"Another top lot at Sotheby’s was David Hockney’s The Splash (1966), one of the artist’s classic California swimming pool scenes. It sold for £2,920,000 ($5,407,407),"
Yeah, there is a freshness about Hockney, even when he does a really traditional commissioned portrait, like this one. It always looks like he's enjoying himself and choosing not to worry about what one should or shouldn't do in contemporary painting.
I've always had mixed feelings about this painting, though I've never seen it in person so I can't really judge. Hockney, as in the splash painting mentioned, can be a brilliant colorist and completely on point in his paintings. However I kind of think his genius is as a draftsman.
That being said, whats the consensus on his optic technology theory for the masters? I kind of think he got in way over his head on that one.
.. its also kind of an interesting factoid that the husband in this painting was later murdered by a gay lover.
I didnt read the optics book, but on the topic of technology, they just discovered some stuff about our ancestors that basicly says that almost from day one we as humans were doing stuff with stuff that pretty much is what we are doing now, but not as refined.
"Three shells with holes bored into their centers, excavated from sites in Israel and Algeria, may be the oldest known evidence of personal decoration, according to new research published in Science.
what this points to if you follow me, is that before people could do things they could imagine things, and that people have been imagining things almost from day one.
Our ancestors made the pyramids - it wasnt aliens, and it wasnt magic.
I like this painting for a lot of academic reasons - the pos neg space in the railing being one - nothing to cream your pants over but its the stuff of Dali without the fantasy, and thus sophisticated - meaning you dont have to appologize for being adolescent with your poorly printed melting clock poster or whatever - you are an adult with this painting. Isnt it weird how having a painting is more adult than having a poster? Like having your own room, then having your own mini bar, then having your own James bOnd Cat type familiar.
I like the cat - it sits unaturally tabletop-flat right in the groinal region. What is up witht that? Obviously some sort of sign, like when you italicize something that otherwise would have no significance.
Thats where Hockney is using his art history chops, but also making them accessible to the uninitiated but reasonably observant.
What does the cat mean? Well a dog used to mean faithfull, and a cat means pussy right now, to me, sitting here.
I just went to see "Wassup Rockers" - it the best road movie, or rather skate movie, since Repo Man, as far as I'm concerned. Theres a bit of allegory, a bit of dream geography in a "Being John Malkovitch" or "Beetlejuice" kind of scene jumping through the backyards of hollywood- and the soundtrack is punk rock.AWESOME!
I think it relates - theres a bit of the predatory nature of the human species - like this painting , lions zebras and/or hyeenas at the watering hole.
yeah I hadn't really studied the cat before, makes one appreciate the painting a little more. To me, it kind of has a displaced, Balthusian air to it which is nice in juxtaposition with the overbearing 70s-ish feeling to the rest of it.
Clark some of his movies are entertaining but I thought seeing his shit in Luhring Augustine sucked
I like Hockney's work for the most part. His book on the old master's using the camera obscura is nothing but bunk. Not sure what his agenda was in producing it but his theory is ridiculous. That is that Ingre and Jan van Eyck used this contraption to create there work for those who are interested.
They did not. Its been proven by scores of contempory realist painters who claim to be lesser talents than either of the former and yet they can produce very well drawn work with out the need of camera obscura.
yea maybe people should start using that stuff again--michael bevilaqua please note--cus whats missing from most contemporary work is proportion. even yr lowliest graphic designer knows how to work the ratios.
zak smith looks "right" but he traces photos doesnt he?
I learned to draw the marvel way, and I have used the grid to size things up or even to make them proportional, be they maps or still lifes...but these are devices, and devices are not just objects, they are ideas - heuristics to use a fancy computer type word.
So when Hockney points to optics, I wonder why, in a more "photography changed everything" kind of way - Saltz has used "photographic perspective" as a criticism - that is the framing/space changes depending on the source material- but its more than just source - its treatment - and we are back to the eye of the beholder, or the lense through which one sees.
he didn't really work the fey angle as hard as some of his other boys,. The "optics ?" got everyone talking about him, press, hot lecture series, canonized him in the context of the 'Masters' and ultimately offered us a lense to view his work thru. Everyone loves classics and tropes, 10 million viewers tuned into Broken Trail, shattering records.
epilepticadam, i didn't read the book, didn't realize he was trying to discredit everyone. I did figure that some used devices and probably not all the time. My thing was big deal if some did. I am aware that there are very few around skilled in this way today, but that was most of their agenda then. Hockney probably has his own issues, and he was slow .. I don't think he had a complex about this or i hope not. There certainly have been a huge amount of skilled freehand drawers and painters once we got past pure accuaracy - not that you dispute this, just saying. A different skill - A different time. It brings us to a good place. Too bad about that though, needing to sack every old master artist. I still can't get beyond the word devices. Cause everyone used them in one way or another. Not the camera obscura, but sighting with an arm extended is a device, so is a greek axis formula or an egyptian grid. this is why i say big deal who used what, but saying everyone traced, which is what you say Hockney is saying i say is definately false.
a very bad example of the negative effects of using photography in painting would be the jenny dubnau post 3 artists down. this hockney example is perhaps a successful example of its positive uses..(of course I am in no way against photography used in painting)
to add to the argument, Hockney was actually suggesting that an artist like Ingres used a complex contraption to reflect the image onto the paper while drawing a sitter, thereby facillitating his ease and grace at capturing their likeness. A preposterous idea just for the simple reason that there is not one historical reference to the artist using such a contraption in Ingres' case.
epilepticadam is right Hockney is like some snake oil sales man trying to hawk his book. The thing was utter bs.
Think about it, have any of you seen a camera obsura or camera lucida and know how it works?
It produces the image upside down and in Van Eykes time the thing would have been huge. The optics inferior. I think they used them as a curiosity, a new toy so to speak.
Now lets move forward in time to Ingre's time period(late 18th and early 19 century) the device is still huge but the optics are better, but lets think about the process.
You have to be in this dark room or under a dark cloth to view the image which is upside down and then you can draw it.
Does this sound like something extremly well trained and talented artist of the past would do?
Training, talent, tricks. The winner uses them all. Artists of the past know how to keep a secret. They had to, to make a living.
Now a days, well who has the time? My brother can draw & paint super well. He is an illustrator, among other things. Lydecker type style. Never made any kinda money on it, tho. Good thing they have rent control in W. Hollywood. Ingres never had rent control.
When I think of proportion--I mean elegance. This Hockney is elegant and glamourous, with just a slight hint of "English" domesticity or picturesqueness. Just a whiff. I love the tension.
But who is really elegant? Just them robots that zips always on about.
I'm not going to support all you painter illustrative folk out there!
But the painting is good for a number of reasons: And bad, for equal number of them. The figures are these vertical things and as vertical performances should [they not] at their best find themselves grounded, like trees. Humans aren't trees. We move about them, like the Man from Oxley. But in a painting humans aren’t moving, nor is the famous town that named the famous he. So it does make sense to make sense of sense some other way: In Mr. Hokney’s piece--here shows humans-o-rendered-as—petite-dividers of space. There is just the right division that divides them. Phewww! Many of the other phalanges in the picture don't do a lot--Gloomy in the form of glee. Sticky: reiterative our pedestrian derangement, and if spared the minimal completion-the-the failure of this painting, is kind of the painting the. Another success, less we talk of less, of the artist, redress, is this ‘other’ subtle opening -- 'sliding window’ set to dewy. The place between the two bodies, and this other ‘draw the pane’ is something we well we might know. Uncontained, however, it spells better air than we normally receive—thus a really a good place to plant an olive tree, after-all.
if you were trying to right something that was difficult to read you were successful. so you don't think humans belong in paintings hey? There is a new painting above Hockneys with a tree and a deer in it. Please respond to it.
That vertical stuff bugs me too. That and the self conscious spatial play stuff. But what else is there to do once you've answered all the questions about life and death?
I think Hockney tried to warn us about the dullness in art, when we get too attached to our tools instead of viewing the world with our eyes, minds, souls. I enjoyed his book, whatever bullshit it might be. But why didn't he just paint it?
27 comments:
David Hockney
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
June 11-Sept. 4, 2006
Aww. I am such a sucker for David Hockeny. Love.
looks like your not alone!
"Another top lot at Sotheby’s was David Hockney’s The Splash (1966), one of the artist’s classic California swimming pool scenes. It sold for £2,920,000 ($5,407,407),"
what a cutey pic. of him at sean kelly!!!
finally, a real painting!
Yeah, there is a freshness about Hockney, even when he does a really traditional commissioned portrait, like this one. It always looks like he's enjoying himself and choosing not to worry about what one should or shouldn't do in contemporary painting.
I've always had mixed feelings about this painting, though I've never seen it in person so I can't really judge. Hockney, as in the splash painting mentioned, can be a brilliant colorist and completely on point in his paintings. However I kind of think his genius is as a draftsman.
That being said, whats the consensus on his optic technology theory for the masters? I kind of think he got in way over his head on that one.
.. its also kind of an interesting factoid that the husband in this painting was later murdered by a gay lover.
jeeze cooky optics and intrigue in one post.
I didnt read the optics book, but on the topic of technology, they just discovered some stuff about our ancestors that basicly says that almost from day one we as humans were doing stuff with stuff that pretty much is what we are doing now, but not as refined.
"Three shells with holes bored into their centers, excavated from sites in Israel and Algeria, may be the oldest known evidence of personal decoration, according to new research published in Science.
here
what this points to if you follow me, is that before people could do things they could imagine things, and that people have been imagining things almost from day one.
Our ancestors made the pyramids - it wasnt aliens, and it wasnt magic.
I like this painting for a lot of academic reasons - the pos neg space in the railing being one - nothing to cream your pants over but its the stuff of Dali without the fantasy, and thus sophisticated - meaning you dont have to appologize for being adolescent with your poorly printed melting clock poster or whatever - you are an adult with this painting. Isnt it weird how having a painting is more adult than having a poster? Like having your own room, then having your own mini bar, then having your own James bOnd Cat type familiar.
I like the cat - it sits unaturally tabletop-flat right in the groinal region. What is up witht that? Obviously some sort of sign, like when you italicize something that otherwise would have no significance.
Thats where Hockney is using his art history chops, but also making them accessible to the uninitiated but reasonably observant.
What does the cat mean? Well a dog used to mean faithfull, and a cat means pussy right now, to me, sitting here.
I just went to see "Wassup Rockers" - it the best road movie, or rather skate movie, since Repo Man, as far as I'm concerned. Theres a bit of allegory, a bit of dream geography in a "Being John Malkovitch" or "Beetlejuice" kind of scene jumping through the backyards of hollywood- and the soundtrack is punk rock.AWESOME!
I think it relates - theres a bit of the predatory nature of the human species - like this painting , lions zebras and/or hyeenas at the watering hole.
yeah I hadn't really studied the cat before, makes one appreciate the painting a little more. To me, it kind of has a displaced, Balthusian air to it which is nice in juxtaposition with the overbearing 70s-ish feeling to the rest of it.
Clark some of his movies are entertaining but I thought seeing his shit in Luhring Augustine sucked
I like Hockney's work for the most part.
His book on the old master's using the camera obscura is nothing but bunk.
Not sure what his agenda was in producing it but his theory is ridiculous.
That is that Ingre and Jan van Eyck used this contraption to create there work for those who are interested.
They did not. Its been proven by scores of contempory realist painters who claim to be lesser talents than either of the former and yet they can produce very well drawn work with out the need of camera obscura.
yea maybe people should start using that stuff again--michael bevilaqua please note--cus whats missing from most contemporary work is proportion. even yr lowliest graphic designer knows how to work the ratios.
zak smith looks "right" but he traces photos doesnt he?
I learned to draw the marvel way, and I have used the grid to size things up or even to make them proportional, be they maps or still lifes...but these are devices, and devices are not just objects, they are ideas - heuristics to use a fancy computer type word.
So when Hockney points to optics, I wonder why, in a more "photography changed everything" kind of way - Saltz has used "photographic perspective" as a criticism - that is the framing/space changes depending on the source material- but its more than just source - its treatment - and we are back to the eye of the beholder, or the lense through which one sees.
he didn't really work the fey angle as hard as some of his other boys,. The "optics ?" got everyone talking about him, press, hot lecture series, canonized him in the context of the 'Masters' and ultimately offered us a lense to view his work thru.
Everyone loves classics and tropes, 10 million viewers tuned into Broken Trail, shattering records.
epilepticadam,
i didn't read the book, didn't realize he was trying to discredit everyone. I did figure that some used devices and probably not all the time. My thing was big deal if some did. I am aware that there are very few around skilled in this way today, but that was most of their agenda then. Hockney probably has his own issues, and he was slow .. I don't think he had a complex about this or i hope not. There certainly have been a huge amount of skilled freehand drawers and painters once we got past pure accuaracy - not that you dispute this, just saying. A different skill - A different time. It brings us to a good place. Too bad about that though, needing to sack every old master artist. I still can't get beyond the word devices. Cause everyone used them in one way or another. Not the camera obscura, but sighting with an arm extended is a device, so is a greek axis formula or an egyptian grid. this is why i say big deal who used what, but saying everyone traced, which is what you say Hockney is saying i say is definately false.
a very bad example of the negative effects of using photography in painting would be the jenny dubnau post 3 artists down. this hockney example is perhaps a successful example of its positive uses..(of course I am in no way against photography used in painting)
to add to the argument, Hockney was actually suggesting that an artist like Ingres used a complex contraption to reflect the image onto the paper while drawing a sitter, thereby facillitating his ease and grace at capturing their likeness. A preposterous idea just for the simple reason that there is not one historical reference to the artist using such a contraption in Ingres' case.
epilepticadam is right Hockney is like some snake oil sales man trying to hawk his book. The thing was utter bs.
Think about it, have any of you seen a camera obsura or camera lucida and know how it works?
It produces the image upside down and in Van Eykes time the thing would have been huge. The optics inferior. I think they used them as a curiosity, a new toy so to speak.
Now lets move forward in time to Ingre's time period(late 18th and early 19 century) the device is still huge but the optics are better, but lets think about the process.
You have to be in this dark room or under a dark cloth to view the image which is upside down and then you can draw it.
Does this sound like something extremly well trained and talented artist of the past would do?
Training, talent, tricks. The winner uses them all. Artists of the past know how to keep a secret. They had to, to make a living.
Now a days, well who has the time? My brother can draw & paint super well. He is an illustrator, among other things. Lydecker type style. Never made any kinda money on it, tho. Good thing they have rent control in W. Hollywood. Ingres never had rent control.
When I think of proportion--I mean elegance. This Hockney is elegant and glamourous, with just a slight hint of "English" domesticity or picturesqueness. Just a whiff. I love the tension.
But who is really elegant? Just them robots that zips always on about.
looks like alot of good openings tonight.
Zwirner, Marks, Lelong looks like maybe Pace, connelly
No tricks envolved just talent and good training.
There is contempory artist Tony Ryder who can draw like nobody's business.
I know for a lot of people academic drawing is boring but that's what artist used to do.
No tricks, no easy or magic formulas, just talent and hard work.
Now the painting mediums(recipes) that's another story. they (painters)where very secretive about that.
But this gadget nonsense is a lot of baloney.
sorry for the typo
seems naive to think that artists of the past didnt use tricks of the trade, seeing how painting was a trade in those days.
no one is looking at each other, even the flowers are looking the other way. it looks real nice outside however,
i am sure closeup is flowing the thread, look at her comments again.
yes no-wear man is rite. I read u adam. I cogitated all u had to say, Thanks!
I'm not going to support all you painter illustrative folk out there!
But the painting is good for a number of reasons: And bad, for equal number of them. The figures are these vertical things and as vertical performances should [they not] at their best find themselves grounded, like trees. Humans aren't trees. We move about them, like the Man from Oxley. But in a painting humans aren’t moving, nor is the famous town that named the famous he. So it does make sense to make sense of sense some other way: In Mr. Hokney’s piece--here shows humans-o-rendered-as—petite-dividers of space. There is just the right division that divides them. Phewww! Many of the other phalanges in the picture don't do a lot--Gloomy in the form of glee. Sticky: reiterative our pedestrian derangement, and if spared the minimal completion-the-the failure of this painting, is kind of the painting the.
Another success, less we talk of less, of the artist, redress, is this ‘other’ subtle opening -- 'sliding window’ set to dewy. The place between the two bodies, and this other ‘draw the pane’ is something we well we might know. Uncontained, however, it spells better air than we normally receive—thus a really a good place to plant an olive tree, after-all.
if you were trying to right something that was difficult to read you were successful. so you don't think humans belong in paintings hey? There is a new painting above Hockneys with a tree and a deer in it. Please respond to it.
That vertical stuff bugs me too. That and the self conscious spatial play stuff. But what else is there to do once you've answered all the questions about life and death?
I think Hockney tried to warn us about the dullness in art, when we get too attached to our tools instead of viewing the world with our eyes, minds, souls.
I enjoyed his book, whatever bullshit it might be. But why didn't he just paint it?
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