David Hockney

Vibrant and colourful exhibition at Tate Britain of work by David Hockney from throughout his 60 year career.

The show was arranged well with themes which mirrored the chronology of the show. I liked the emphasis on how Hockney is using different techniques and ideas to look at how time and space can be captured in two dimensions. Although the show was busy when I went the works are large so people flow through well with few bottle necks and you get a good view of the pictures If you are patient. I thought the descriptions of the pictures could have been fuller but next time I go round I’ll take the tape tour which I suspect fills in some of the gaps.

In the early rooms I was fascinated by his series “Domestic Scenes” which showed gay couples in domestic scenes, normalising the relationships at a time (1963) when homosexuality was still illegal. One lovely one showed one man bathing another wearing a short pinafore and socks.

The light and colour in the fourth room showing the wonderful California pictures of the 1960s  hit you as you walked in and it was great to see so many of these pictures together. I love the way he is playing with how to paint still water in the pools. I loved the picture “Splash” which at first site looks like a mess of white paint but you realised when you look at it closely how painstakingly it has been painted.

It was also nice in the next room to see so many of the couples pictures from the late 60s. AS well as the classic “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” I also liked the picture of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.

I was slightly amazed at how many the styles from the later rooms I remembered from their original exhibitions. I have always been fond of the Polaroid montages and such a clever way to show the way our eyes actually view a subject, moving around it and piecing the information together. Similarly it was nice to see the Yorkshire pictures which were at the Royal Academy a few years ago again.

I was mesmerised by the wonderful multiscreen video works from 2010 showing films of slowly moving along a road in Yorkshire in the four different seasons. It was also clever to show some of the recent work on ipads as videos showing the pictures emerging and developing.

A great over view of a long and still developing career, may it continue to do so for many years to come.

Closes on 29 May 2017

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