Post Modern Art

So for my final ever essay, I had to talk about whether art in the post modern age is still unique, in particular looking at the work of Sigmar Polke. So I thought I'd share my essay and thought process with you.

“The idea of making a painting by copying another visual source is a striking way of suggesting the end of art’s uniqueness” (Belton, 2002 p.36)

                                              

Copying visual material and incorporating it into a new work of art is not exclusively a Post-Modern concept. Throughout history, artists have taken ideas and subjects from images they have seen and used those within their own work. Appropriation of images has indeed formed a valuable part of our artistic evolution, and has shaped what we now know as Post Modern art. The suggestion that such appropriation of images is firstly a new idea, and secondly that it will signify the end of the uniqueness of art to me seems to be a profoundly ignorant statement.

When studying the field of art, copying can be and is used as a valuable tool for the art student to learn technique and style. Transcriptions are often a standard part of art education. This is because we can learn so much from the works of the past, and painting them ourselves gives a much better understanding of the technique, form and perspective that all go into making up a successful painting. This does not mean that the artwork produced is not valid however. The artwork produced can often stand in its own right as a unique and successful work of art because the artist has taken elements from an original source and mutated them, to form a new painting that is entirely original in its composition, colour choice, angles of perspective and other areas. Even if the source material is another painting or other visual material, it still makes that work unique in its own right.  Perhaps it is akin to calling siblings not unique – they share similarities and come from the same source material so to speak, so therefore they are not unique within their own right. To me, that is not a valid point of view.  By altering different elements within a work, you then make that work something new, and by definition, it becomes unique.

Looking specifically at the work of Sigmar Polke, we will see an artist that made great use of appropriation, and yet I would certainly call his works original and unique. They all have something that makes them stand out as individual works that may be similar to, but still different from the source material.

Polke, Hope Is: Wanting to Pull the Clouds 1992

 In his Hope Is: Wanting to Pull The Clouds (1992), Polke has used a layering technique:  the image on the base layer appears to be quite modern and abstract, with a landscape  very similar in colour and composition to many works by Turner, in particular Weymouth, 1811, while over the top is a drawn image taking inspiration from both early drawings by Rembrandt, as well as the more modern Pop Art comic book style of Lichtenstein.  While many of his contemporaries were shying away from images containing figures, Polke appropriated images and incorporated them creating a new orthodox of modern abstract painting. (Richler, 1997 p.213)

Turner, Weymouth, 1811

Polke initiated a series in 1973, titled Original and Forgery in which he deliberately questioned and evaluated concepts of appropriation such as copying and mimicry, copyright issues, and “the fine line between change and reinterpretation bordering on vandalism” (Bismarck, 2009) This work questioned the validity of using appropriation and explored the idea that changing an original work

 could be seen as either pastiche or parody, either paying homage to, or vandalising the original. 

Within his Liebespaar II, 1965 he takes directly from Roy Lichtenstein’s comic strip couples. He paints them with “eccentric Expressionist trimmings” (Lucie-Smith, 1995 p.34), using broad expressive brushstrokes with a very abstract feel over part of the canvas, while the figures are painted far more smoothly, with a definite illustrative, commercial feel to them.  Within this particular painting it is blatantly obvious where his inspiration and appropriation are from, yet in my opinion this does not detract from the uniqueness of it. It is still a work of art within its own right. Taken out of context of any original source material, it still appears to fit well within the genre of the time and is not a carbon copy of another’s work. 

Polke, Liebespaar II 1965

With Polke’s Alice in Wonderland, 1971 he has taken from the early Cubist works of Picasso and Braque where they utilised fabric and collage with their work, as well as the early beginnings of Pop Art in the incorporation of book illustration and commercial design.  Also within the painting is a sketched version of the classic ‘Alice’ image with the mushroom and caterpillar (Larking, 2012). Yet despite all these obvious appropriations from earlier sources, the image succeeds as an original work of art. Within this work he has utilised techniques which we now take for granted in our own work. Collage using fabric as well as paper is a very accepted form of artwork, as is using found materials and incorporating them within our own creations.  What Polke has done is use other materials, add in almost transcription like images, (the basketball player and Alice herself could be seen as being copied directly from another source), and collaged them together in a layering technique. In my mind this created an extremely unique work of art.  The drawn images overlayed on the different fabrics tie the entire artwork together and give it a sense of unity. 

Polke, Alice in Wonderland, 1971

I certainly believe that the art environment in the world today has been greatly enhanced by artists such as Sigmar Polke and his use of appropriation.  Today we have a much wider source of materials to work and draw inspiration from.  And we can ask the question forever about whether something is unique, however that then raises the second question of what is actually uniqueness?  Is it something that is very subjective, as is art itself? I think the answer to that is certainly yes.  Art is subjective, and by the very nature of it, uniqueness is subjective.  Whether you as a person find something individual and unique depends entirely on your set of personal circumstances.  The things that you have experienced within your life up until the point that you are viewing something, will determine your opinion on what you are seeing before you.  

For me personally, uniqueness is something intangible.  It is something within the picture that you find different to the ordinary, whether that is aesthetically pleasing to you or not.  I don’t believe for a moment that artists appropriating images from other sources to use within their own work means the end of art’s uniqueness.  I firmly believe that when you explore other sources, cultures and ideas, your work can only grow and improve.  I believe that when you appropriate images you then take that image and make it your own.  As an artist it is necessary to interpret what you see, and put that interpretation onto canvas.  It may be ultimately up to the viewer to interpret that image based on their personal experiences, there still remains however a unique image that only you have created. 

I think that if Polke started out with a critique of consumer society, appropriating images from pop culture to indeed show how art had lost its uniqueness,  he has ultimately ended up showing the world that despite his best intentions, art has perhaps more uniqueness now than ever before. Now we as artists have free reign to absorb other cultures and visual sources and incorporate those into our own work in order to create completely new works that take from the old and new.  Polke’s work displays multiple texts and can be seen as schizophrenic, a discontinuous and abstracted experience.  However they work inexplicably as enjoyable works of art, aesthetically pleasing, both pastiche and a parody of earlier work appropriated for his creations.  He has shown us that anything goes and art can and will retain its uniqueness even in the face of multiple attempts to prove otherwise.  As Bismarck states, “Polke’s love of experiment, of abrupt stylistic changes and of contradiction, irony and mocking distance thus remained essential to his uncategorizable and innovative art” (2009).

REFERENCE LIST

Belton, R.            2002       The World of Art   The Five Mile Press. Vic

Lucie-Smith, E.   1995       Artoday    Phaidon Press Inc. New York

Richler, M.          1997       A World of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington   Scala Publishers     Ltd.           London               

Bismarck, B.       2009       http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4671 , Oxford   University Press, accessed Nov. 21, 2012

Larking, M.          1996-2007  Sigmar Polke: Alice in Wonderland    http://www.dnp.co.jp/artscape/eng/focus/0606_02.html,   Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd, accessed Nov. 21 2012

Not just crayon art! And a little competition too.

So my latest project has been so so much fun! I have been seeing all this crayon art on Pinterest lately, and decided that I wanted to have a go and see what I could come up with.

So I got a packet of Faber Castell crayons (I haven't used the cheaper generic brands, but Faber Castell is so nice and generally very good quality in all their other supplies, so I figured their crayons would work well and they did!), and I broke them up and placed them over the canvas, kind of randomly but not totally random.

I hot glued the crayon to the canvas first, using just a dab of hot glue - this way I didn't have to hold the crayon and burn my fingers until it melted enough to grip itself.

I really enjoyed melting the wax - the hairdryer was pretty hot and it worked quite quickly. I liked how once the stick itself was melted, I could use the directionality of the airflow to push the colours around and mix them together.

How the painting looked once all the wax was melted. I only used a small packet of crayons - 12 in total, and the canvas size is 24 x 48 inches, so not an overly small one.
The I spent some time deciding what I wanted to draw back into the picture, and thought that it would look cool to have a pair of eyes , but I didn't want them staring straight out, I wanted them to be a little bit more provocative.

I used collage here - I printed out a pair of eyes I liked - I had to play around with cropping the image and enlarging them to print on my A4 printer, then I played with the placing of them on the canvas until I found a pleasing composition.

The next step was to work with some ink and basically throw it onto the canvas. I used some Atelier interactive medium and water to create puddles, and let it dry overnight. (It took a while because well...water over wax.....won't soak in).

The next morning I started drawing my images into the picture using Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens which are India Ink in a pen form with a brush tip, so it's like using a paintbrush with the control of a pen. I love love love these!

I had a fair idea of what I was going for and I just got stuck in. Had some music playing (it helps me create!), and just went with the feel of the painting.

Once I got to this point, I knew I needed to take it slow and let the picture tell me when to stop. A few little tweaks to the white areas, and a couple of extra flowers on the right side, and viola! It's done!

And so here is where you come in! I am having a competition to name the painting. The winner will receive a print in time for Christmas! There are two ways to enter - either go to my Facebook page using the links at the top of this page, like the page, share it on your wall and leave a comment for me with your 'title'.
OR
Share my blog on your blogsite, and leave a comment on this page with your 'title'.

You can enter more than once, just follow the rules for each entry (as in, you must share the page and comment for each entry!).
Competition will run until December 1st and my ever supportive husband will choose the winning title - it will be the one he feels is the most creative and fits the most with the work! I'll contact the winner after the close of competition for their address!

Have a great day!

How to make an exhibition a success!

The exhibition was a great success! Our opening night had well in excess of 100 people and quite a number of works were sold! We had plenty of food and wine and so many fantastic comments on the work.

 

After we had set up the food and organised the drinks table, it was time to relax and play hosts to our numerous arriving guests.  The next half hour to 45 minutes was spent showing people our respective artworks, and catching up with each other intermittently with exclamations of "so and so just LOVES your work!"

The wine certainly helped ease nerves! I wasn't actually nervous at all in the lead up to the exhibition, however as the end of the day drew closer on the Monday, I began to be a little apprehensive. After all, there were going to be random strangers looking at, commenting on, and judging my work! Scary prospect.

 I had several people comment on this work, 'Imagination'. It sold which was just an amazing feeling! I think I could have sold it several times over though, because I had so many wonderful comments on it. People wanted to know how I had come up with the idea for the work, what techniques I had used, and what my thought processes while creating it were. It was truly a wonderful validation of all the hard work I put in. And as I was explaining my work, it occurred to me that this was really it! I was now a fully fledged professional artist! This is what it feels like for those people you see who are having exhibitions and selling work. They really are just like me - maybe it gets old for them if they do it all the time, but I don't know. I somehow think that the novelty of 'hosting' your work to people wouldn't wear off quickly. It's really rather exhilarating!

 Our guest speaker was our teacher and mentor, Heather Stewart. She was introduced by our other teacher and mentor, Andrea Clifford. Heather began Brougham School of Art and Photography, and it was wonderful to hear her say such lovely things about us and our work and the hard work we put into the exhibition.

In addition to the painting I sold, I've just found out that the bottom two prints of mine have an excited buyer! A lot of the art sold was to friends and/or relatives during the exhibition. I think that if someone you know actually wants to pay for your work, it's a massive compliment! It's awesome when it's not someone you know because it validates that you ARE good enough. That your work is of a high enough standard that random strangers want to have it on their walls. But also, when it's someone you do know, it's very flattering that they are impressed enough with what you've created to fork over their hard earned cash, rather than simply asking you for it as if the work you put in isn't worth them paying, but they're happy to have it if it's free. So either way, when you sell work, it's a fantastic affirmation of your professional worth. (oh, and thank you Mum for the photos! - if you want to see more of the photography stylings of Liz McMahon, check her blog out here.

How to hold an exhibition

Well this weekend has been a busy one! I had 4 works in the Golden Plains Art Awards:

Devils Marbles at Sunset - Pastel

After The Storm - acrylic on canvas

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse - acrylic on canvas

Dead Tree in Front of the Dunes - acrylic on canvas

I also had 4 unframed works for sale in this exhibition. Hopefully I sold some! I delivered these works to the venue on Thursday, and then yesterday I delivered 17 works for the exhibition that I, together with 11 of my classmates, are holding as the final ever graduating students from our school. (It is closing at the end of this semester, which is very sad, but luckily most of us will have completed our degrees!). We spent the entire day yesterday hanging work and making the gallery look AMAZING!

Unframed prints - so so many!

 We had so much work between us! There are 12 of us exhibiting and we have quite literally filled the entire gallery. The gallery consists of two front rooms, a hallway which you can see in the photo below, then another room to the left after the office (which is just at the end of the hallway in the next photo). To the right of the end of the hall, is another room which is now filled with prints and drawings, and then off that yet another space filled with drawings and prints, and a couple of artist books as well.

Working out the spacing

Artist and self portrait!

 We worked hard, but for the most part the day was lots of fun! It was certainly tiring and a great look into what it takes to to stage an exhibition. We all brought our work in, and the large paintings were all placed in the two front rooms and the hall. All the drawings and prints were put into the back area. We then had to work out which paintings should go where. This was done methodically, room by room, and we had pretty good general consensus on most of the work, but luckily we had our trainers, Heather and Andrea, there to help us along and guide us (I'm sure there may have been just a few disagreements if not!).

Hard at work!

 After we decided on the larger paintings, we made the decision that the smaller uniformed size square ones should all go in the hall to be grouped together, then we had to begin measuring! This involves working out eye height. So we took Rachelle, who is probably height wise, the average of us all, and decided that her eye height would be our midline. All the paintings and pictures would be centered on this height, of 160cms. Then we had to measure all the paintings and find the middle of them, and then add the distance between the middle of the picture and the height that the hanging wire sits at. This measurement was added onto our eye height. For example, if the hanging wire on a painting was 23cms above the middle of it, we added 23 to 160. This gave us a measurement of 183cms, and that measurement is where the hook for the painting was placed on the wall! Sounds complicated, but it's not really, it's just tedious. The end result though, is very harmonious - all the paintings have their middle sitting at eye height and it makes it pleasing for people as they wander the gallery! You can probably tell though from that, that it made for a loooooong day!

Two of my copperplate etchings.

We have prints, unframed and framed, along with things like artist books!

 Once the paintings were all up, we had to measure the distance between them to make sure it was even, put numbers on the wall next to them all for the catalog, (so people know whose work is whose!), the we had to use a level (or our eyes when we got fed up with the level!) to make sure that they were all sitting straight on the wall! After that we had lunch then moved on to the prints and drawings! Same deal again, except there are waaaaaaay more of them than the paintings! AND they were all hung in multiples on the hanging strips. So a lot of measuring again! Then we had to finish up with the number system, and Rachelle worked very hard on the catalog making sure it corresponded with the numbers on the wall - this was a little difficult with a few because not everyone was there, but we got it figured out in the end!

Oil on canvas - Altered Landscape - one of mine

Mixed media on canvas, another of mine, titled Mixed Emotions

Nude - I still love the round canvas I painted this on.

My transcription titled Musician - oil on canvas

The end result (or at least a small section of it!)

I am hard at work hanging prints and making sure they are spaced and centered evenly

A personal favourite - my mixed media on canvas titled Imagination.

This was all my work stacked up at home the night before, ready to transport to the gallery

In the end, we cleaned up, and had a look around. And the difference seeing your paintings and prints on a wall with a little number plate next to it in a gallery setting, to seeing them at home laying everywhere, is HUGE!! They all look so professional! And it makes you kind of realise that a lot of the work you see in galleries, looks like that because of the work that the artists and curators have done. That you shouldn't judge your own work compared to what you see in a gallery until you have seen yours in the same kind of setting, and seen how it changes the look of a work. It makes you feel good. Yes, the work has to be of a good enough standard to begin with, but placing it in a gallery setting makes it just so much more professional looking. A great lesson and a great confidence builder as well.

I'll do a follow up post with more pics of the exhibition and opening next week!

Halloween in Australia

In celebration of the fact that Halloween is almost upon us, and also because I LOVE Halloween, I thought I'd share with you all a little history on the origins of the celebration, courtesy of the History Channel,  and some artwork I've seen that is just awesome (Halloween inspired of course!).

Perhaps surprisingly to some, Halloween is not exclusively an American 'thing' or tradition. It actually has it's roots in Celtic origins. The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain involved people wearing costumes and lighting bonfires to ward off roaming ghosts. Living 2000 years ago, the Celts celebrated their new year on November 1, because this day was considered the end of the summer period and the start of the cold dark winter period that was associated with human death. They believed that the night before the New Year was when the boundaries between living and dead were blurred and the ghosts of the departed were able to roam the earth, damaging crops and causing problems. During their night of  celebration, the Druids wore animal skins as costumes, attempted to tell each other's fortunes, and made animal and crop sacrifices to the gods in their huge bonfires.

By the 9th Century Christianity had spread to the Celtic lands, and the church decreed November 2nd to be All Souls Day, which was a day to honour the dead. The day was celebrated in much the same fashion as the Celtic Samhain - dressing up in costumes like saints, angles and devils, with parades and bonfires. The day was called All-hallows, or All-hallowmas, and the night before began to be known as All-Hallows eve, eventually becoming Halloween.

Halloween did not become a tradition within America until the second half of the 19th Century when mainly Irish immigrants helped to make the celebration popular. Copying from the English and Irish, Americans began to dress up in costume and go house to house asking for food or money, in what would eventually become trick or treating. Over time, Halloween became more about community get togethers than about superstition and ghosts. The idea of giving local children candy came about in a combined effort of community involvement and to prevent tricks being played on themselves.

Many superstitions and beliefs have formed the celebration which is now called Halloween, and while some of them may now be a little commercial, I find Halloween to be far less so than Christmas. Halloween has become about dressing up, having fun, scaring each other and engaging with your local community by trick or treating. The kids love it, and it's really harmless fun. And all you have to do to prevent having a trick played on you is give out some lollies! I can't see the harm in that!!

Image courtesy of http://www.guildwars.com/events/contests/halloween2011/

http://radojavor.deviantart.com/art/Scarecrow-41286004

http://radojavor.deviantart.com/art/Scarecrow-41286004

http://chatterboxbydesign.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/halloween-part-2-decorations/

http://sharddot.blogspot.com.au/2010_10_03_archive.html

Oh! And did I mention how cool the decorating aspect is??? I just love the pumpkins and the scary props and I only wish that it was that time of year over here, instead of it being spring!

How to be an artist in the technology age

So I am sitting here procrastinating about doing some very much needs to be done homework, and it got me to thinking about how easy it is for me to find something else that just 'needs to be done'. So instead of researching artists and doing my journal work, I am on here writing about the way technology can take over and become a business in itself.

I have a blog account (obviously!), as well as a personal facebook page which takes up WAY too much time, and an art/business facebook page. I have a Pinterest page, which is proving to be a very successful time waster indeed, but it's just oh so tempting to browse things on there..... I have a website that I try to keep updated, I have also got an online store, an  Instagram account, a Red Bubble store (that I almost never get on to anymore!) and now I have joined the Art Colony! A virtual studio for artists to congregate and give and get feedback on their work.

So how does an artist successfully manage all these technological areas AND still find time to actually produce decent artwork? I want to keep all of these things updated and network online to improve my business, but I also want to have time to not only paint and draw, but just keep up with everything else that needs doing in my everyday life...not to mention working and going to school as well!

I am going to be finished school in a couple of months, and after Christmas and New Year I'll be starting up my art lessons for children again. So I've been online searching for ideas and it's really very very useful. I've found SO MANY ideas that I can adapt into my own version and that I know will work really well for kids of all ages and will produce some awesome kids artwork. But as I browse, I often see images that inspire me to want to paint and draw and experiment! My problem is time. And it's sort of a catch 22 situation. If I wasn't browsing online forums and websites, I wouldn't get all these bursts of creativity that are overcrowding my brain at the moment. But I'd have way more time to focus on my work. But if I focus so much more on my work, I feel like I'm disadvantaging myself in this technological age. In essence, I feel like I'll be missing out on certain areas in which to not only market myself and my work, but also to get new ideas for both artwork and lessons.

So what do people do in this day and age? Do they hire people to keep up with their online self, or do they just ignore it and stay old school so to speak? Or do they keep trying to keep up with everything and leave the washing and housework to someone else? Actually.....I like that last idea....think I'll go with that one for now! :)

Art Takes Miami

Sarah Wherry

I'd just like to also let you know about the competition I've entered - it's called Art Takes Miami and it's a great chance to have my work featured on an international stage!

Just click my name above to go to my portfolio and vote for me if you like my work. The more votes I have the higher my chance of being selected.

Thanks!

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

So last month I was fortunate enough to see some absolutely amazing stuff. We went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and I got to see work by artists who I have studied and admired and who by all accounts are some of the absolute Masters of the Universe....oops! Haha, I meant Masters of the art world. But actually, if I think about that for a minute, maybe they are Masters Of The Universe? Just not in the HeMan and Skeletor sense of the word.
Lets just analyze that for a minute. We have a ridiculous competition here on Earth (well we have several, but let's not digress!). The one I am referring to is the Miss Universe competition. How on EARTH (yes, I am being quite literal with this one) can we humans have any kind of competition which states that the winner is the best in the entire UNIVERSE?! We have our measly little (but still quite lovely) home here in planet Earth, and we are one of 8 planets now in our solar system. But there are billions upon billions of planets and solar systems out there in the universe. Perhaps there are even HeMen and Skeletors and maybe even a Chewbacca or two out there. The point I'm getting at is that we don't know, so we can't judge something as being the best of it's category in the universe.
That being said, if we are so egocentric as to say something here IS the best of the best in the universe no less, I think some of the artistic Masters whose work I saw recently would have to be in that category.
There! I made my point. I knew I'd get there eventually!

So...one of my favourite artists in the entire world, maybe the universe, who knows....is Joseph William Mallord Turner. He is AMAZING! I just love love love his work. I saw a few of his paintings in the NGA and they really did take my breath away. Now I appreciate that not everyone can share my all encompassing love for all things art, and by this point in our little excursion I certainly had a couple of fairly bored companions. But they ever so graciously simply sat and waited without complaint while I wandered around the gallery with my hands behind my back, (so I didn't inadvertently touch a painting and get arrested!), exclaiming "Oh my goodness, would you LOOK at this?!?!" or something of the sort anyway.

Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, Turner, 1835

I was also absolutely blown away when we saw the only DaVinci painting in the entire Western Hemisphere!!

Ginevra De Benci, Leonardo Da Vinci, 1474 -78

I also saw work by Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, Rembrandt, Picasso....and more. I saw works by Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns...by Ingres and David. We saw a massive array of art history spanning literally hundreds of years. And I was speechless for a lot of it.

Some of the art I saw, in purely technical, academic terms, was mediocre. But it wasn't in reality.  It was amazing because these works of art are all ones we can and have learned from. They are the steps that have provided us with the art that we have today. Every piece of art that has been produced in the history of time, has contributed to what we know and love, and what is acceptable of art today.

It was almost like when you see your favourite band up on stage in person, or if you see a superstar walking down the street. It's a feeling of "wow!!" but also, "huh". And by that I mean, you get a feeling of amazement because you are seeing something in person, right in front of you that you have only ever seen in books, (or on tv, or heard on a cd), and for that aspect it's quite exciting. But also the 'huh' feeling - the ' I can paint like that' or 'I could do something that looks like that' or 'that looks awesome but from a technical standpoint it isn't that impressive'. When you realise that person who seems larger than life, really is just a person.  And that moment is just as important as the 'wow' one. Because it lets you realise that anything really IS possible. That all these Masters of The Universe (hehe) were actually just people. Just like you and me. They simply followed their creative minds to where-ever it lead them, and the end result is a painting that billions of people recognize. It makes you understand that mistakes are meant to be made, and they help form what will eventually become reality.

So what did I get from seeing so much amazing art, and so many amazing sights? I got that you should never ever stop playing, that you should always be happy to experiment and that while you need to know the rules, sometimes when you break them, pure genius flows out. Artistically speaking, of course.

California and David Hockney: How Los Angeles changed his style

Thought I'd share with you all my essay on the fascinating David Hockney!

David Hockney began his career with a very abstracted style of painting. He used his art to express his sexuality in a still conservative London arena. His works combined both abstract and figurative elements, and he used text and numbers heavily within his paintings. After his relocation to California in late 1963 his work took on a new life. He began exploring an almost architectural style, simplified and simplistic, yet at the same time, very realistic. He used strong lines and a far more pastel palette, representative of the typical American suburban colours of the time. Although his work still explored homosexuality, and regularly showed naked men, his style became remarkably different from that which had earned him the respect of his teachers and peers at the Royal College of Art in London.

His painting Doll Boy 1960-61 shows a background with strong diagonal lines overlaid with a very abstracted figure of a boy. The figure is in stark contrast to the controlled background, being painted with hurried brushstrokes that show much expressive movement. The colour within this painting is bright and vibrant and the subject matter explores sexuality in a seemingly open, yet still quite conservative way. Cliff Richards’ song Livin’Doll had been a recent hit and is referenced within the painting in the forms of the numbers 3 and 18 being placed in a simple alphabetical code for the letters C and R.  (Archer, 2002 p.25) The word queen is written over the bottom of the painting, perhaps implying that the Living Doll within Cliff Richards famous song, was actually gay.

We Two Boys Together Clinging, 1961 shares the same hurried brushstrokes and repeated vertical patterns as Doll Boy. The painting also incorporates text and numbers and is done with a bright and vibrant palette. This painting openly explores the idea of homosexuality, with the two boys kissing and looking back at the viewer perhaps in defiance of the still conservative London audience. Both of these paintings are painted in an almost childlike way, very simplified with no detail to be seen. There are no muscles or sculpted tone, as can be found in his later work. Despite the difference in style, he continued to explore his sexuality within his paintings after his relocation to California.

Despite the childlike nature of these early paintings, or perhaps because of the irony of combining such a simplistic style with such adult subject matter, David Hockneys’ work drew acclaim from his peers and earned him success. Archer describes why his work was successful:  ‘... [they are] noteworthy for their wilful mix of abstract and figurative elements, and for the manner in which they used the marks of graffiti and language of teenage crushes in the expression of sexuality and desire.’ (2002, p.25)

After his relocation in late 1963 he found that California was exactly as he had hoped it would be. Within the first week of arriving he had bought a car and earned his American drivers licence. He had driven himself to Los Vegas and won money there, set up a studio and begun painting. It was exactly as he imagined and so he immersed himself fully in the culture of 1960’s America. (Lucie-Smith, 1995 p. 44) His painting Building, Pershing Square, Los Angeles 1964 shows none of his earlier frenzied brushstrokes, rather it looks very deliberate and smooth. The painting is very calming to look at, and is almost architectural in style. He has still incorporated text within this work, but the text has a purpose: it is the name of the building he is depicting. This painting has strong lines, but those lines are painted with a much more muted pastel palette.

Man Taking a Shower in Beverly Hills 1964, shows how he embraced this new architectural style. It shows strong diagonals and a very simplified, or simplistic depending on your viewpoint, look into the bathroom of a man taking a shower. The perspective is distorted and as a viewer you are not quite sure whether you are looking at one room, or three. The tiles on the walls of the shower are painted in such a way that you are not sure which direction the wall is facing. In the upper right corner of the painting is a half view of a dining table and chairs, which begs the question: are we looking at a window type view of another room, or are we looking at a picture of a dining setting? The strong line of the pink carpet adjacent to the shower leads our eye directly to this view, so perhaps Mr Hockney wanted to create some confusion within his picture. The wet naked man within the shower shows how ‘fascinated with the images of young, built, and tan men’ he had become. Indeed, this was a repeated subject in many of his Californian paintings, with many of them including ‘mainly wet, sculpted men’. (www.davidhockney.com)

In A Bigger Splash 1967, he shows us his now favourite subject of the suburban but sunny Californian landscape. This painting is very architectural, utilising a soft pastel palette so typical of the suburbs in America in the 1960’s. It appears very simplified, yet in actuality is quite detailed. The shadows within the plate windows are layered with tonal variations and are very precise. The splash of the water adds movement and vibrancy giving the image layers of interest and ensuring viewer curiosity.  He ‘creates a delightful interplay between the stolid pink verticals of a Los Angeles setting and the exuberance of spray as the unseen diver enters the pool. [There is] no visible presence here, just that lonely, empty chair, and a bare, almost frozen world. Yet that wild white splash can only [have] come from another human’. (www.ibilio.org/wm/paint/auth/hockney/)

According to Hughes, David Hockney shows us a ‘detached, amiable, but sharply discriminating ... affectionate image of the blank good life under the California sun’. (1991 p.420) Before his relocation to California, Hockneys’ work was simplistic yet abstracted, exploring his views on homosexuality with hurried brushstrokes full of movement and bright vibrant colour palettes. After he moved, he embraced the seedy underground of 1960’s Los Angeles and found an entirely new way to express his sexuality through his work. He still created movement and interest within his paintings, simply with a new technique. He piqued the viewers’ curiosity by using a different type of simplification, a more subtle colour palette and a much more naturalistic painting style.  His colours reflect the sun sea and sky that forms so much of the Californian lifestyle and his subjects are the ordinary, yet somehow extraordinary Californian suburb dwellers. These paintings are vastly different in appearance and technique, and seem a world away from the work he was creating in Londons’ cold, dreary and conservative art world. 

David Hockney, The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, 1960-61

Man Taking a Shower in Beverly Hills, 1964 David Hockney

REFERENCE LIST

Archer, Michael. 2002 Art Since 1960 New Edition, Thames and Hudson, London, UK

Hughes, Robert. 1991 Shock of The New, Thames and Hudson, London, UK.

Lucie-Smith, Edward. 1995 Art Today, Phaidon Press Ltd., London, UK.

www.davidhockney.com n.d. accessed June 11, 2012

www.ibilio.org/wm/paint/auth/hockney/ n.d. accessed June 11, 2012