A British artist who contributed to the 20th century Pop Art movement




By Jhupu Adhikari Mar 24 2013
Tags: Leisure Writing
A recent group exhibition that featured works of artists from Britain was covered in one of my earlier columns. Among the names that I had mentioned, was David Hockney whose work I have admired ever since I had the opportunity of seeing his solo exhibition at the Annely Juda Gallery in London in the 1990s. The exhibition featured over 20 portraits and an equal number of still life studies of vases and flowers.

David Hockney, born on July 9 in Bradford in England, is considered ‘one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century’. During his training at the Royal College of Art in London, Hockney featured in an exhibition titled ‘Young Contemporaries’ and along with Peter Blake, the exhibition was hailed as the ‘arrival of British Pop Art.’ While Hockney was certainly a contributor to the ‘Pop Art’ movement, his earlier paintings show clear traces of expressionism. When the Royal Academy refused to let him graduate in 1962, Hockney drew a sketch titled ‘The Diploma’, as a form of protest. The story goes that Hockney refused to write an essay required for the final examination, insisting that his assessment should only be on art. By this time, Hockney had quite a fan following and the Academy finally had to change its regulations and award a diploma.

With such a reputation, it is but to be expected that Hockney would choose to live life in his own way. On a visit to California, where he later chose to settle for long periods, he was inspired to do a series of paintings of swimming pools in the 1960s, using acrylic, a comparatively new medium in those days. In 1961, Hockney explored the nature of gay love in ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’, after a poem by Walt Whitman and in 1963, painted ‘Domestic Scene, Los Angeles’ showing two men -- one showering while the other washes his back.

Hockney is said to have been born with ‘Synesthesia’ -- whereby he can see colours while listening to music. This made him a highly suitable person for creating backdrops and décor for ballets and operas at La Scala and the New York Metropolitan Opera. The colours that he sees through ‘musical stimuli’ are a base for his construction of the stage sets for ballets and operas where the colours and lighting are created while listening to the music of the piece he is working on.

Hockney returned more frequently to Yorkshire in the 1990s, usually every three months to visit his mother who died in 1999. He then decided to capture the local sights based on boyhood memories. But by 2005, he was painting the countryside first in water colours and later in oils. He created paintings made of multiple smaller canvases placed together -- a style that is often used by artists of today. In June 2007, Hockney’s largest painting titled ‘Bigger Trees Near Warter’ measuring 15 feet by 40 feet, was hung in the Royal Academy’s largest gallery during its annual summer exhibition.

Since 2009, Hockney has painted hundreds of portraits, still lifes and landscapes on iPhone and iPad. His show Fresh Flowers featuring more than 100 of his drawings was held in 2010 at La Fondation Pierre Bergé in Paris, followed in 2011 by another at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Hockney, whose first one-man show was in 1963 when he was 26 years old, has had many retrospectives devoted to his work. In 1970, the first of several major retrospectives, which opened in London, travelled to three European institutions. In October 2006, the National Portrait Gallery in London organised one of the largest ever displays of his work, from over five decades. In 2009, “David Hockney: Just Nature” was held at the Kunsthalle Würth in Germany. From January 21, 2012 to April 9, 2012, the Royal Academy presented ‘A Bigger Picture’, which included more than 150 works, many of which covered entire walls. Dedicated to images of Yorkshire, along with oils, there were 50 drawings on iPad printed on paper. The exhibition moved on to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and later to the Ludwik Museum in Cologne, Germany where it closed on February 3 this year.

In 2008, David Hockney decided to donate ‘Bigger Trees Near Warter’ to the Tate Gallery in London and was quoted as having said, “I thought if I’m going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good.”

Victorine Contemporary Art


Marc Harrold
Artexpo New York
                  Please join us at Booth 269 from today until March 24
Visit artexpony.com for more information.

Brigit Nihan
Victorine Contemporary
192 Thames Street
Newport RI 02840
401.848.2544
401.835.1920






Victorine Contemporary Art in Newport



Marc Harrold
Artexpo New York

Please join us at Booth 269 from today until March 24 
Visit artexpony.com for more information.

Brigit Nihan
Victorine Contemporary
192 Thames Street
Newport RI 02840
401.848.2544
401.835.1920


Marc Harrold
Artexpo New York


Please join us at Booth 269 from today until March 24
Visit artexpony.com for more information.

Brigit Nihan
Victorine Contemporary
192 Thames Street
Newport RI 02840
401.848.2544
401.835.1920


Exhibit featuring '80s pop art by Keith Haring goes on as authentication battle rages



MIAMI — A showdown over art - real and possibly not so real- is playing out in the MiamiDesign District, completewith legal threats, court orders and lots of confusion.
At issue: whether piecesin an exhibit featuring theworks of 1980s pop-artistKeith Haring have been properly authenticated.
A New York law firm representing the Keith HaringFoundation is demandingthat the exhibit remove allbut 10 of the 175 pieces of art.
The deadline was 7 p.m.Friday.
As the deadline loomed,the entire exhibit appearedto remain intact.
On Friday evening, theshow went on as planned.
Organizers took $25 admission from art lovers whowandered in from the street.
No one was moving artworkout of the exhibit space asthe deadline passed.
Michael Rosen, who co-produced the exhibit withManny Hernandez, said thetwo had come to an agreement with the Haring Foundation in which one of the 12collections in the exhibitwould be removed and therest would be allowed to remain. Rosen said the collection at issue had been removed earlier Friday.
But there is some question on the size of the unauthenticated collection. Rosen said it was a small part ofthe exhibit, while the collection's attorney, StephenWeingrad, said the collection could encompass 100pieces of work.
Rosen's attorney, HermanRussomanno III, sent ane-mail to the Miami Heraldindicating that the exhibitwould continue to show only the 10 pieces of art thatwere authenticated by theHaring Foundation.
"If there's anything leftthere other than those 10pieces, we're going to have aproblem," said Sarah Gold, aFlorida attorney who is filing a lawsuit on behalf of theKeith Haring Foundation.
"Haring Miami," whichopened Wednesday andruns through Sunday at theMoore Building on Northeast 40th Street and SecondAvenue, celebrates the lifeand art of Keith Haring,whose brightly coloredpaintings of featureless people became the international logo of Best Buddies, anorganization that helps thedisabled. Haring died ofAIDS-related complications in 1990.
The Keith Haring Foundation became aware of the"Haring Miami" exhibit inJanuary, when Rosen andHernandez began advertising, said Michael Stout, anattorney representing theNew York foundation.Stout's legal partner, EricJohnson, said he asked Rosen for information aboutwhere each of the 200 piecescame from and documentation of their authenticity.
The information Rosen sentback wasn't satisfactory,Johnson said.
"It would be impossible tomount and exhibit 200 ormore works without involving the foundation," Stoutsaid on Friday. "It becameapparent that there wassomething wrong here."
Rosen insists that everything in the show is authentic.
He said that because theHaring Foundation no longer has a committee that authenticates pieces of art - only attorneys who go aftercopyright infringements -the approximately 165 unauthenticated pieces of art inthe exhibit aren't necessarily fake. They simply mightnot have been examined andauthenticated by the foundation yet.
For example, furnitureand installation art like theimages Haring drew directlyonto light posts in the 1980saren't usually authenticated."You'll never find anypiece of Keith Haring-painted T-shirt or clothing that has a foundation authentication letter," Rosen said.
To get around that idea,he posted a disclaimer at theentrance: "The art in this exhibition may be by the artistKeith Haring or from his circle of friends. . . . the ownersand publisher of this catalogand curator cannot and doesnot guarantee the authenticity of the works."
However, the exhibit hadbeen extensively advertisedas featuring the work ofKeith Haring.
In addition to removingall but the 10 authenticatedpieces of Keith Haring artwork, the court order callson Rosen and his company,Colorful Thumb, to stop distribution of and destroy allcatalogs and brochures associated with the exhibit. Rosen said the items wereno longer being distributed.


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