.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In conversation with David Sylvester, Howard Hodgkin commented, 'I want to get the sort of evasiveness of reality into my pictures. I mean, looking at you now, I don't see Ingres' portrait of Monsieur Bertin, for example. Because I'm always seeing something else and something more. I might be looking past you or looking at the light falling on part of you or thinking of you. So it's my idea of you as well as what I see that's in my mind. But this kind of realism which depends also a lot on illusionism, is, of course, evanescent, frail and difficult to establish' (see exhibition catalogue, Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings: 1973-84, London, British Council, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1984, p. 97).
Hodgkin studied at Camberwell School of Art (1949-50) and then at Bath Academy of Art (1950-4), where he subsequently taught for 10 years (1956-66). In the late 1950s, during Hodgkin's time at Bath, he began working on a series of portraits which were to form a significant part of his output for the next twenty years. Teresa Gleadowe comments, 'These paintings may, with hindsight, be seen as studies in language, something akin to Queneau's celebrated Exercises in Style. But, at the time they were made, the pictures had for Hodgkin another function, helping him to define his own 'space' as an artist in the context of the prevailing styles of the period. The occasional passages in which ironic observation shades into sharper satire may be seen as a direct engagement with those of his contemporaries who considered his practice too idiosyncratic, too wayward or whimsical, for serious consideration' (see exhibition catalogue, Howard Hodgkin: Paintings 1977, XLI Venice Biennale, British Pavilion, 1984).
Hodgkin studied at Camberwell School of Art (1949-50) and then at Bath Academy of Art (1950-4), where he subsequently taught for 10 years (1956-66). In the late 1950s, during Hodgkin's time at Bath, he began working on a series of portraits which were to form a significant part of his output for the next twenty years. Teresa Gleadowe comments, 'These paintings may, with hindsight, be seen as studies in language, something akin to Queneau's celebrated Exercises in Style. But, at the time they were made, the pictures had for Hodgkin another function, helping him to define his own 'space' as an artist in the context of the prevailing styles of the period. The occasional passages in which ironic observation shades into sharper satire may be seen as a direct engagement with those of his contemporaries who considered his practice too idiosyncratic, too wayward or whimsical, for serious consideration' (see exhibition catalogue, Howard Hodgkin: Paintings 1977, XLI Venice Biennale, British Pavilion, 1984).