David Hockney back in L.A. -- for a bit
David Hockney was always a puzzle to me. As a child/ teen my mother would take me to modern art museums to expose me to culture. I got giggle from artist like Ed Ruscha and Klaus Oldenburg, but Hockney I couldn’t figure out. I was attracted to the fact he was doing something I visually could see with figures and backgrounds, but always was left with a feeling his wasn’t finished developing as an artist. The drawing was representational in the most primitive way and the painting was crude in form and technique. The colors were occasionally appealing from 40 feet but that feeling was wrenched away as you got close to the painting. Everything in his work felt separate from background to foreground, no sense of a unified picture, just unattached elements painted side by side. I like when I see representational elements mixed with abstraction in Diebenkorn, but there was something about Hockney staying to close to the representational (without any foundation) for his work to coalesce for me. Seeing his new landscapes codified it for me. Every part of the painting is still crude and awkwardly unharmonious, he was never classified as a folk artist, but I think in the end that’s what he is: a modern folk artist. His work begs for it to be judged with the traditional, but is to crude to stand up to the great history of painting he claims to so deeply understand. Perhaps he feels the beauty in his patternmaking, but never captures it for the viewer, it’s always away in the distance. Perhaps that gives him drive? The sad think is a good art teacher could make him great in very short time.
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