The Art Newspaper

David Hockney: a Bigger Picture

21 Jan 12 – 9 Apr 12

london. David Hockney will transplant the Yorkshire countryside to the English capital when the Royal Academy of Arts stages the first major UK display of his landscape works.

Edith Devaney, the head of the academy’s “Summer Exhibition”, approached the artist following the appearance of Big Trees Near Warter, 2007, in that year’s show.

Many of the 150 works on view have been made since then. Marco Livingstone, the independent curator who has co-organised the show, says: “We knew he would want to put time into making new work.

Knowing his temperament, once he had these fabulous rooms available, there was no stopping him.” Galleries will be dedicated to motifs including hawthorn blossoms and trees in winter, and two galleries will show works from the past 55 years, such as Fields, Eccleshill, 1956.

Hockney’s lengthy sojourn in the US is represented by the photomontage Pearblossom Hwy., 11-18th April 1986, 2, 1986, and A Closer Grand Canyon, 1998, which comprises 60 canvases.

Until 1997, when the Bradford-born artist was encouraged by his dying friend Jonathan Silver (who founded the 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill, Saltaire, to show Hockney’s work), “he had never wanted to paint England,” Livingstone says.

After travelling in 2002 to Norway and Spain, the artist returned to oils and began to paint the Yorkshire terrain.

Hockney’s works have become increasingly large (Winter Timber, 2009, is more than six metres wide). “It was the technical problem that interested him,” Livingstone says.

“How big could you go and still paint nature?” Many paintings cover multiple canvases, which “show time unfolding, not just one moment being photographed.

He went to Yorkshire to get away from the camera’s way of seeing.” To produce The Big Hawthorne, 2008, the artist rose at dawn every day for a week to paint his subject in a particular light.

“His work in the 1960s was much more graphic, and he would spend six months on one picture. He’s now painting six canvases in a matter of days,” Livingstone says.

Hockney will fill the largest gallery with 51 inkjet-printed drawings made using an iPad. These accompany a large-scale painting, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) (one of a 52 part work), 2011, and 44 drawings will be shown on iPads.

The 74-year-old artist recently met the inventor of the Brushes application, who was “amazed by what Hockney has managed to do”, Livingstone says.

“He has his suits made with a pocket to fit the iPad. He’s always ready to pounce.” The show, which is due to travel to the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao (14 May-30 September) and Cologne’s Museum Ludwig (27 October-4 February 2013), will include a work in progress, an untitled 20-minute film of the changing seasons.

It was shot using nine cameras and will be shown on multiple screens. Hockney’s Yorkshire period may be unfinished, but it already “stands as a great body of his work”, Livingstone says. “I feel very strongly about that.” Ria Hopkinson Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)

• Monanism, Australia
• British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, United Kingdom
• 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Germany
• Owen Jones: Islamic Design, Discovery and Vision, United Arab Emirates
• This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1980s, USA

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