The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
David Hockney’s Dog Days
David Hockney (b. 1937) is one of Britain’s best-loved contemporary artists. His artistic expression and subject matter often included friends and everyday surroundings – educating us all on the extraordinary beauty of so-called ordinary life. So it comes as no surprise that a favourite motif in his artistic work since the 1980s has been dachshunds. Awoof! This gets the Archibald Super Woof of Approval.
Hockney painted many portraits of his beloved dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie. His enjoyment of us long-bodied, height-challenged hounds did not stop at painting, however, and Kamila in particular will be abundantly delighted to learn that Hockney has also participated in a “Dachshund Derby”.
Hockney is on record as saying that he feels his duty as an artist is to give pleasure. Wonderful! This too often dreary cynical world sorely needs more pleasure and beauty, as all sensible hounds know. His philosophy began when he saw a still-life of a small vase of flowers that had been drawn during the bleak days of World War II. From this he came to the ephiphany conclusion that it an artist’s duty to enjoy and to express to others what is the ‘essence of life’: ‘pleasures of the eye.’ From eye to heart, and then to hand.
Richard Polsky (Art Market Guide 2000) considered Hockney one of the “finest living realist painters”. Not many would disagree with him, but worryingly, Polsky considers that the worst of Hockney’s paintings are the “pathetic portraits of his sleeping dachshund, Stanley..” I feel it my doggy duty to state that Polsky’s taste is obviously and very highly flawed. Drawings of dachshunds are not sentimental or ‘pathetic’ – and even Picasso could not resist the temptation to sketch a sausage dog or two.
One wonders, in fact, whether Hockney’s delight in dachshunds was inspired directly by his study of Picasso’s work since the 1950s. Picasso is – of course – well known for his love and his single-line ink sketches of his own dachshund. But of course – loving dachshunds needs no inspiration but our doggy selves and houndish natures.
Hockney’s paintings of his dachshunds was published as David Hockney’s Dog Days (1998). The layout of the book was designed in collaboration with the artist, who also provided a text on the ‘behind-the-scenes’ workings of how to deal with models who don’t necessarily want to sit still (unless they’re sleeping - which thankfully us dachshunds do quite a bit of).
Hockney has called himself “an accidental Englishman,” having spent three decades in Los Angeles. Yet his return to Britain and more specifically, to Yorkshire, were regular, as he only missed 3 Christmas’s away from his mother, who in 1999 died, at the age of 98. But it is another death that left him less tied to his spacious and sun-drenched LA home: that of his beloved dachshund Stanley. Arooof! Let us all offer a low howl in sympathy.
Hockney’s return to Britain - and a friendship with Jonathan Silver- inspired a series of watercolours of Yorkshire countryside landscapes – as well as to heckle the Prime Minister about the ever-increasing ‘Bossiness’ of Labour policy.
One painting of two Yorkshire trees has a haunting and serenely melancholy beauty, but all his work – new and old – is worth viewing. Especially the portraits of the sadly departed Stanley and Boodgie.
Awoof! Archie
Posted 02 Dec 05
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©2008 Roleta Archibald, Awoof!™
[…] David Hockney’s two dachshunds — Stanely and Boodgie – are immortalised in his portraits of them. Some of these portraits feature in this lovely book. Most definitely a must have for the artistically-inclined dachshund lover. Awoof! Archie […]
Archie - Dog tales - David Hockney’s Dog Days @ 10:45 pm, 06 May 2007