Perspective Should Be Reversed
Contents
2014

3-camera movie of A Bigger Exhibition

Before A Bigger Exhibition closes at the de Young, Hockney travels to San Francisco to make a movie of the installation. With three video cameras mounted on a trolley-like tripod, he wheels his way through the show capturing three different perspectives of the exhibition in one pass.

A Bigger Exhibition: A Film by David Hockney

Painting portraits in Hollywood

Hockney continues painting four-by-three-foot portraits of individual sitters in varied full-length poses but always in the same chair. He calls these “twenty-hour exposures” because each sitting takes six to seven hours on three consecutive days.

Peter Goulds, 31st December 2013, 1st, 2nd January 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Stephanie Barron, 7th, 8th, 9th January 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Dagny Corcoran, 15th, 16th, 17th January 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Jonathan Wilkinson, 19th, 20th, 21st January 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Kate Pynoos, 23rd, 24th, 25th January 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Avner Chaim, 27th, 28th, 29th January 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Merle Glick, 1st, 2nd, 3rd February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Jacob Rothschild, 5th, 6th February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Douglas Baxter, 8th, 9th, 10th February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Ray Charles White, 12th, 13th, 14th February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Ivan Schreiber, 24th, 25th, 26th February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Sam Perlman, 15th, 16th February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Jack Perlman, 17th, 18th February 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Rita Pynoos, 1st, 2nd March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Jim McHugh, 3rd, 4th, 5th March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Fruit on a Bench, 6th, 7th, 8th March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Ayn Grinstein, 10th, 11th, 12th March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Irving Blum, 17th, 18th, 19th March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Brad Bontems, 22nd, 23rd, 24th March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Paul Gray, 29th, 30th, 31st March 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Jackson McCoy, 4th, 5th, 6th April 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Arthur Lambert, 11th, 12th, 13th April 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Ian Gray, 3rd, 4th, 5th May 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Maurice Payne, 30th May, 1st, 2nd June 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Augustus and Perry Barringer, 16th, 17th June 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
John Fitzherbert, 17th, 18th, 19th July 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Oona Zlamany, 22nd, 23rd July 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"
Gary Wood, 28th, 29th, 30th December 2014 from "82 Portraits and 1 Still Life"

Paintings of groups

The Group VII, 20-27 May, 2014

He moves on to paint groups of people in his studio as they move about, chat, and look at art. Pieces of furniture are included—chairs, tables, [NESTED]easels—as well as works of art on the walls.

There’s a weird spatial thing going on which seems to me to be about the center of the picture, not the edges. In these groups, there’s general perspective for the room but also for each person, because I’m looking at them .... If a figure is close to me, I am seeing his face head on, but also looking down at his feet. So you are moving in to view just that one individual. Then, you have to turn to look at another person .... You make space through time, I think. And the space between where you end and I begin is the most interesting space of all.

There’s a weird spatial thing going on which seems to me to be about the center of the picture, not the edges. In these groups, there’s general perspective for the room but also for each person, because I’m looking at them .... If a figure is close to me, I am seeing his face head on, but also looking down at his feet. So you are moving in to view just that one individual. Then, you have to turn to look at another person .... You make space through time, I think. And the space between where you end and I begin is the most interesting space of all.

The Group I, 31 March - 11 April
The Group II, 15-16 April
The Group III, 16-22 April
The Group IV, 22-28 April
The Group V, 6-11 May
The Group VI, 15-20 May
The Group VIII, 4-10 June
The Group IX, 23-27 June
The Group X, 24 June - 2 July
The Group XI, 7-11 July
The Group XII, 24 July - 15 August
The Group XIII, 4-9 August

Photographic drawings

Hockney shifts to another medium, digital photography, to explore these group scenes, collaging as many as 200 digital photographs to create a single multi-viewpoint image. A figure might appear more than once in the composition, as if their movement within the studio space has been tracked. Hockney calls these time-based works “photographic drawings.” 

Paintings of dancers

Having completed group pictures portraying friends and acquaintances, Hockney next invites a group of dancers to pose for a series of paintings. These paintings, particularly those in which dancers are placed against an abstract background, often reference the work of Henri Matisse.

The Dancers II, 11 August - 8 September, 2014

The very first picture of the dancers was of them stood in a circle; it was okay, but they weren’t moving, they weren’t dancing. I got them to go round in a circle, then I would say stop, and draw one and I slowly built it up. Now I’ve moved out of the room and put them in a landscape—on top of the world, really.

The Dancers I, 11 August - 8 September
The Dancers III, 13 August - 8 September
The Dancers IV, 14 August - 5 September
The Dancers V, 27 August - 4 September

Exhibitions

Solo

  • The Jugglers, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb 1–Apr 20).
  • Hockney, Printmaker, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (Feb 5–May 11); catalogue with a text by Richard Lloyd.
  • The Arrival of Spring, Annely Juda Fine Art, London (May 8–Jul 12); catalogue with a text by David Hockney.
  • The Arrival of Spring, L.A. Louver, Venice, CA (Jul 10–Aug 29).
  • The Arrival of Spring, Pace Gallery, New York (Sep 5–Nov 1); catalogue with a text by David Hockney.
  • Looking is a Very Positive Act, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, U.K. (Oct 18, 2014–Feb 22, 2015).
  • Some New Painting (and Photography), Pace Gallery, New York (Nov 8, 2014–Jan 10, 2015); catalogue with a text by Martin Gayford.

Group

  • Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo (Feb 7–Feb 23).
  • Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain, Tate Liverpool (Feb 28–May 11).
  • Year after Year: Works on Paper from the UBS Art Collection, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (Mar 21–Jun 21); catalogue.
  • Le musée passager, Regional Council of Île-de-France, Paris (Apr 5–Jun 22); organized by Les Ateliers Frédéric Laffy; travels among Saint-Denis (Apr 5–20), Évry (Apr 26–May 11), Mantes-La-Jolie (May 17–Jun 1), and Val D’Europe (Jun 7–22).
  • Art and Yorkshire: From Turner to Hockney, Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate (Apr 12–Oct 12); catalogue.
  • Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Apr 18, 2014–Jan 11, 2015); catalogue.
  • Visual Deception II: Into the Future, Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo (Aug 9–Oct 5); travels to Kobe and Nagoya.
  • Ludwig Goes Pop, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (Oct 2, 2014–Jan 11, 2015); catalogue.
  • Pop to Popism, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (Nov 1, 2014–Mar 1, 2015); catalogue.
  • Bare Life: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and others–London artists working from life, 1950–80, LWL-Museum for Art and Culture, Domplatz Münster, Germany (Nov 8, 2014–Feb 22, 2015); catalogue.

Publication

Publication

  • Christopher Simon Sykes, David Hockney: The Biography, 1975–2012, A Pilgrim’s Progress, New York: Doubleday; London: Century.

Film

Film

  • Hockney, 113 min., Blakeway Productions, directed by Randall Wright.