{"id":733,"date":"2010-07-08T11:49:29","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T11:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp\/2010\/07\/home_on_the_range_with_hodgkin.html"},"modified":"2010-07-08T11:49:29","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T11:49:29","slug":"home_on_the_range_with_hodgkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2010\/07\/home_on_the_range_with_hodgkin.html","title":{"rendered":"Home on the Range with Hodgkin"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the redesigned Modern Art Oxford until 5th September is a large, bountiful exhibition of paintings by my friend, Howard Hodgkin, from 2001-2010, called “Time and Place” (it will be seen after that at Tilburg and San Diego; also in Oxford, at the Ashmolean until 26th<\/sup> Sept. is <\/span>Royal Elephants from Mughal India, Paintings & drawings from the collection of Sir Howard Hodgkin<\/span><\/i>, twenty elephant subjects, dating from about 1570 to 1750).<\/span>   <\/span>I imagine everyone who has seen the MAO show feels elated as they walk about the three spacious, generously-hung rooms.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\"Howard<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Home, Home on the Range (2001-2007)<\/div>\n
copyright Howard Hodgkin, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery<\/div>\n


\n<\/p>\n

 <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The scale of the
\nshow is just right, about sixty paintings, I’d guess. They range in size from
\nthe tiny, 25.1 x 28.9cm, Leaf<\/i>
\n(2007-2009), what appears to be a single swooping stroke of a large brush loaded
\nwith a particularly appealing green paint – a painting you fall in love with at
\nfirst sight – to the four enormous Home,
\nHome on the Range<\/i> series. The Oxford show may be the only opportunity we
\nget to see all four of these hanging side by side in a big room filled with
\nnatural light, so I urge you to see the show. But it seems to me that these
\nextraordinary masterpieces ought really to be treated in one respect like the
\nRothko murals. Surely Tate Modern (or a similar institution) ought to own (and
\nexhibit) them together?<\/span><\/p>\n

The first two, Home, Home on the Range<\/i> and Where the Deer and the Antelope Play<\/i>,
\nare dated 2001-2007, and are lusciously colourful, the first with highly
\nsaturated oranges and reds, the second still bright, but dominated by the outer
\nbands of dark blue and brown found near the centre of the first picture. Are
\nthey meditations on the American landscape? Why not. But what strikes you first
\nis the depth of both images: the eye is strongly drawn into the centre of the
\npicture plane, which in both cases seems to recede. Hodgkin has a real genius
\nfor suggesting depth and perception with what appear to be (but of course,
\naren’t) simple swipes of paint. He’s always been able to capture the feeling of
\nlooking out of (or into) a window, onto a landscape, a garden or into another
\nroom, or looking at a stage.  <\/span>This
\npair of pictures invites you to stare at them, and when you’ve peered closely
\nat them for long enough, to discern some natural features of landscape – seen,
\nperhaps, from the window of a moving train or car. <\/span><\/p>\n

Or maybe not.
\nMaybe they’re the correlatives of states of feeling – maybe the hot reds and
\noranges of the first recall the excitements of sexual attraction. Or not. But
\nwhatever these pictures are, they are not abstract. You don’t have to analyse
\nthem to know this – you can tell from your own response to them, the quickening
\nof the pulse, the sensation of having your gaze pulled into the centre  <\/span>– in brief, the tugging at the
\nheartstrings, that something is going on that ain’t geometry.<\/span><\/p>\n

It isn’t
\nsurprising that the latter two paintings of the series Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word<\/i> and And the Skies are not Cloudy All Day<\/i> are dates 2007-2008; or that
\nboth leave areas of the wood support unpainted. Both achieve the transparency,
\nthe clarity that Hodgkin has said he is striving for, as he gets older. In Where Seldom…<\/i> I at first thought I could
\ndetect the direction of the brushwork moving from right to left, and maybe that
\nis so for the thick lines of blue and grey near the centre, above the curved
\norange and yellow forms at the bottom of the panel. But looking at the surface
\nreally closely I can see that that is not possible, and that, indeed some of
\nthe strokes must be going from left to right. I still sense horizontal
\nmovement; but now I am inclined to see the human form in the huge orange and
\nyellow gestures – though I could easily be persuaded to read the whole image as
\nlandscape. But it’s a happy picture, of that I’m sure. Though it might have had
\nsome menace in it, if the navy blues got any blacker. Again, there is no need
\nto cogitate to “get” this picture – your visceral reaction is all the
\nauthorization you need for liking (or disliking) it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then we come to And the Skies are not…<\/i> where it appears
\nthat less than half the surface of the wood is painted with odd,
\nanarchic-seeming marks of the same shade of green. This is a huge picture, 2
\nmetres by 2.67 metres, and the skies aren’t cloudy because they’re summer’s
\nlush green – no clouds, but maybe the green of the quality of mercy that
\ndroppeth like the rain. What is actually surprising about this image that is
\nachieved by such minimal means is that you couldn’t mistake its author.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hodgkin is the
\nartist of memory. Whereas his earlier work was intimist, recalling particular
\nmoments in time and place, but usually in interiors, or with particular people
\nin interiors or landscapes, often their own gardens, the recent work has
\nbroadened its scope and simplified its means. Hodgkin has spoken of his wish to
\nget rid of clutter, his aspirations to clarity and transparency. The catalogue
\nof this show is very worth buying. Though Sam Smiles’ essay has some of the
\nlexical opacity of academic work, he is actually being precise rather than
\nobfuscatory. You’ll want the catalogue for its illustrations, and for the
\nillustrated “reader” at the back of it, put together by Antony Peattie and by
\nPaul Luckcraft who helped put the show together for MAO. It is “a survey of
\ncritical responses, 1962-2009” with representative images. From it and the
\nillustrations of the newer work, you will see that it is almost impossible to
\nfail to recognize a Hodgkin, and utterly impossible to mistake anyone else’s
\nwork for his. This is indisputably the hallmark of the Master, the gift given
\nto those few artists who make their mark on history. If anybody remembers me in
\na hundred years’ time, it will be because Howard has twice painted me; these
\nimages will certainly outlive any other evidence of my existence. What happy
\nimmortality.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the redesigned Modern Art Oxford until 5th September is a large, bountiful exhibition of paintings by my friend, Howard Hodgkin, from 2001-2010, called “Time and Place” (it will be seen after that at Tilburg and San Diego; also in Oxford, at the Ashmolean until 26th Sept. is Royal Elephants from Mughal India, Paintings & drawings from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-bP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}