The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
Hockney Portraits
Produced in close collaboration with the artist, the National Portrait Gallery is hosting the first exhibition devoted to David Hockney’s portraits spanning over fifty years. The Life Love Art show is well worth what a chap I know calls “a shifty.” (And I trust you don’t forget that this British artist who was once sketched by Andy Warhol, like Warhol, was a big lover of dachshunds, and his work, again like Warhol’s, featured his beloved four-legged pals!)
Hockney has engaged with portraiture since his teenage years. One self-portrait from his college of art days features a ‘canvas’ of pages from the British daily broadsheet, the Times. Self-portraits and portraits of family, lovers, friends — not least of whom include Stanley and Boodgie, his beloved dachshund companions — represent an intimate visual diary of his life and artistic preoccupations.
Featuring over 150 works across different media from the now iconic early double portraits to recent paintings produced especially for the exhibition, the show reveals how the artist’s creative development and concerns about representation can be traced through his portrait work.
The retrospective of Hockney’s portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery (Wolfson and Ground Floor Galleries) runs from October 2006 to 21 January 2007. The exhibition is organised with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is supported by Burberry. Awoof!
To add extra interest to the show is the slightly askew fact that Hockney has for the time being abandoned pictorial portraiture and has been working on colourful landscapes of the countryside of his childhood.
Why a retrospective to the portrait when his current work consists of refreshing and vibrant landscapes painted en plein air? Awoof! Makes one puzzle, no?
All the same, it absolutely delights me that one of Britain’s greatest living artists.. who just happens to absolutely adore us long-bodied, short-legged badger hounds.. also just happens to be breaking the mold, and taking part in an exciting first for a major London gallery.
Superwoof to David Hockney! Archie
Posted 21 Oct 06
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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 @ 10:46 pm, 06 May 2007