It's this desire that makes the painting easy to relate to rather than to simply view as a sort of snapshot of Hockney's life in the California sunshine.  And next to this painting is the commissioned lithograph for the Munich Olympics, Olympische Spiele München 1972 (70/71) which I really liked looking at because the way in which Hockney has captured both water and shadow with a limited number of colours works really well.

I think one of the reasons this exhibition is enjoyable is because David Hockney's personality really comes across through commentary and photos.  I take nothing away from the man himself because the range of work on display within a relatively small exhibition space is intriguing.  I could have studied each work without reading about it and still enjoyed the exhibition.  But the way in which the exhibition has been curated is a credit to the Walker Art Gallery, informing and enhancing the viewing experience.

Keywords at Tate Liverpool

Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain was a slightly frustrating experience for me when I visited it this afternoon.  The exhibition uses Raymond Williams' book Keywords - A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976) as a structure for its narrative.  So works are positioned opposite huge cursive writing of words (by Luca Frei and Will Holder) such as 'Private', 'Violence' and 'Materialism' - headings or the eponymous keywords which have been selected from Williams' book.

Unlike many exhibitions that focus on one or two words as a central theme, Keywords takes a whole cluster of words as it explores works that cover the themes and interpretations of these words.  Having flicked through the book, it certainly looks as though it makes for interesting reading, like an expounded dictionary of selected words.  The point of Williams' book is that words often have many different meanings but they also develop relationships with other words; words which often have a variety of different meanings too.  So in the exhibition, works are placed opposite select words and works without a concrete indication of which words they belong to.

Because words and their meanings have such fluidity, it would seem that the arrangement of the works with their own fluidity of interpretation would work very well.  But actually, the experience is a bit overwhelming.  I found myself looking at a variety of paintings and sculptures and then trying to find their 'headings' and from that, how they explore them.  About a third of the way through, I decided not to force the issue too much and so I focused mostly on the works themselves, reading any information that Tate Liverpool had provided on them.

That being said, I found some gems here.  Within the film programme, I watched some of Dick Jewell's Headcases (1989) where twenty to thirty-somethings are asked a series of questions about sex, politics and their perceptions of themselves.  The film's humour comes across as interviewees - look out for Neneh Cherry of Buffalo Stance fame - respond spontaneously to some rather intrusive questions.  In contrast to that was a solemn triptych by Stephen Willats - Living with Practical Realities (1978) - in which a pensioner explains the lonely reality of her existence in a high rise flat.

There are other works that I feel I should mention.  Derek Jarman's Ataxia - Aids is Fun (1993); a painting that actively gives the viewer a sense of this particular manifestation of the illness - one in which the sufferer loses control over the co-ordination of their limbs - and bites back at those that would seek to hold back on sympathy.  I was drawn to the vibrant blues of Anish Kapoor's Untitled (1983) and their pleasing forms, much the same as I was to Tony Cragg's bronze sculptures, On the Savannah (1988).

A personal delight was a video by Duvet Brothers, Blue Monday/War Machine (1984) - a very apt year.  The first segment of the film syncs the New Order track (slightly remixed) to footage of politicians, nuclear explosions and textile mills but it does it in such a way that the footage seems to inform the lyrics.  The briefer, following segment features the persistent image of cannons firing to the sound of the equally persistent motto, "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Overall, it isn't that Keywords is incoherent, it's just a bit of a hectic experience and quite an assault on the senses.  If that's how you like your exhibitions, go and see it because there are some fantastic works on display here.  If you don't, consider it first.  I'm not at all sorry I went but I did feel like having a good sit down afterwards.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/keywords-art-culture-and-society-1980s-britain