Originally written on Sunday, November 14, 2010
David Hockey has always been a bit of an artistic hero to me. For as long as I can recall, I have been a fan of his work.
I am not entirely sure how I became aware of Hockney’s work. Perhaps, when I was younger I saw similarities between Hockey and the likes of Paul Klee and Vasiliy Kandinski; the bold colours, the simplistic styles. Perhaps it was because Hockey is a relatively local lad, being of sound mind he is from Yorkshire and his Gallery, the magnificent Salts Mill in Saltaire, just outside Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the second greatest county in England, after the East Riding of Yorkshire.
It could be that, being local, he has painted wonderful scenes of Yorkshire, which, with the five or so years I have spent in Africa, do make miss Blighty ever so slightly. It could be the vibrancy of the colours he uses, the different medium, from pencils and charcoals to oils and water colours.
Or perhaps it was that, for me anyway, Hockney is a truly innovative artist. There are his magnificent ‘photo collages of the Grand Canyon, his iconic Stop sign, his Nude from the mid 1980’s, and those Los Angeles colleagues of his friends, his lovers, his mother and his dog. All these can be seen, in glorious Flash, here. If you have a mobile Apple thingy, well, send an email to Steve Jobs, as he has decided you can not view Hockeys wonderful work.
And then of course there were Hockney’s series of faxes, or facsimiles; drawing of swimming pools, drawn in pencil at his studio in California and sent through, page by agonisingly slow page to the Gallery in Saltaire. HisTennis is enormous and really must be seen to be appreciated.
Hockey is now at it again. He is once again proving that he is at the forefront of art, that contemporary art is not just A Bird on a Stick, Unmade Bed or the Damien Hirsts Shark in Formaldehyde, which once elicited the question, ‘Hirst, what is he, artist or fishmonger ?’
Hockey has a new installation, this time at a Paris gallery; Fresh Flowers, or Fleurs Fraiches, en Francais. Essentially, Hockney has as series of display screens, each showing a new, original work from the Great Yorkshire Man.
Hockey can create a new piece, digitally, and have this new, original work sent directly to the devices in Paris; a modern re-fresh of the 1980’s fax-able art. As Hockney himself has said in the BBC Interview here, “You can make a drawing of the sunrise at 6am and send it out to people by 7am.”
Mark Daniels 