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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
La Vie en Rose is a poignant and incandescent example of Howard Hodgkin’s painterly idiom. The title of the work is taken from Edith Piaf’s signature song of the same name. Characteristic of Hodgkin’s output in the late 1990s, during which he abandoned all representational form, La Vie en Rose is assuredly abstract. Composed on a wood panel, which Hodgkin had used since 1960, the work centres around a glowing sunset scene. Broad swathes of orange and red sweep across a painterly field contained by a thick border of chestnut brown. In his signature style, Hodgkin has extended the painting directly onto its frame, which he saw as essential to the painting’s content as any chromatic choice. Hodgkin’s paintings are nearly always inspired by a memory, which he has then distilled into a single image built up over many years; indeed, the three-year gestation period of La Vie en Rose reflects this introspective, thoughtful working process. Although their titles may contain allusions to real places or people, very little in Hodgkin’s paintings is ever explicit: ‘I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances,’ he remarked. ‘I paint representational pictures of emotional situations’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in M. Price, Howard Hodgkin: The Complete Paintings Catalogue Raisonné, Fort Worth 2006, p. 14). Instead, the viewer is left with an overwhelming and potent sensation of a remembered feeling, fortified and solidified through the unification of support and image. In the case of La Vie en Rose, Hodgkin has captured a waning sun, the pleasant warmth of the day fading into dark.
La Vie en Rose is a poignant and incandescent example of Howard Hodgkin’s painterly idiom. The title of the work is taken from Edith Piaf’s signature song of the same name. Characteristic of Hodgkin’s output in the late 1990s, during which he abandoned all representational form, La Vie en Rose is assuredly abstract. Composed on a wood panel, which Hodgkin had used since 1960, the work centres around a glowing sunset scene. Broad swathes of orange and red sweep across a painterly field contained by a thick border of chestnut brown. In his signature style, Hodgkin has extended the painting directly onto its frame, which he saw as essential to the painting’s content as any chromatic choice. Hodgkin’s paintings are nearly always inspired by a memory, which he has then distilled into a single image built up over many years; indeed, the three-year gestation period of La Vie en Rose reflects this introspective, thoughtful working process. Although their titles may contain allusions to real places or people, very little in Hodgkin’s paintings is ever explicit: ‘I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances,’ he remarked. ‘I paint representational pictures of emotional situations’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in M. Price, Howard Hodgkin: The Complete Paintings Catalogue Raisonné, Fort Worth 2006, p. 14). Instead, the viewer is left with an overwhelming and potent sensation of a remembered feeling, fortified and solidified through the unification of support and image. In the case of La Vie en Rose, Hodgkin has captured a waning sun, the pleasant warmth of the day fading into dark.