David Hockney's Photography One of the most revolutionary developments in photography this century had
been the work of businessman/inventor, Charles Land. Perhaps you've heard of his
camera, the Land Camera? The Polaroid Land Camera? There, I knew you'd heard of
him. As photographers go, they either love it or hate it, and that's pretty much
the case with artists as well. A few of us have used it from time to time for
quick colour images, or to create compositions when time was of the essence. On
certain occasions, it can be a helpful tool. A few artists, one in particular,
have embraced it as an art/photography medium and have demonstrated its
considerable potential.
That artist is David Hockney. Born in England in 1937, Hockney originally
came to notice for his use of hundreds of Polaroid shots of a single scene,
collaged together like little snippets of memory to create an overall mural of
sizable proportions. His photomontage entitled Pearblossom Highway 11-18th
April 1986, for instance, is some 78" tall and 111" long. The effect is that
of a glimmering mosaic featuring a desolate desert highway where cactus compete
with road signs in decorating the landscape. More recently, he has dabbled in
everything from acrylic painting to set designs for such productions as Die
Frau Ohne Schatten for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1992. Still
more recently, he created a nine-minute stage set performance piece called A
Snail's Pace, in which coloured lights were the actors.
His most recent endeavor is so new it arrived from England for an exhibit at
the National Museum of American Art in Washington with the paint still wet. Some
twenty-four feet long in what is termed an "almost realistic" style, it is
entitled, A Bigger Grand Canyon. The work is a sequel to the
twenty-two-foot-long, computer-driven, abstract work he presented last year.
Somewhat like his Polaroid montages, this work is comprised of sixty separate
canvases, mounted into a single grid, 24 feet long and 7 feet tall. The painting
had its genesis back in 1982 when Hockney photographed the Grand Canyon using
his off-the-shelf Polaroid camera to create a preliminary work from which he has
painted. The work took three months to complete with Hockney painting at times
on individual canvases and at other times on the work as a whole. The Exhibit
will be on view in Washington through September 7, whereupon it will travel to
the L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice, California. Contributed by Lane, Jim
19 June 1998 |
