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拍品專文
‘My titles are straightforward. People want to ask me questions, I think, because they want to ask all artists questions. My hope that painting pictures is all any artist needs to do – or dancing or writing or whatever – was dashed a long time ago. I don’t believe in programme notes or explanations for paintings, since they come between the audience and the picture. It must have something to do with the times or the change in communications, but nobody seems to be able to respond to art without a gush of words’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in A. Peattie, ‘A Conversation with Howard Hodgkin’ in exhibition catalogue, Howard Hodgkin, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, 1993).
The present work is a portrait of the artist and his wife Julia at their home, 114 Sinclair Road, London, W14. The work was painted on an old table top. Hodgkin and Julia lived there, whilst he commuted to Bath Academy of Art, where he was a part-time teacher, along with fellow tutors including Gillian Ayres, Michael Craig-Martin, Robyn Denny, John Ernest, Adrian Heath and Henry Mundy. In 1958, they moved to 12 Addison Gardens, Kensington. Although dated to 1960, it is possible to surmise that The Room may have been started in 1958 and completed in 1960. At the time, Hodgkin was profoundly affected by Abstract Expressionist paintings seen in two important exhibitions held at the Tate Gallery: Modern Art in the United States in 1956 and The New American Painting in 1959.
Although the large scale of the paintings he saw made an impression, at this moment his works were still a relatively modest size, with a combination of abstraction and portraiture. In The Room Hodgkin has placed heavy emphasis on the white surface background of the painting so that with its heavily worked impasto it stands very much as an integral part of the work. The use of white, rather than remaining neutral and non-intrusive, is a process that provides a clear boundary forcing the viewer to focus and pay attention to the two figures. The positioning of Hodgkin cleverly uses the edges of the painting to provide the sitting support. Additionally, the removal of any distracting elements and placing the figures in a void presents an opportunity for the emotion to emerge from, what is seemingly, a very simple painting. With two young sons, born in 1958 and 1960, the present work may convey Hodgkin’s sense of becoming a side-lined observer to his young family’s life, with Julia’s focus on the burden of motherhood. There is certainly a reflective mood, and their languid poses belay a dynamic tension between the positioning of the two figures.
Portraiture was important to Hodgkin throughout his career. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the majority of Hodgkin’s paintings were portraits, or included figures, and these demonstrated the influence of Abstract Expressionism through the gestural strokes, partially non-representational positioning of the subjects, as well as the use of blocks, stripes and dabs of colour. By the early 1960s 'swinging London' was taking hold, driven by a new youth culture that came to define the metropolitan landscape. Early ground-breaking exhibitions, such as Young Contemporaries held at the RCA Galleries in 1961, irrevocably shifted the perceived boundaries between popular culture and fine art. Hodgkin was undeniably part of this scene: in 1962 he shared an exhibition at the ICA with Allen Jones, and at one stage acted as the landlord to Patrick Caulfield, who took a studio in Hodgkin’s home. Personal friends with many of his artistic contemporaries during this period, Hodgkin painted portraits of Allen Jones and his wife, as well as Joe Tilson and his family, Adrian Heath and his wife, and Patrick Caulfield and his wife. As the 1960s progressed, with the bold and brash imagery of Pop Art, his confidence in the use of colour evolved.
‘My pictures are finished when the subject comes back. I start out with the subject and naturally I have to remember first of all what it looked like, but it would also perhaps contain a great deal of feeling and sentiment. All of that has got to be somehow transmuted, transformed or made into a physical object, and when that happens, when that’s finally been done, when the last physical marks have been put on and the subject comes back-which, after all, is usually the moment when the painting is at long last a physical coherent object-well, then the picture’s finished and there is no question of doing anything more to it. My pictures really finish themselves’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in D. Sylvester, Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings, exhibition catalogue, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1984, p. 97).
The present work is a portrait of the artist and his wife Julia at their home, 114 Sinclair Road, London, W14. The work was painted on an old table top. Hodgkin and Julia lived there, whilst he commuted to Bath Academy of Art, where he was a part-time teacher, along with fellow tutors including Gillian Ayres, Michael Craig-Martin, Robyn Denny, John Ernest, Adrian Heath and Henry Mundy. In 1958, they moved to 12 Addison Gardens, Kensington. Although dated to 1960, it is possible to surmise that The Room may have been started in 1958 and completed in 1960. At the time, Hodgkin was profoundly affected by Abstract Expressionist paintings seen in two important exhibitions held at the Tate Gallery: Modern Art in the United States in 1956 and The New American Painting in 1959.
Although the large scale of the paintings he saw made an impression, at this moment his works were still a relatively modest size, with a combination of abstraction and portraiture. In The Room Hodgkin has placed heavy emphasis on the white surface background of the painting so that with its heavily worked impasto it stands very much as an integral part of the work. The use of white, rather than remaining neutral and non-intrusive, is a process that provides a clear boundary forcing the viewer to focus and pay attention to the two figures. The positioning of Hodgkin cleverly uses the edges of the painting to provide the sitting support. Additionally, the removal of any distracting elements and placing the figures in a void presents an opportunity for the emotion to emerge from, what is seemingly, a very simple painting. With two young sons, born in 1958 and 1960, the present work may convey Hodgkin’s sense of becoming a side-lined observer to his young family’s life, with Julia’s focus on the burden of motherhood. There is certainly a reflective mood, and their languid poses belay a dynamic tension between the positioning of the two figures.
Portraiture was important to Hodgkin throughout his career. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the majority of Hodgkin’s paintings were portraits, or included figures, and these demonstrated the influence of Abstract Expressionism through the gestural strokes, partially non-representational positioning of the subjects, as well as the use of blocks, stripes and dabs of colour. By the early 1960s 'swinging London' was taking hold, driven by a new youth culture that came to define the metropolitan landscape. Early ground-breaking exhibitions, such as Young Contemporaries held at the RCA Galleries in 1961, irrevocably shifted the perceived boundaries between popular culture and fine art. Hodgkin was undeniably part of this scene: in 1962 he shared an exhibition at the ICA with Allen Jones, and at one stage acted as the landlord to Patrick Caulfield, who took a studio in Hodgkin’s home. Personal friends with many of his artistic contemporaries during this period, Hodgkin painted portraits of Allen Jones and his wife, as well as Joe Tilson and his family, Adrian Heath and his wife, and Patrick Caulfield and his wife. As the 1960s progressed, with the bold and brash imagery of Pop Art, his confidence in the use of colour evolved.
‘My pictures are finished when the subject comes back. I start out with the subject and naturally I have to remember first of all what it looked like, but it would also perhaps contain a great deal of feeling and sentiment. All of that has got to be somehow transmuted, transformed or made into a physical object, and when that happens, when that’s finally been done, when the last physical marks have been put on and the subject comes back-which, after all, is usually the moment when the painting is at long last a physical coherent object-well, then the picture’s finished and there is no question of doing anything more to it. My pictures really finish themselves’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in D. Sylvester, Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings, exhibition catalogue, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1984, p. 97).