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Lot Essay
‘The more evanescent the emotion I want to convey, the thicker the panel, the heavier the framing, the more elaborate the border, so that this delicate thing will remain protected and intact’
–Howard Hodgkin
‘Hung around him, on walls as bare and stately as a nave, were seven of the large paintings that were destined for the Gagosian show. All of them, as is his custom, are painted on wood… The frames alone announce them as Hodgkins; he often scouts junk shops for old frames, ranging from the blockish to the ornate ... There are blank canvases in the studio, but they are used simply to hide the paintings from view, leaving only one exposed—he likes to labor on a single work, shutting out the distraction of its fellows … I indicate a passage in the top right-hand corner of “Memorial” (2000-03), with its new variation on an old Hodgkin theme: the fluid, falling arc of paint that speaks, against all logic, of the breaking of hearts. ’
–Anthony Lane
A magnificent example of Howard Hodgkin’s unmistakable mature idiom, Memorial (2000-03) is a painting of a remembered feeling, existing in a hazy territory between abstraction and representation. It is an inquiry into how emotion can be represented in paint, and a jewel-like image of the vivid yet evanescent nature of memory. A field of sunburst yellow is contained in a heavy, wooden frame, which has been painted orange and brushed over with a leafy green. Shapes come into focus within: concentric strokes of translucent yellow veil a black area to the lower right, which is adjoined by a bold dash of red; a red-grey haze to the upper left angles jauntily upwards, while mute flashes of teal and white can be glimpsed beyond, like light breaking through cloud. Hodgkin’s brushwork is bright, tactile, and alive with expression. Yet while they may echo human forms, architectural settings, or even the features of a landscape, the elements of his paintings always recede into abstraction. Physical impressions become only part of an indivisible, holistic fabric of emotional reality, a highly specific state of feeling that the painting both records and transmits. As John McEwen writes, ‘All Hodgkin’s pictures can be thought of as the grit of some experience pearled by reflection’ (J. McEwen, ‘Introduction’, in Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings 1973-84, exh. cat. British Pavilion, XLI Venice Biennale / Whitechapel Gallery, London 1984, p. 10). In Memorial, through the prismatic intensity of Hodgkin’s memory, we bear witness to an extraordinary coalescence of sight and sensation, of perception and passion.
Hodgkin’s incorporation of painted frames into his pictures is one of many striking originalities in his work, which falls into no straightforward artistic category. With support and paint forged into a unified whole, these brilliant, basically autobiographical paintings – and indeed the original feelings that sparked them – are transformed into autonomous, self-sufficient pictorial objects. There is a sense of Hodgkin fortifying his precious subject matter by reifying it, bringing it into the world, as solidly as possible: his labour is gradual and arduous, and the three-year gestation of Memorial is not unusual. Discussing his frames in 1984, Hodgkin observed that ‘The more evanescent the emotion I want to convey, the thicker the panel, the heavier the framing, the more elaborate the border, so that this delicate thing will remain protected and intact’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in P. Kinmonth, ‘Howard Hodgkin’, Vogue, June 1984). If this frame works to keep the memory ‘protected and intact’, it also figures a sense of loss and distancing, sealing the memory forever just beyond reach. Yet despite this necessary tint of melancholy to Hodgkin’s art of recollection, the very fact of his artistic creation is its own spectacular reward. In Memorial’s blazing colour, light and form, he not only forges a private elegy to a place and an emotion, but is also able to communicate his deeply personal interior reminiscence to other people. In a 2003 interview with Anthony Lane, Hodgkin illuminates his work’s unique power, placing the significance of Memorial beyond the reach of words. ‘So how does he know when his work is done?’, Lane wonders. ‘“When the original feeling comes back as a painting.” I indicate a passage in the top right-hand corner of Memorial (2000-03), with its new variation on an old Hodgkin theme: the fluid, falling arc of paint that speaks, against all logic, of the breaking of hearts. Can the swipe of a brush really do that – signal, over and over, another small paradise lost? “I’m very pleased with that part of the painting, so I can’t really talk about it,” Hodgkin says, and we leave it at that’ (A. Lane, ‘True Colors’, New Yorker, 25 November 2003, p. 99).
–Howard Hodgkin
‘Hung around him, on walls as bare and stately as a nave, were seven of the large paintings that were destined for the Gagosian show. All of them, as is his custom, are painted on wood… The frames alone announce them as Hodgkins; he often scouts junk shops for old frames, ranging from the blockish to the ornate ... There are blank canvases in the studio, but they are used simply to hide the paintings from view, leaving only one exposed—he likes to labor on a single work, shutting out the distraction of its fellows … I indicate a passage in the top right-hand corner of “Memorial” (2000-03), with its new variation on an old Hodgkin theme: the fluid, falling arc of paint that speaks, against all logic, of the breaking of hearts. ’
–Anthony Lane
A magnificent example of Howard Hodgkin’s unmistakable mature idiom, Memorial (2000-03) is a painting of a remembered feeling, existing in a hazy territory between abstraction and representation. It is an inquiry into how emotion can be represented in paint, and a jewel-like image of the vivid yet evanescent nature of memory. A field of sunburst yellow is contained in a heavy, wooden frame, which has been painted orange and brushed over with a leafy green. Shapes come into focus within: concentric strokes of translucent yellow veil a black area to the lower right, which is adjoined by a bold dash of red; a red-grey haze to the upper left angles jauntily upwards, while mute flashes of teal and white can be glimpsed beyond, like light breaking through cloud. Hodgkin’s brushwork is bright, tactile, and alive with expression. Yet while they may echo human forms, architectural settings, or even the features of a landscape, the elements of his paintings always recede into abstraction. Physical impressions become only part of an indivisible, holistic fabric of emotional reality, a highly specific state of feeling that the painting both records and transmits. As John McEwen writes, ‘All Hodgkin’s pictures can be thought of as the grit of some experience pearled by reflection’ (J. McEwen, ‘Introduction’, in Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings 1973-84, exh. cat. British Pavilion, XLI Venice Biennale / Whitechapel Gallery, London 1984, p. 10). In Memorial, through the prismatic intensity of Hodgkin’s memory, we bear witness to an extraordinary coalescence of sight and sensation, of perception and passion.
Hodgkin’s incorporation of painted frames into his pictures is one of many striking originalities in his work, which falls into no straightforward artistic category. With support and paint forged into a unified whole, these brilliant, basically autobiographical paintings – and indeed the original feelings that sparked them – are transformed into autonomous, self-sufficient pictorial objects. There is a sense of Hodgkin fortifying his precious subject matter by reifying it, bringing it into the world, as solidly as possible: his labour is gradual and arduous, and the three-year gestation of Memorial is not unusual. Discussing his frames in 1984, Hodgkin observed that ‘The more evanescent the emotion I want to convey, the thicker the panel, the heavier the framing, the more elaborate the border, so that this delicate thing will remain protected and intact’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in P. Kinmonth, ‘Howard Hodgkin’, Vogue, June 1984). If this frame works to keep the memory ‘protected and intact’, it also figures a sense of loss and distancing, sealing the memory forever just beyond reach. Yet despite this necessary tint of melancholy to Hodgkin’s art of recollection, the very fact of his artistic creation is its own spectacular reward. In Memorial’s blazing colour, light and form, he not only forges a private elegy to a place and an emotion, but is also able to communicate his deeply personal interior reminiscence to other people. In a 2003 interview with Anthony Lane, Hodgkin illuminates his work’s unique power, placing the significance of Memorial beyond the reach of words. ‘So how does he know when his work is done?’, Lane wonders. ‘“When the original feeling comes back as a painting.” I indicate a passage in the top right-hand corner of Memorial (2000-03), with its new variation on an old Hodgkin theme: the fluid, falling arc of paint that speaks, against all logic, of the breaking of hearts. Can the swipe of a brush really do that – signal, over and over, another small paradise lost? “I’m very pleased with that part of the painting, so I can’t really talk about it,” Hodgkin says, and we leave it at that’ (A. Lane, ‘True Colors’, New Yorker, 25 November 2003, p. 99).