David Hockney

Last night, I was so happy to hear David Hockney talk at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago. I've wanted to meet him for years, actually I want him to sketch me, but I was happy just to listen to him for an hour or so. (I did manage to get him to sign my book.) Beforehand, I went to see his 6 large canvases of Woldgate Woods. Beautiful, complex, and moving. What can I say-- I think he is one of the most important painters alive and I love his work. He has spent a large part of his career working out the problem of perspective-- exploring ways to represent the world without being bound to the rigid perspective of a photograph. He has managed to be a relevant painter for 50+ years-- fueled by his intellectual curiosity and his refusal to limit his explorations.

A few things he said last night about this recent work, what he referred to as landscapes of "the marvelous three-dimensional world:"
--"I became very aware that you see terrific things out of the corner of your eye."
--"these landscapes are my figure paintings...where is the figure you ask? You are-- the viewer is the figure."
--"you can't really see a tree unless you look at it for a year."
--"in winter, these trees became like faces."
--"there is a randomness in nature...maybe we don't like the randomness, but limbs grow here and there as they want."

(Thank you to my friend Renee for telling me about this event.)