David hockney 82 portraits & 1 still life

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this frozen moment, that was very unreal to me … Compared to Rembrandt looking at himself for

Fig. 25 George, Blanche, Celia, Albert and Percy, London, 1983. Photographic collage, edition of 20, 111.8 x 119.4 cm

hours and hours and scrutinising his face, and putting all these hours into the picture that you’re

made some experiments with a Polaroid camera, a novelty

going to look at, naturally there’s many more hours

technology popular in the 1970s. It produced distinctive,

than you can give it. A photograph is the other

square photographs that developed themselves within

way round. It’s a fraction of a second frozen,

seconds before the viewer’s eyes. Taking scores of Polaroid

so the moment you’ve looked at it for even four

photographs of the same object from slightly different

seconds, you’ve looked at it for longer than

angles and assembling them together as a collage offered

the camera did.27

Hockney a sudden and unexpected liberation from what he had identified as the twin tyrannies of photography: the

He articulates a similar critique today, and the portraits in

single viewpoint and the snapshot’s denial of temporality. 29

the present exhibition are testimony to his insistence on

The camera’s weakness, as he put it in a piquant phrase,

spending many hours studying his subjects, an extended

lay in ‘looking at the world from the point of view of a

period of intimate exchange. He describes them as ‘anti-

paralysed cyclops – for a split second’. 30 The collages,

photographic’ works.

while clearly legible, nonetheless visibly enshrined multiple

28

Despite this, since the early 1980s, photography has

34

viewpoints and inscribed the elapse of time between each

played a significant role in his output. He had always made

of the individual photographs being made. This practice,

hundreds of photographs while travelling, and also in the

of course, paid homage to the procedure underlying

studio, recording work in progress: many of his paintings,

Picasso’s and Braque’s early Cubist paintings, which had so

including Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy and Portrait of an

brilliantly untethered the moorings of visual representation

Artist (Pool with Two Figures), used photographs as raw

in the years before the First World War. Hockney’s earliest

material. A turning point was reached in 1982, when he

Polaroid experiment was essentially a witty pastiche – a

Fig. 26 My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, Nov. 1982. Photographic collage, edition of 20, 120.7 x 69.9 cm

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this frozen moment, that was very unreal to me … Compared to Rembrandt looking at himself for

Fig. 25 George, Blanche, Celia, Albert and Percy, London, 1983. Photographic collage, edition of 20, 111.8 x 119.4 cm

hours and hours and scrutinising his face, and putting all these hours into the picture that you’re

made some experiments with a Polaroid camera, a novelty

going to look at, naturally there’s many more hours

technology popular in the 1970s. It produced distinctive,

than you can give it. A photograph is the other

square photographs that developed themselves within

way round. It’s a fraction of a second frozen,

seconds before the viewer’s eyes. Taking scores of Polaroid

so the moment you’ve looked at it for even four

photographs of the same object from slightly different

seconds, you’ve looked at it for longer than

angles and assembling them together as a collage offered

the camera did.27

Hockney a sudden and unexpected liberation from what he had identified as the twin tyrannies of photography: the

He articulates a similar critique today, and the portraits in

single viewpoint and the snapshot’s denial of temporality. 29

the present exhibition are testimony to his insistence on

The camera’s weakness, as he put it in a piquant phrase,

spending many hours studying his subjects, an extended

lay in ‘looking at the world from the point of view of a

period of intimate exchange. He describes them as ‘anti-

paralysed cyclops – for a split second’. 30 The collages,

photographic’ works.

while clearly legible, nonetheless visibly enshrined multiple

28

Despite this, since the early 1980s, photography has

34

viewpoints and inscribed the elapse of time between each

played a significant role in his output. He had always made

of the individual photographs being made. This practice,

hundreds of photographs while travelling, and also in the

of course, paid homage to the procedure underlying

studio, recording work in progress: many of his paintings,

Picasso’s and Braque’s early Cubist paintings, which had so

including Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy and Portrait of an

brilliantly untethered the moorings of visual representation

Artist (Pool with Two Figures), used photographs as raw

in the years before the First World War. Hockney’s earliest

material. A turning point was reached in 1982, when he

Polaroid experiment was essentially a witty pastiche – a

Fig. 26 My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, Nov. 1982. Photographic collage, edition of 20, 120.7 x 69.9 cm

35


Working stages of cat. 54, Barry Humphries, 26th, 27th, 28th March 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Working stages of cat. 65, Margaret Hockney, 14th, 15th, 16th August 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Working stages of cat. 54, Barry Humphries, 26th, 27th, 28th March 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Working stages of cat. 65, Margaret Hockney, 14th, 15th, 16th August 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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9 Joan Agajanian Quinn, 16th, 17th, 18th October 2013 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Kevin Druez, 28th, 29th, 30th October 2013 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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9 Joan Agajanian Quinn, 16th, 17th, 18th October 2013 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

90

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Kevin Druez, 28th, 29th, 30th October 2013 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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45 John Fitzherbert, 17th, 18th, 19th July 2014 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Oona Zlamany, 22nd, 23rd July 2014 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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45 John Fitzherbert, 17th, 18th, 19th July 2014 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Oona Zlamany, 22nd, 23rd July 2014 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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67 Isabella Clark, 26th, 27th, 28th August 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Celia Birtwell, 31st August, 1st, 2nd September 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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67 Isabella Clark, 26th, 27th, 28th August 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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Celia Birtwell, 31st August, 1st, 2nd September 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm

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