Hockney’s Eye
I saw Hockney’s Eye back in fall and it was calling my name, because: David Hockney! No need to say anything else, the photo of him on a sofa with his two dogs and a wall fully decked out in paintings of said dogs is one of my favorite photos to exist. But regardless of that, I went to see this exhibit fully unprepared as I like to do sometimes, so that I can experience it by itself without absorbing prior descriptions, opinions, and the like. Now, I adore Hockey for his diversity; in my mind this man can do anything, any style, any medium, and it all makes sense. Same goes for this exhibition, which was built around Hockney’s thesis on how visual aids, such as the camera obscura and lucida, might have been used in many classical paintings. It’s not necessarily a new concept as this notion has entered the public space with the publication of Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge (2001), though it is the first time it has been explored in the space of an exhibition.
We hold classical artists in high regard for their expertise and their masterful execution, however, David believes (and proves) that they might have branched out and looked for different ways to essentially not only make their job easier, but also more precise and probably more enjoyable. There’s no fault to be found in these practices as I see it, it is mere human nature to find innovations that make our lives that little bit more effortless. What is to be found here, is a contemplation about how we view these artists. Often they are painters who are put on a pedestal and we use titles like ‘old masters’ to describe them. Surely, they were talented or at least very skilled at their craft, but I doubt that artists creating art today will ever be considered masters by a future generation. Maybe that’s because much of the mystique surrounding art and its process has been uncovered, or perhaps the democratisation of art has played a role. Either way it’s a framework for thinking about what is real and what we’re being presented when we look at two-dimensional depictions of the natural world hung on a wall.
The exhibition was a mixture of works meant to be counterparts to existing classical painting as well as some of Hockney’s idiosyncratic work incorporating different visual aids and techniques into his pieces, including a series of Ipad self-portraits made using photos as underlays. He plays a lot with ‘reverse perspective’, putting forward the idea that ‘linear perspective’, which has been accepted in Western art as the correct way of depicting subjects accurately, is limiting and inhibits alternative modes of seeing and representing.
Besides the concept itself, I particularly liked how Hockney took the idea of using visual aids, which is quite uncontroversial today, and made it into something new in his own work. And lest I forget the little easter egg, namely Ed Sheeran appearing in one of his pieces created by collaging AI images. The exhibition has now ended, however there is an accompanying book, which dives into the topic and is a great read, not to mention the book previously published by Hockney.