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Museum of Modern Art Oxford, August 26 2010. Time and Place’ at the Museum of Modern Art has been extended until 12th September 2010. A traffic accident, a tortuous re-routing via High Wycombe, torrential rain and a recent fall all conspired to make Howard Hodgkin’s arrival at the Museum of Modern Art last night – some 80 minutes late - an even more eagerly anticipated event. But it was worth the wait. Seated in front of a series of four magnificent canvases – some of the largest Hodgkin’s has ever painted – part of his current exhibition ‘Time and Place’, the artist’s ponderous, resonant delivery electrified the room, just as his tears, his candour and his evident frail health moved his audience, as his canvases do, towards what Andrew Graham –Dixon described as ‘emotional congruence, empathy and affinity ’ with one of Britain’s greatest living artists. ‘You talk about art, and I’ll talk about money’, Hodgkin growled, reaching for a glass of red wine. It was like watching a rare, venerable giant Galapagos tortoise being tempted out of its shell by an engaging, charming schoolboy with a bunch of dandelions – each bloom hand-picked, delicately proffered and tactfully withdrawn at the slightest exhalation from Hodgkin’s wary nostrils. ‘I don’t mind being an endangered species’, Hodgkin declared last night, an artist for whom privacy and secrecy within which he can create have always been paramount. Graham- Dixon’s approach differed markedly from the BBC’s 'Imagine' documentary being shown as part of ‘Time and Place’ in which Alan Yentob’s confident prompts as to what Hodgkin might have intended have the effect of a very sharp stick, reducing Hodgkin from demurring monosyllable to silence – although he does startle Yentob at the end by picking up a brush and applying it in a perfunctory, mischievous manner to a small canvas which he then turns to the wall. But Hodgkin last night was thrilling: revelatory, incisive, surprising, amusing. When Graham-Dixon suggested that rooting his paintings in reality kept Hodgkin ‘honest’, avoiding repetition and reduplication ‘without feeling’, Hodgkin replied: ‘We’re leaving something out here’, and paid tribute to his teachers, particularly Wilfrid Blunt, brother of Anthony, who in the brief year he spent at Eton encouraged Hodgkin to value paintings as things, rather than mere images or illustrations, unlike most of his contemporaries, particularly from his social mileu. ‘Culture is the enemy of art’, he’s commented, previously. Blunt’s African statue of a dog with an erect penis which ‘startled parents’ but expressed ‘up yours’ gave Hodgkin a sense of the integrity of the outsider, a state of mind which still persists, despite the late recognition he has received in the UK. More prolific than ever as he enters his 78th year, Hodgkin admits to long periods of contemplation, sprung from memories, before completing recent work relatively quickly. ‘The most successful are the barest – I’ll stop there’. He scans the audience. ‘I’m working now’. ‘Motorway in the rain’, ‘High Wycombe’, Graham-Dixon wondered. Hodgkin’s gaze was unwavering. Alison Boulton (DI Reviewer), 29/08/10 The fact that painter Howard Hodgkin uses a limited palette of colours for his work accentuates his passion for true colour. In ‘Red, Red, Red’, a stunning orangey hue makes twisting open circles from swirling gestures in one colour tone. The uneven distribution of the shapes on the board makes the artist's gesture that creates them all the more mysterious. Hodgkin’s new work appears upstairs in the exhibition comprising of larger pieces that are formed from the sensual nature of paint being applied directly on to bare wood. ‘Blood’, completed this year, could signify gestures of giving, spilling and smearing blood so that different colours separate out and dry to give a lime green splash. The dramatic nature of swirling shapes made with a wide brush is evident in each work but actually comes alive in ‘Snake’, that seems to be wriggling off the frame. If the titles of the paintings are to be taken literally then nature is the place that inspires Hodgkin most. ‘Leaf’ is physically created in a green paint that is applied using the Japanese tradition of not taking the brush off the surface at all. ‘In Egypt’ shows an abstract suggestion of palm trees swaying with pale blue leaves moving and a showering of dotted paint marks form the background. ‘Saturday’ is most disquieting. The leaf pattern on the frame fails to join up with the work it adorns and a rhythm cannot easily be found to the pale or dark blue flicks of paint that make up the painting. The gaps of bare wood left without paint become annoying - then eventually appealing. The length of time spent trying to find a rhythm perhaps speaks about the viewer’s connection to time. It is hypnotic. The earlier work on the ground floor appears to argue for the need to make the frame part of the painting, as brush strokes of colour splash outside the picture, blurring the boundary. ‘Mud’ is an earthy mix of brown, beige and white opaque layers, smeared together to generate a gooey texture through colour. Later work makes boundaries part of the actual painting. In the racy ‘Privacy and Self-Expression in the Bedroom’, a light touch of the brush bristles creates a seductive black net veil forming a border to uncontrollable squiggles in the boudoir colours of garish orange and a shocking pinky red. The simplicity of the colour palette and brush strokes belies the length of time it surely takes to evolve the complex emotions behind each piece. ‘Where the Deer and the Antelope Play’ convinces the viewer this is true. A painted boundary opens onto layers of colour. The effect of a window looking out onto rolling green swathes of meadow lit by a sky on fire with an orange sunset is moving. The wide open spaces of the States can almost be reached out and touched. The idyllic view is hard to leave. When you get abstract right, it is perfect for ever. Lita Doolan (DI Reviewer), 26/08/10 |
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