for teens

15 July - 5 November 2023
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo,
Exhibition Gallery 1F/ 3F

Who isDavid Hockney?

David Hockney was born in 1937 in Bradford, an industrial
city in northern England. He went to a local art school from 16
to 20 years old. From when he was 22, he studied at the Royal
College of Art in London for three years. Since then, for morethan 60 years he has continued to work with painting,printmaking, photography, film and more. Travelling all
around the world to create his work, he has studios inLondon, UK; Los Angeles, USA; and Normandy in France,
where he is based now. Hockney has also visited Japan manytimes, which is related to his interest in Japanese art andChinese scroll paintings. He studied “pictures” extensively inpursuit of “how to depict the world,” always interested inexperimenting with new materials and techniques. The iPad is
one such example, and you can see works made on an iPad in
this exhibition.

Hockney moved from London to Los Angeles in 1964. In
this tropical climate, very different to England, he started
to depict water and light in constant motion, such as poolsurfaces reflecting sunlight, or sprays of sprinkler water
falling onto grass — fleeting moments that cannot be
captured by the eye. He used acrylic paint, which was
newly available at the time, making the most of its
characteristics to render buildings and pools into a flat,
vivid surface. He has also rendered landscapes celebrating
light and water using various printmaking techniques, oron the iPad he started to use in 2010. Look out for thewater and light in his pictures, which change theirexpression not only with the season and time of day, butalso with the method he uses.

Painting ever-changing
light and water

Painting people
close to him

Hockney has depicted many portraits of those close to him
like family, lovers and friends as models. In one of his
best-known works, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, Hockney’s
two friends looking out at the viewer are painted almost inreal size. This work took him about one year to finish. He
painted the room based on photos and sketches, trying to
express the space naturally by the effect of the light coming
through the window behind, and the position of the table in
the lower left corner. He had the couple pose in his studio
many times, painstakingly completing the painting. Hockneytells that what he wanted to depict most in this work was therelationship of the couple.

Take a look at the couple’s
e xp r e s sio n s , p o s e a n dp osit ion. What kind offeelings can you read ineach of them?

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970-71, Tate

The lilies painted here are said to represent purity andmotherhood, while the cat symbolizes being moody or
free-spirited. What kind of story about the couple does thissuggest to you?

Hockey visited the stone garden at Kyoto’s
Ryoanji Temple in 1983. Walking on theedges, he took more than 100 photos fromhis feet to the wall, and pasted them
together. Why did he do that? In this work,
Hockney challenges traditional perspective.
From one particular perspective, objects inthe forefront look bigger, while those

The stone garden drawn

further away are smaller. For example,

in one point perspective(it is also called linear

even though the garden looks rectangularperspective).

to the naked eye, when you take a photo of
the garden with a camera, it appears to betrapezoidal.

Looking at things fromdifferent perspectives
But Hockney came to think about how aphotograph can express the shape of thegarden as it looks to the naked eye, and herealized that the perspective of thephotographer needs to move. So in thiswork, you see stones that would be hidden
when you look from a certain edge of thegarden. Hockney’s feet which you can seeat the bottom of the work show movement
and passing time, which cannot becaptured

inone

photograph.

Here,Hockney discovered expressing things seenfrom multiple perspectives on a single
plane.

Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto, Feb. 1983,
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Hockney’ s work which
put together photographs
taken from multiple
perspectives.

Looking at thetimes. The oil painting in the series “The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate,
East Yorkshire in 2011 ( twenty eleven ) ” is comprised of 32 canvases. It
shows grass and flowers blooming all over the ground, and new green
leaves dancing in the wind from beyond the small path. The piece wascreated by Hockney in his studio while recalling spring landscapes he had
previously seen. These show dynamic expressions of grass and flowers
blooming all over the ground, and new green leaves dancing in the windfrom beyond the small path. On the other hand, the works drawn on his
iPad were created outdoors on the same path, every day between theend of winter and the beginning of summer. The ever-changing lights andcolors of the landscape captured quickly with his iPad show us the vividchanging of the seasons. Another masterpiece, A Year in Normandie, wasalso drawn on the iPad. This work was inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry,a 70 meter long embroidery showing historical scenes from 11th century

landscape close by

Hockney has created works on the theme of the arrival of spring several

Normandy. Hockney drew this 90 meter long work over one year,
connecting the landscape as seen from his garden. Try walking along andexperiencing the changing of seasons and passing of time.

Bayeux Tapestry

Published by: The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, The Yomiuri Shimbun
Supervisors: Kyongfa Che, Ai Kusumoto (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
Editor: Wakaba Sakai
Design and illustration: Ryoko Yamane
Translator: Meri Joyce© Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, The Yomiuri Shimbun

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