When David Hockney's bright and vivid paintings meet the Old Masters of the Renaissance, who will be better. At the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, UK, the exhibition "Hockney's Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction" opens up a dialogue spanning more than 500 years and attempts to explore Hockney's ideas and theories about technologies such as perspective and projection delineators. For The Guardian commentator Jonathan Jones, Hockney's paintings overshadowed the Old Masters, and the exhibition, like a book he wrote, would reveal new ways of looking at art.
As far as I know, David Hockney never patented a color. But we would say, "Hockney Blue" and "Hockney Red," in fact, Hockney has a whole set of bright and subtle palettes of his own. This is particularly evident at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which he occupies. This museum has one of the best collections of Old Master paintings in The UK. These classical masters play against opponents. Next to Domenico Venezian's 15th-century Annunciation hangs a version of the Virgin Mary, to which angels are cheering, covered in intense, almost psychedelic colors, emerald lawns where dark pink and blue shades shine together, and the yellow floor is paved with radioactive terracotta lines.
"The Primula of our Lady", Domenico Veneziano
Annunciation II, After Fra Angelico, David Hockney
The Renaissance "lost". But Hockney would never say such a thing. He competed with artists from 500 years ago in an intimate and friendly way, as if he were attending the Royal Academy of Arts with Veneziano, rather than with Allen Jones and R. Berger. Generation of RB Kitaj. What was Hockney thinking when he painted his renaissance Annunciation in 2017? He experimented with perspective theory, and the exhibition highlighted Hockney's experiment by analyzing Veneziano's violation of single-point perspective through a computer. Therefore, while drawing on Hockney's passionate colors, the exhibition leads you to think about Western art's exploration of how to depict the world in realistic depth.
Hockney didn't think it was a good idea, though. He believes that perspective is a limited way of observation. The exhibition is held at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge and the Heong Gallery in Downing College, with the Incense Gallery being the main venue. There was a Hockney-made film shown on the subject of his favorite Chinese scrolls, which unfolded to show an epic vision of an emperor on the Grand Canal and the world around him. How does art recreate that magnificent picture? Hockney did a great job. Next to a landscape by meindert Hobbema, a Dutch golden age landscape painter, Hockney presents what he calls "re-perspective" on six canvases, where the road unfolds between two rows of tall trees, and the space in the distance does not contract but extends outward. Again are those colors: fiery farmhouses, emerald farmland. In this fascinating picture, you can see art history more clearly.
Imitation of Hoberma, David Hockney 2017
The exhibition is like Hockney's well-illustrated, concise, and inspiring book. You don't have to agree with his theories to find that they open up the way you see art. One exhibition hall presents his claim in Secret Knowledge that Ingres's surprisingly accurate portraits of the 19th century were made using camera lucida. We'll see real-life examples of optical innovations under this Industrial Revolution, paintings by Angle himself, and Damien Hirst, McKellen, and Alan Bennett by Hockney himself with a projection delineator. Hockney's paintings are interesting and have a free vitality.
Hockney's most recent self-portrait
12 Portraits of Imitation Ingres (Partial), 1999-2000, David Hockney
Sometimes, it all seems even unfair. Hockney's bright colors will overshadow those Old Masters. Next to a Picture of Hockney's Yorkshire Landscape, The Hampstead view of Constabeuer is reduced to a wet handkerchief. To reiterate, this was not intentional. In a room full of paintings of Dutch flowers, the dialogue between the past and the present is perfectly choreographed. On the screen in the center of the exhibition hall, Hockney's cartoon of flowers drawn with his iPad is played, and the flowers disappear one after another. You can see the fragility and variability of the blooming flowers depicted by Hockney, and then go up close to the Dutch paintings, and see insects and snails crouching on the bright tulips.
April 17, 2020, iPad painting, David Hockney
Despite exuding artisanal humility and disrespect for the artists' "secret knowledge," the exhibition will eventually make you feel respect for Hockney. You begin to wonder if he was a living "Classical Master." Not everything is a witty view of perspective and machines. Among the museum's masterpieces hang Le Parc des Sources, Vichy, painted by Hockney in 1970. Two people sat side by side with their backs to us. Long wavy curls are draped over their collars, exuding a moving atmosphere of the times.
Le Parc des Sources, Vichy, David Hockney
They were in a manicured park overlooking a boulevard that narrowed and stretched out into gaps in the sky. On this three-meter-wide painting, the trees are purely colored walls. One side is blue, the other side is more slate gray, matching the clothes of the people, under the tree is a large shade. These intense, seductive colors surround you and immerse yourself in them. I came back repeatedly to enjoy the feeling of being immersed in the atmosphere. This is a painting as an art film.
You can conceive of all sorts of stories, speculating about the identities of two people and their calm and intense contemplation in the face of the deep landscape. It could be a love rendezvous or a whisper about a mutual friend. What about the third chair that was empty next to them? A photograph in the catalogue shows Hockney himself as the owner of that seat. The two friends in the photo are fashion designer Ossie Clark and sculptor Mo McDermott. But these facts do not exhaust the mystery of this painting, nor do they exhaust its romance and magnificence. It was the big picture he loved. As big as life.
Grand Canyon One, 2017, David Hockney
In the end, I don't believe that all this can be done with optical instruments. All great artists have their own secrets. David Hockney has undoubtedly been.
The exhibition "Hockney's Eye: Art and Technology in Depiction" will run until August 29, 2022.