Mixed up confusion

Sweet Thames Run Softly

It started well.  The day dawned fine, and Grosvenor Square was tranquil, though the strangely wrapped figure of Dwight David Eisenhower outside the Qatari remake of the US Embassy seemed an ominous portent:

Anyway, in one of the Halcyon Galleries on Bond Street I get a glimpse of early Hockney, where the women come and go:

And across the way Bob Dylan exposes his inner Marlborough Man with a little less finesse than Bradford Davey:

And then I work my way through the streets of Soho, past traces of earlier communications, now repositories of today's excess:

I note that Pink seems to be the in colour today, whether on your rickshaw:

Or with a casual glass of wine while trading al fresco:

Or as part of your biker gear:

Or if you are Queen for the day:

Then, where Kipling once lodged, I pass one of my favourite haunts, though now it's hard to get a seat:

With my special dragon bike I take a pedal up the river to Richmond and beyond, where the sun is out:

And a heron fishes, the cycle of life:

And where, in the 18th century, George II lodged Henrietta Howard, his mistress, in Palladian splendour, another cycle of life.

It is hot now, but the Sweet Thames runs softly, 

So I took her sailing on the river (Flow sweet river, flow),

From Putney Bridge to Nine Elms Reach
We cheek to cheek were dancing
Her necklace made of London Bridge
Her beauty was enhancing

Ewan MacColl

But this is where things start to go wrong.  The heat. The after effects of gothic strawberries, the press and confusion of London Town; even if it is French:

We dine upstairs, the food, the drink, the company, the wine, the digestifs.....

It may be my daughter's birthday, but the confusion is beginning to set in, my pulse beat racing, 

Well, there’s too many people

And they’re all too hard to please

Well, my head’s full of questions

My temperature’s rising fast

Well, I’m looking for some answers

But I don’t know who to ask

Bob Dylan

Mixed-Up Confusion

And so it goes......

But then, despite the gentle musings of Ewan MacColl, and the ebb and flow of Old Father Thames (without which, London would not be) I sink into oblivion, exhausted by the heat and confusion of the city. I long to be back in the calm of Norfolk, even though this yearning is a two-edged blade. I trip from MacColl to Edmund Spenser, and look to Prothalamion for solace, those sixteenth century lines like a cool gauze across my brow:

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air 

Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play, 

A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay 

Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;

And at dawn it is quiet now.  Oxford Street so near a desert:

Tottenham Court Road a pedestrian dream:

And all the fowl which in his flood did dwell 

Gan flock about these twain, that did excel 

The rest so far as Cynthia doth shend 

The lesser stars. So they, enranged well, 

Did on those two attend, 

And their best service lend, 

Against their wedding day, which was not long: 

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Edmund Spenser

Prothalamion

And, waking, as if from a confused state, I walk through Gordon Square, and hear a voice:

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

Rabindranath Tagore

But I’m walking and wondering

And my poor feet don’t ever stop

Seeing my reflection

I’m hung over, hung down, hung up!

Bob Dylan

Mixed-Up Confusion

*****

The nymphs are departed.

T S Eliot

The Waste Land

*****

To unwind, please see Christy Moore, with 

Sinéad O'Connor and Neill MacColl, singing Ewan MacColl's Sweet Thames Flow Softly....

https://youtu.be/Tgwtl-s0CNI

David Hockney - Bigger & Closer

 Love Life 

David Hockney: Bigger and Closer review – an overwhelming blast of passionless kitsch

This was the heading of Jonathan Jones's two star review, posted on February 21st 2023.  In his piece he wrote that, Gigantic projections of the painter’s work fill entire walls in this immersive audiovisual extravaganza – but there is no real art to catch the memory or move the soul....

I wonder exactly what your definition of real art is, Mr Jones?

I saw the show today, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  I found it engaging and eye-opening and it was a wonderful contrast to the grey damp London day outside. And a wonderful contrast to the miserable world of politics and economics that enshrouds us.  

I am not a stranger to art galleries, and I would love to be able to spend time, for instance, in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam admiring (studying?) the Vermeer exhibition (though it has been sold out for weeks)..... I suppose that is your idea of real art, Mr Jones?

Video footage of David Hockney driving friends through Malibu Canyon in California with Wagner on the stereo may well not count as real art, but then I am not sure that Warhol's Marilyn, or Edvard Munch's The Scream are quite up there with Rembrandt's The Night Watch.....

This is a very clever, visually entertaining and instructive (to me, at least) show. There are sequences, with a commentary by Hockney himself, which explain something of his "art."

And there are episodes, shall we say, about various periods of, and developments in, his "art."  We may not be able to appreciate the brush work, nor to linger for as long as we may choose in front of the "real thing," but we can be immersed in something of the light and the experience.....  From California:

To the woods of Yorkshire:

The colours of winter trees:

The colours of summer fields:

The sunshine of Normandy:

And there are ideas expressed - ideas, or, perhaps, to be fair, opinions - on aspects of art and photography, such as this idea gained from a drive through the Alps into Switzerland:

Mr Jones makes some fair points about the way this show dodges from one thing to another, and about how Hockney could have been more explicit about some of his work, rather than, perhaps telling us that Brunelleschi got it wrong (though the Chinese got it right - did I understand that?  Does it matter?)

But Mr Jones ends his critique with this: He (Hockney) is sceptical of the camera’s rule over our eyes yet it’s a sad fact that, in this kind of spectacle, photography and film clips have more reality than drawings and paintings. So Hockney in his innocence has lent his fame here to a dumb contemporary fad that doesn’t – and cannot – capture the beauty of his art. It’s ultimately like seeing a great artist through the wrong end of a telescope – smaller and further away.

The phrase, dumb contemporary fad is really not helpful.  Do we have to go back to red dye on a cave wall for authenticity?  Wasn't painting on damp plaster a dumb contemporary fad once?  Leonardo (in Milan) got it wrong, but, amongst others, Michelangelo and Raphael got it right (in Rome). Shouldn't we be glad they persevered?

At least Mr Jones uses the term great artist to describe Mr Hockney, but the way he does it is condescending to both Mr Hockney and to me.  I am no art critic, but I know what I like.....

You try so hard but you don't understand 

Just what you will say when you get home 

Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is 

Do you, Mr. Jones?

Ballad of a Thin Man

Bob Dylan

As David Hockney himself says: The world is very very beautiful if you look at it, but most people don’t look very much. They scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, they don’t really look at things incredibly well, with an intensity. I do.

Thank you, David Hockney.

I recommend you see this show for yourselves....

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/feb/20/david-hockney-lightroom-immersive-bigger-closer-not-smaller-further-away?CMP=share_btn_link 

Homage to Hockney

Hockney's Eye

Hockney's Eye is the title of an exhibition (until 29 August 2022) at The Fitzwilliam Museum and The Heong Gallery in Cambridge.  The exhibition is the first to explore the many ways of seeing in the art of David Hockney. 

Beautiful Tulips

And I am in Cambridge to see this show.  The first time I have been out of Norfolk for months....  The first time on a train this year.  And, Oh, the crowds!  I thought there was a pandemic on, but it seems as if I am the only one cautious enough to mask my face....

Oh, now I see what a halo is!

Annunciation II, after Fra Angelico

Nothing and no-one can better Fra Angelico.  The delicacy of his mid-fifteenth century frescoed Annunciation on the wall of the convent of San Marco in Florence is lace dipped in champagne to soothe a fevered heart.  Apparently the awareness of space shown in the picture signals the emergence of art from the Gothic to the Renaissance.  The wonderful thing about Hockney's take on this is that while he captures the dynamic between Gabriel and Mary his is not a mere copy nor a paltry likeness - he changes the perspective without losing the narrative, and freshens the colour to delight the modern eye.....  Cosimo de Medici may not have been impressed, but times have changed....

This exhibition is integrated with the permanent  show at the Fitzwilliam, so that Hockney's pieces are a part of the History of Art, at one with the development of representational painting.  The convention of attempting to transfer three dimensions to a flat picture is something that all artists have struggled with, before and after an understanding of perspective was developed.  

My all time favourite painting is Meindert Hobbema's The Avenue at Middelharnis, (usually on display in the National Gallery, London).  I am not entirely sure what attracts me to this picture, though there is certainly something about the relaxed attitudes of the figures here and there in sight that bring a sense of ease.  And then there is the disappearing avenue with its wavering cart tracks....  

Anyway, it transpires that this is also one of Hockney's faves, and here he is paying his respect to the Old Master....

After Hobbema (Useful Knowledge). 2017

Again, it is not a copy, nor is it a clever reinterpretation.  It is a revisiting and a way of recognising the genius of the original.  Perhaps (?) it is like playing Bach on the piano - not how it was written to be, but a way to enjoy this in the modern age?

Another examination of perspective and vanishments is Le Parc des Sources, Vichy. 1970.  Here, an empty chair invites the onlooker to join Hockney's friends in admiring the distance.

And sure enough, we are soon wondering if we may join the party.....

I wish I was there.....

Hockey himself is very present in this exhibition.  There are videos of him explaining his work - notably one on the Camera Lucida - and there are panels which show the entire process of creation on his iPad.  This sequence shows just three moments in a continuum where the artist builds an impression of a riverside:

 

I tell you I love it.  In this age where darkness falls at dawn every day, it is uplifting to be reminded that there is light in life.  It is wonderful to engage with the artist in his enjoyment of a frosty lane as captured by nine cameras mounted on his car:

And it is magnificent to see his wide angle view of the Grand Canyon, where perspective becomes almost 180 degrees and colour is rainbow simplification....  

Somehow you can taste the aridity....

Grand Canyon I. 2017

Hockney himself also welcomes you to The Heong Gallery, where he is discussing oriental art by the gardens of Downing College:

While at the end of the hall I find Viewers Looking at a Readymade with Skull and Mirrors, 2018, an extraordinary invention of mirrored stillness.....

It's a picture that brings to mind Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas....

But that just goes to show how our eyes are connected to our brains and to our hearts.  As the exhibition notes suggest, We see things through the filters of memory and feeling....  And we are all different.

I do recommend this exhibition. When times are difficult, it is good to know there is another world..... And it is good not to dwell for a moment on which world is illusory.

*    *    *

All the artworks shown here, with the exception of Meindert Hobbema's The Avenue at Middelharnis, are copyright of David Hockney - I have taken the liberty of sharing them simply to encourage others to visit the exhibition and to admire, as I do, his art.  I have no financial or professional interest in this.

[Should anyone object to the use of these images I will immediately take them down, with apologies for my presumption.]

A shadow admires

Thank you David.....