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Interview with Stephanie Barron
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David Hockney and Stephanie Barron at a press preview, June 7, 2006.
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‘THIS IS AN ARTIST
WHO HAS NO FEAR’
LACMA’s senior curator identifies key themes in David Hockney Portraits, June 11–Sept 4, 2006.
Q. You co-curated Hockney’s 1988 retrospective—did you nonetheless learn something new, seeing these portraits together?
A. It is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on almost fifty years of Hockney’s work, tracing and looking carefully at his friends, family and close relations. I have to confess that I had a poignant reaction when I looked at all the work together, because so many of the people who were close to David over all these years are no longer with us; whether through old age or illness, they’ve died. So I was struck by their absence but also filled with joy—what a beautiful way to remember them, and to continue to think of them, in the vibrant, remarkable manner that Hockney captured them.
Q. Is the portrait angle a novel approach to his work?
A. I think the portraits are a very revealing angle; I don’t think it’s a surprise to do it. When I actually heard that colleagues in London and Boston were planning the exhibition, it was an idea that I had been mulling about, that I thought would be good for LACMA, so I was thrilled that it was being done and that we were able to participate in it.
Q. A recent article said that Hockney “may well be the world’s most famous living artist.” But when we try to identify his signature visual style, it’s not so obvious.
A. One of the things that comes through in looking at Hockney’s work is his unrelenting curiosity and creativity. This is an artist who has no fear about exploring painting and any kind of graphic medium. There is a genuine curiosity and an openness to exploration that he manages to bring to each of his endeavors. He’s someone who’s unafraid to stumble, and something interesting always comes out of it. So this enormous and unending curiosity for me is the thread that pulls a lot of the work together.
Q. What else should the viewer look for?
A. Well, look for the people. The exhibition is organized roughly chronologically, although you’ll find that there are different little byways where many of the works imaging the same person are put together. So the visitor has a chance to look at an image of Henry Geldzahler, Betty Freeman, Celia Birtwell, his parents, Gregory Evans, and others, over many decades, and you can see how the sitters have changed and how Hockney’s relationship to them has changed, and how life goes on.
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| Watercolor on four sheets of paper, 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist © David Hockney. All rights reserved. Downloading, transferring or otherwise making copies of this image without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. |
Q. In your discussions with Hockney, has he ever articulated what precisely it is that draws him to portraiture?
A. I think portraiture for David is something that allows him to witness his friends in a very intimate way. He likes to paint the people whom he knows really well; their faces become almost like a landscape that he revisits. But if you look at the double portraits I find them really fascinating, because here is Hockney inspecting, in a very up-close way, the relationship between two people. It’s not quite voyeuristic, but it is slightly invasive, and yet because he’s so friendly with them, it’s not. I think he’s curious about the nature of long-term relationships, particularly gay relationships, and I sense there is sometimes a longing to understand what makes them work. I think in his own life he hasn’t had a consistent single partner. And some of the couples whom he has painted or drawn do enjoy that, so it struck me that this might be something that he’s looking at.
Q. The show has been described as a visual diary, a life in paintings. What can we read in these portraits about the relationship between painter and subject?
A. You know, sitting for one of these portraits is not an easy experience. It’s almost tough, or at least that’s how I felt. You’re really under such examination. Maybe for other people it’s easier; I found it difficult. And I think for some people, being under that kind of scrutiny, maybe they just forget that he’s there and just kind of get into their own thoughts. But I’ve done it a couple of times, and it’s not easy.
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| From 112 L.A. Visitors. Color laser printed still video portrait, Ed: 20. © David Hockney. All rights reserved. Downloading, transferring or otherwise making copies of this image without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. |
Q. So your portraits will be in the show?
A. There’s one of them in there.
Q. How long did it take?
A. The painting was an hour and a half; the photo about 20 minutes, and a camera lucida drawing about an hour.
Q. You have said that Hockney does not worry about flattering his sitters, and it made me think about the changing role of portrait painting.
A. These are never commissioned—I think there are only two commissions—so he really does them for himself, and flattery is not the name of the game. I don’t think that these are portraits in the tradition of formal portraiture. It’s really only in the last group of portraits that he asked people to come to the studio, and give some care to what they wore, and he sometimes helped to choose what they wore. So they were in a way the most formal of any of the portraits I think that he has done. But that’s unusual.
Q. Do you think of Hockney in any sense as a particularly Californian artist?
A. I think he is a California artist in terms of his great joy in the color and in the light that suffuses our environment. If you go through the show chronologically, you can absolutely tell the paintings that were done in London and the paintings that were done in LA. They’re just filled with a very different color: much more joyous, much more saturated, much brighter.
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