calendario eventi  :: 

X

16/10/2006

Howard Hodgkin

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

This exhibition traces the evolution of Howard Hodgkin's work over six decades, from the early portraits and interiors of the 1950s and 1960s, to his use of the wooden panel and painted frame in the 1970s, through to his more gestural paintings since the 1980s.
Hodgkin describes his work as 'representational pictures of emotional situations'. Working from memory, he both reveals and obscures his subjects by layering the picture surface with bold colours and distinctive marks, often over a period of several years. Neither wholly abstract nor figurative, his paintings attempt to recreate the intensity of experience.
Hodgkin completed Memoirs 1949 when he was sixteen, while a student at Camberwell School of Art, and considers the painting his first mature work. Displayed by the entrance to the exhibition, its vivid colours, flattened perspective and equal treatment of figure and object anticipate many of the themes and techniques that Hodgkin developed and refined in later work. Memoirs portrays a social exchange long after the moment has occurred and introduces the artist's enduring preoccupation with translating the act of remembering into paint.

'The early pictures are to some degree a rehearsal for what is to come.' 2001
From the moment he appeared on the art scene, Hodgkin has taken a unique path. As a young artist he was close friends with some of the emerging stars of the 1960s but his painting style remained distinct from art movements typically associated with this era, such as Pop art. Many of Hodgkin's early paintings refer to his personal experience of Britain's vibrant scene through representations of his artist friends.
Although traditional in subject matter, these are not conventional portraits. In Mr and Mrs Robyn Denny 1960, Hodgkin moves away from depicting the physical appearance of his subjects. He combines figuration and abstraction to capture instead the feeling of being in the presence of this fashionable young couple. representations of his artist friends.
Other paintings refer to local, domestic spaces where social gatherings occurred, such as Acacia Road 1966. The picture plays hide-and-seek with reality as fragmented forms and painterly symbols allude to individuals and objects within an interior space.

'The more evanescent the emotion I want to convey, the thicker the panel, the heavier the framing, the more elaborate the border, so that this delicate thing will remain protected and intact.' 1984
During the late 1960s Hodgkin experimented with different formats and painting supports. In R.B.K. 1969-70, a portrait of the artist RB Kitaj, Hodgkin introduced one of his signature motifs, the painted frame. These borders both encase the subject and draw attention to the works as objects. He reinforced this physicality when he changed from canvas to wood - a solid support which allows him to apply many layers of paint over long periods.
Around this time Hodgkin virtually eliminated figurative references, restricting himself instead to dots, stripes, splodges and overlapping planes of colour. His subject matter also evolved as he turned to nature and outdoor environments, particularly in relation to his travels. Bombay Sunset 1972-3 recalls a spectacular sunset in India. By transforming the landscape into a brilliantly distilled field of pattern and colour, Hodgkin creates a visual equivalent for his specific memory of this experience.

'It's the moods, the way people live in India, that has probably influenced my painting very much...everything is visible, somehow, there.' 1984
In 1964 Hodgkin made his first trip to India. However, his fascination with the country had begun much earlier, when his art teacher introduced him to Indian painting at the age of fourteen. Struck by the bold colours and the rich combination of styles, Hodgkin began to buy Indian miniatures of his own, assembling a fine collection of paintings and drawings which has been displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum.
Over the years Hodgkin has continued to return to India because, as he explains, it is 'somewhere else'. His artistic relationship with the country ranges from exhibiting in the First India Triennale in 1968 to designing a mural in 2000 for the British Council Building in New Delhi by architect Charles Correa. Paintings referring to the people he befriended in India, including artist Jamini Roy and historian Foy Nissen, also evoke Hodgkin's experience of India itself - its exotic colours, energies and rhythms.

'I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations.'
In 1976 Hodgkin discovered a medium called Liquin which transformed his method of working. It reduced the drying time of his pigments and allowed him to build up layers of oil while preserving the paint's luminosity and fluidity, as visible in the overlapping marks of Red Bermudas 1978-80 and the translucent glazes in Clean Sheets 1982-4.
Hodgkin's work of the late 1970s reached a new level of emotional intensity as his subject matter grew more personal and intimate. Reflecting his admiration for the painter Edouard Vuillard and the Symbolist poets, Hodgkin uses pure colour to depict transient moments not by describing them, but by suggesting them indirectly. The pictures present reality through fragmented glimpses - they both reveal and conceal their subject.
In addition to moments of anger, jealousy or pain, certain pictures explicitly refer to erotic situations. The unpainted curve of wood in the lower register of Waking up in Naples 1980-4 models the contour of a reclining nude.
In 1984 Hodgkin represented Britain in the XLI Venice Biennale. He chose to paint the walls of the British Pavilion eau de nil green, a colour similar to the walls of this gallery, to reflect and diffuse the shimmering light from the Venetian lagoon.
Following in the tradition of Canaletto and JMW Turner, Hodgkin's captivation with Venice resulted in a series of paintings. Venice Evening 1984-5 and Venice Sunset 1989 are among his smallest works and although composed of broad, gestural brushstrokes, they capture the changing illumination of the city with extraordinary accuracy.
Rain 1984-9 evokes weather on a much larger scale - the cloudcover and downpour seem to surround the viewer. Over the years Hodgkin has recorded a vast range of atmospheric conditions. From radiant sunsets to ethereal mists and ominous storm clouds, his work demonstrates how light and weather can shape our moods and define our memories.

'Small pictures can be as large in a public sense as huge pictures. Sometimes more so.' 1993
During the 1980s Hodgkin continued to experiment with scale. Snapshot 1984-93 was one of his largest works and its title underplays the nine years that it took him to complete. Meanwhile, Fisherman's Cove 1993, one of Hodgkin's smallest paintings, possesses a fluidity and boldness of brushstroke that appears disproportionate to its size. These works demonstrate Hodgkin's ability to make large works seem intimate and small works epic.
Chez Max 1996-7 and Memories of Max 1991-5 commemorate Hodgkin's architect friend, the late Max Gordon. While Hodgkin's paintings often represent specific individuals or locations, he remains reluctant to elaborate on his subjects: 'the more an artist talks about his work, the more his words become attached to it... I want people to look at my pictures as pictures.'
Various found domestic items - stools, table-tops and old clocks - have provided unlikely supports for Hodgkin's pictures, emphasising his view of them as objects. For example, the knife marks visible in Evening 1994-5 draw attention to the wood panel's former use as a breadboard.
Hodgkin's work of the 1990s exhibits an increasingly expressive and gestural style. While his subject matter grew more emotionally complex, his brushwork became looser and his mark-making simplified. This economy of means indicated a growing confidence and a refinement of his imagery, as seen in Learning About Russian Music 1999.
Hodgkin has long acknowledged his admiration for the painters Edouard Vuillard, Edgar Degas, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and perhaps above all, Henri Matisse. In his homages to these figures he does not attempt to replicate their respective styles; rather, he aims to invoke his experience of looking at their works.
Over the years, Hodgkin's work has attracted the attention of numerous poets and novelists, inviting various collaborations and responses from writers such as Bruce Chatwin, Susan Sontag and Julian Barnes. Hodgkin draws equal inspiration from literary sources: In Paris with You 1995-6 takes its title from a poem by James Fenton.

'I've found [making large paintings] a very difficult thing to learn how to do and although I've been trying to paint larger pictures for a long time, I've only come near to solving it in the last ten years or so.' 2002
During the past decade Hodgkin has embarked on an ambitious period of productivity. The monumental Undertones of War 2001-3 is his most sombre picture to date, with its shadowy palette surrounded by a heavily hinged and knotted wooden frame. The emphatic brushwork reveals an urgency rarely seen in his earlier work.
In Come into the Garden, 'Maud' 2000-3 Hodgkin leaves substantial areas of plywood exposed. Inspired by the poet Tennyson's Maud, the animated splodges of colour suggest the rose and lily blossoms which call to the poem's lovesick narrator. Here Hodgkin creates a marked tension between the heavy wood support and the delicate emotion depicted.
In recent works such as A Rainbow 2004, Hodgkin expands and builds upon his trademark visual vocabulary as he continues to find new means of expression. In the artist's own words, 'The paramount difficulty is to make the picture into as finite and solid an object as possible in physical terms and to include nothing irrelevant or confusing. Ideally they should be like memorials.' (1967)

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofi'a. Sala Nouvel 1
Santa Isabel, 52 - Madrid
Mondays to Saturdays: 10,00 a 21,00 h.
Sundays: 10,00 - 14,30 h.
Close on Tuesday

stampa

permanent link