Career of David Hockney
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David Hockney has had one of the most unusual careers of any artist of this century. Born in England in 1937, by the time he left London's Royal College of Art Hockney already had a national reputation as a painter. Since that time he has consistently been one of the most financially and critically successful artists in the world as well as one of the most popular (Livingstone 9). Hockney's works are known and recognized by a far broader audience than most artists enjoy. His is the kind of success that perfectly blends popular and critical acclaim. Thus, the prestigious Tate Gallery of London consistently reports that Hockney's well-known double portrait Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970-71) is the museum's most popular picture with visitors (Geldzahler 14). This popularity has grown even as Hockney has changed mediums and styles. From the early pop-related style through the flat-surfaced acrylic portraits of the seventies and eighties and in the California swimming pool pictures, opera sets, engravings and Polaroid collages Hockney has repeatedly extended his art and extended his audience. Though abstract expressionism was the dominant style at the time Hockney began his career he never adopted a purely abstract approach. Recognizable, if highly-stylized, figures always remained the subject of his paintings. Today the works for which Hockney is best known are the paintings "in a lush coloristic style indebted to Picasso and Matisse" (Fineberg 241). Picasso in
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. In order to avoid detailing the wall in any way Hockney had to make it possible for the viewer to read the spatial relations quickly. To do this he inserted a ruled line indicating a corner where two walls meet. This line falls to the left of center and provides evidence of the physical support the sitter has. If, however, the flowers were not shown on the right the blank wall would flatten out so that she would still be suspended without support.
The flowers themselves define a similar use of blank space as a supporting surface. The single ruled line of the table could not be read as a flat surface if the flower were not shown resting on it. It could, without them, be a wall in front of the sitter just as easily as a table. If the drawing is turned on its side it is easy to see how Celia rests against the wall in a manner similar to that in which the vase rests on the table.
Hockney also uses the straight lines to build up the composition as a series of rectangles with one dominant rectangle that holds the sitters' face and makes it the center of the viewer's attention. The main rectangle of the picture surface is broken into three unequal parts by the two straight lines. The dark black of Celia's jacket (with its
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Approximate Word count = 2415
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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