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This blog will is about all things related to digital artistry, varied from interactive visual and audio topics. This content is entirely by Kevin Ronkko.
David Hockney a living master: turning mundane to fascinating
David Hockney A living master: turning the mundane to fascinating. Art institute of Pittsburgh Online Division Kevin Ronkko Color Theory with Professor Diana Hill 11/01/2005
Abstract
David Hockney reached the peak of his popularity in the 1960s, and has remained famous ever since. His artistic career has seen several stages, though his work has been influenced by key masters and thus has had a common thread both stylistically and in meaning. This paper will seek to offer a brief biography, look in depth at a work of his, and to discuss his influence as an artist and to the art of the future. Focus of color theory, pertaining to David Hockney’s work, will be a priority in this paper. Some time and attention to his theories regarding art history and the techniques utilized surrounding the Lens Obscura will also be looked at, in order to better understand how artists might have studied tone, shadow and detail of hue in art works of the past. Much attention will be addressed to the meaning of Hockney’s work, as well. Anyone interested in learning more about David Hockney can simply do so by typing his name combined with an idea from this paper into a major search engine, like Google, and explore. The amount of information floating around in cyber space is staggering, some of which has influenced this paper, via a sort of neuronal scramble, though sources have been cited appropriately, as Hockney is debatably one of our greatest living artists today.
''The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist.' – David Hockney' (IRVINE) As a child, David Hockney, born in Bradford England on July 9th 1937, used to spend Sunday school creating cartoons of Jesus, though encouraged not to http://www.davidhockney.com). Hockney is still that controversially creative little boy inside, even as an older person, but is now a vital and creative world class, knowledgeable artist and draftsman. His immense body of work with oil paints, in particular, includes landscapes, still life paintings and human portraits wearing varying amounts of optional clothing, often poolside, which explains the color choices of many of his paintings, often having a polish central hue.His immense talent is hard to ignore, as his technique is universally considered to be unique and perfectly executed. His uses of simple geometric shapes, combined with his generally clever designs, are the elements that have made him a famous, or infamous, to some artists in spite of changing trends, for better or worse, within the creative community.
David Hockney developed an early reputation as a pop artist of the 1960s. His look at this time, roughly speaking, was a bit like a sort of combination of Elton John glasses, Andy Warhol hair and a toned down Liberace jacket. Because of his artistic skill and maturity, though, Hockney has repeatedly proven to be an exceptional and unique artist with encyclopedic knowledge of art history, technique and the likely techniques, utilized through his own personal experience.
Hockney was educated at the prestigious Bradford Grammar school, where he earned school credit by drawing posters for the debating society, and the Royal College of Art in London. Hockney became friends with the acclaimed painter and pop artist Ronald Brooks Kitaj there. Years later, Hockney would be the best man at R.J. Kitag’s wedding. (Bernhard)
Though he is often falsely labeled as a pop artist, he is a contemporary landscape painter with a very unique and deliberate style, often with still life fine art exploding off the page, be it pools or house plants. His work Cactus with Lemons would be a prime example.
Hockney is certainly influenced by Picasso's work, which is why he is very arguably much more than a simple pop artist. An etching example, from 1974, called Simplified Faces 1 is proof of this. His use of photo collage in the 1980s was one of his great contributions to art and could be thought to be influenced by cubism, like Picasso’s. Hockney’s greatest artistic influence, when his enormous body of existing work is reviewed, does indeed seems to be Picasso, apparently due to his having seen a Picasso exhibit in 1960 at the Tate museum in London. (Bernhard)
In 1970s Hockney began working on scene design, and has become highly influential in this art form, in addition to painting. He still works on stage design this today. In 1977, Hockney was an artist involved with artists for Amnesty International, a civilized human rights organization. Other artists involved with this important program include artists like Yoko Ono and musicians Peter Gabriel, Winton Marsalis, the band ColdPlay and others. Comedy great Steve Martin is a David Hockney fan. In a recent interview, he stated so, in an off the cuff moment, pointing out the way in which Hockney handles criticism, by believing in himself.“`OK, I can go along and do my work and know that some'll be interesting, some won't, some'll be fairly criticized, some will be unfairly criticized,' and it's just part of the business…. …And you know, I saw a great--Am I going on too long?--a documentary about David Hockney. And I talked to an art collector, a friend of mine, about five years ago--and I really like David Hockney--and he's a contemporary art collector, and I said, `Do you have any Hockney?' He goes, `Oh, no, he's out of it. He's this'--you know, blah, blah. And then I saw this documentary on him and I realized that Hockney doesn't care. Hockney's going on with his work, making beautiful things. He's in a way outside the contemporary mainstream art scene, although he's represented by important galleries in New York, but he was so enthused about his own work, it just didn't matter what people thought of him, what, you know, outside critics, people with their own specialized point of view think of him. He's making beautiful--he was doing at that point stage design. Anyway, it made me really, really admire David Hockney.” – Steve Martin (Conan)
In 1986, Hockney developed experimental art works on the photo copier, realizing that it was almost like a camera, but scanned images. This must have gotten him to thinking. Master artist David Hockney has been often misunderstood, despite his efforts to speak clearly and simply. Artists, perhaps like magicians, aren’t supposed to give away all of the secrets. Hockney, however, teamed up with Las Vegas Magicians Penn and Teller, in his 1992 book, Behind the Scenes with David Hockney,to do exactly in that. His important 2001 book Secret Knowledge changed history. The unveiling of this theory within the arts community could be compared with, as in music, the moment that Bob Dylan, loudly, went electric before a tender eared traditional folk crowd. In both cases, the emotional confusion of progressive change was impossible to ignore.
The BBC “Omnibus” special tells how artists once likely used the Lens Obscura to illuminate photographic-like quality images on a plane in order to better capture details for accurate painting. Actually, Filippo Brunelleschi was thought to be using mirrors to aid him in his work as early as the 1400s. It was about 1420 where the exciting changes of painting detail in fine art are known to be documented.Critics say that Hockney is stating that the artist didn’t have the skills to create such great works of art without the use of the “camera obscura”. After reviewing Hockney’s statements on the film, it can be determined that he never stated that. All he stated was that if the technology was available, and it was, wouldn’t at least some of these artists have had utilized it once in a while? It’s hard not to agree. What scientist wouldn’t use a telescope or microscope to do research after all? Though Hockney’s revelations might not explain all of, or maybe even any of, the mysteries behind great works of art, he should be given credit for explaining one way in which an artist of the time period could have, and very possibly did utilize the breakthrough technology of the time. Hockney should be applauded for his work here. The coincidences are certainly notable, without a doubt.
“So is the camera the enemy of the representational painter? The artist David Hockney … has long suspected differently. He believes that the camera has been a jealously held secret tool of great artists since the Renaissance: that the method of optically reproducing an image - photography, if you like - has been around a lot longer than we thought…. … The ancient Greeks were aware of it, and it has been directly assisting artists since as early as the 1420s. If he is right - and tonight's Omnibus Special,"David Hockney's Secret Knowledge", is persuasively argued - then ever since Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb eclipsed all previous stabs at artistic accuracy in 1432, the whole \of art history will have to be reappraised. By the same token, it could perhaps be said that Da Vinci, Caravaggio and Vermeer, rather than being touched by genius in their ability to recreate texture, perspective, light and shadow, were merely expert copyists who knew how to trace reflections.” (Bonetti)
Hockney continues to walk in the steps of his other hero, the great poet Walt Whitman. The history is that Hockney was a conscientious objector in 1959 and so he served his national service \working in a hospital from 1959 to 1957. Walt Whitman, coincidently, had served as a nurse during the civil war. In 1961, Hockney read the complete works of Walt Whitman and actually integrated Whitman’s Poetry into his etchings Myself and My Heroes. “His love of poetry led to the introduction of words in his pictures and drawings, as in the etchings Myself and My Heroes (1961) containing quotations from Walt Whitman. Homage was also paid to past artists in many of his works, such as Artist and Model (1973-74) in which he depicted Picasso as artist and himself as model.” (Bonetti) In 1990, Hockney presented “40 snaps of my house.” It appears that Hockney knows paradise, indeed. Perhaps his real success as an artist is due to the fact that he has painted so much.“Good painting, good coloring is comparable to good cooking. Even a good cooking recipe demands tasting and repeated tasting while it is being followed.” (Albers, 42)
In recent years he has been outspoken about world events, such as wars, natural disasters and smoking laws. He smokes! Hockney peacefully turned down a knighthood in 1990.(Robinson) Hockney has undoubtedly created a vast body of work with a common thread, his own sense of space texture and color, exploring varying techniques and subjects. Though it might be pointed out that Hockney prefers to paint paradise, rather than dwelling on the gloom and doom that is readily available in so much of our daily media outlets.The real beauty of Hockney’s work rests with the fact that he seems to be comfortable and free enough with whom he is, and therefore believes in himself enough to share who he is and his perspectives with everyone.
The work critiqued in this paper, below, is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago web site:
My first impression of this work of art is that it has quite a lot of open space and very little movement. Hockney loves open space as a graphics tool, and is fascinated with it in landscapes. There is a real sense of mystery here.“Any single color or combination of colors might contain a symbolic meaning, convey a message, attract attention, evoke emotions, or display a special mood.” (Wong, 149)
The color harmony scheme here seems to be based on a split harmony concept, when reviewing a color wheel. (Wong, 44) The colors cyan and red are extreme opposites, but here, Hockney utilizes pink, to one side of red, and brown or orange, to the other side, to plan half of his color scheme. Some other colors are also utilized in order for the painting to make visual sense, but the color scheme does indeed seem to be split complimentary with the blue-green cyan taking up so much space. The colors in this painting do work descriptively, though he does add a bit of dissonance, both in subject and color, with the greenish blue and the pink for example. Perhaps this is to suggest a tension between males and females, making the colors have strong meanings? “We emphasize that color harmonies, usually the special interest or aim of color systems, are not the only desirable relationship. As with tones in music, so with color – dissonance is as desirable as its opposites, consonance.” (Albers, 68)
As this painting shows, Hockney’s art is two directional as the hosting Chicago Institute of Art web site points out, “towards a decorative joie de vivre and spontaneity, or towards a perceptual scrutiny almost claustrophobic in its intensity.” The above work is a great example of how to combine both abstract expression and yet somehow still make a personal statement. Hockney regularly turns the mundane into fascinating – or at least interesting. Here, people simply standing in a room become very interesting indeed. “When developing a color scheme, we should begin by choosing a dominant hue and consider variations in value and chroma as well as additional hues.” (Wong, 89)
Though the dominant hue here seems to be a greenish variation of cyan, this painting also combines both harmony and tension, through gently repeated expression and a well planned color scheme. Though much of the painting is in a cool light valued blue, without much sense of shadow, the majority of contrast in color is within the woman’s dress, as if she really stands out somehow, perhaps it is the pink, being a hot color, that causes this. This has to be symbolism, as pink is a kind, female kind of color, really standing out in the front here, even though the man is drawn closer. The woman, through color, somehow moves forward visually in this painting. Yet, the man is in black, the absence of color, so he tends to not stand out as much. The intended blue background, more of a male color, might describe Hockney’s Californian world and his surroundings? The blending of clothed humans, a tree, architecture and human art forms such as a totem pole and a Zen-like pile of objects, all add a certain amount of mystery to this brightly lit painting, due to the use of light values. After a while of looking at this painting, one gets the feeling that they are in a museum, and the people observed are simply wax figures, as rigid and unmoving as the totem pole. Though, perhaps, a spirit of them exists. The most flexible looking figure in this painting is the lively tree with green leaves, explaining a potential for growth and fertility. Hockney skillfully has designed this painting, deliberately placing things in an orderly, museum-like fashion. It is interesting that all of the exhibits in this painting are fully clothed, though I’m not sure as exactly to why, when Hockney has often tended to enjoy Californians in a more natural, organic pose. It appears to be very deliberate in this work. At any rate, the web site at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the painting can be viewed, states, in regard to Hockney’s use of color, “Brilliant California light unites the composition, rather than any affinity between the collectors, who seem oblivious to each other and their art.” It really is like looking into a museum lobby,staring into this painting. (Chicago) The life of David Hockney and his work is full of lessons about life and art. It is a privilege to have an artist of his caliber still living and offering wisdom and insight today. He is not only a connection to our past, but an optimistic hope for the utopian future, splashingly captured in his life’s work.
Many of Hockney’s paintings could be explored and talked about in terms of color scheme, meaning, and influences. The above painting was a great example, but he has left behind so much work, this paper has only begun to scratch the metaphorical surface.
References and Sources Cited:Albers, Josef. (1963). Interaction of Color. Yale University Press. New Haven and London. Bernhard, Brendan. 9-12-18-1997. The L.A. Weekly. Expatriate artist R.B. Kitaj's bittersweet homecoming. Retrieved November 1, 2005 from the World Wide Webhttp://www.laweekly.com/ink/97/42/art-bernhard.php Bonetti, David. Chronicle Art Critic. 08-18-2001. American visionaries / Four L.A. exhibitions explore national identity through painting and photographs;San Francisco Chronicle
Chicago, Art Institute. Retrieved from the world wide web 11-2-2005. The best place to see the painting for research is on the world wide web athttp://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/contemporary/highlight_item?acc=1984.182&page=2Colker, David. Interview. 10-11-2001. e-Briefing; Celebrity Setup; Mixed Media Master; Painter David Hockney blends high and low technology in his art. Los Angeles Times Home Edition Conan, Neal. 10-19-2004. Time: 3:00-4:00 PM. Interview: Steve Martin discusses life on the stage and the page; Talk of the Nation (NPR)
Gilbert, Gerard. 10-13-2001. Staying in: It was all done with mirrors; London. The Independent
IRVINE, IAN. 10-01-2005. The Saturday Prole: DAVID HOCKNEY: Northern lights. The Independent - London Robinson, Stephen. 12-23-2003. Honours refuseniks become new elite By saying no to royal recognition,300 members of the great and good have accidentally formed their own prestigious group, reports Stephen Robinson; The Daily Telegraph Kunst und Ausstellungshalle. 05-17-2001. Kunst und Ausstellungshalle: David Hockney, a Retrospective; BONN, Germany. Business Wire
Livingstone, Marco 01-01-2001. Hockney, David (reference). 1977. David Hockney; American Cultural Leaders. ABC-CLIO Interactive
Wong, Wucius. (1997). Principles of Color Design: Designing with electronic color. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York.
POPOVA: HER ART, BIOGRAPHY, AND INFLUENCES, by KEVIN RONKKO
Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division 9/22/2005 – Instructor Jeff DavisLiubov Sergeevna Popovna (1889-1924), a well studied, extremely inventive and innovative Russian Avant-Garde trail blazer, lived her life seemingly in a flash by modern standards. Though hard to imagine, she died at the startlingly young age of thirty-five from Scarlet Fever, tragically caught when caring her beloved, but infected with the fatal illness, son. In her short life, she earned considerable - though strikingly understated - fame for her enormous contribution to art through her mathematical “Painterly Architectonics,” 1 or Architectonic Compositions, which resulted from her learned fascination with the so-called Cubist and Cubo-Futurism that arrived into popularity on the art scene at around 1910. It should be noted that perhaps her greatest contribution might be her example of how much can be done in such a brief window of opportunity.
The idea behind the concept of constructivism was that art was to be built, instead of drawn in representation of nature or what the eye already can see. To relate this ideal to her work, for example, when painting human forms, she would break the once humanoid figures into cubes, spirals and other mechanical and geometrical-like shapes and shades.
Note: Her geometric landscape work is now of great value in materialistic terms, often found to be auctioned at Sotheby's London for anywhere between $125,000.00 to $250,000.00. Sadly, today’s market is full of fakes of her work.:
“The growth area for forgery today is the work of the Russian avant-garde -- Rodchenko, Popova, Larionov, Lissitsky, Malevich -- which, as a result of perestroika, is coming on the market in some quantity after 60 years of Stalinist-Brezhnevian repression. Prices are zooming, and authentication is thin. Sotheby's held a Russian sale in London in April 1989. It contained, according to some scholars, two outright fakes ascribed to Liubov Popova and one dubious picture, badly restored and signed on the front – something Popova never did with her oil paintings. Doubts about the authenticity of these works were voiced to the auction house, but its staff disagreed and the sale went ahead.”2
Popovna later moved from constructivism type techniques into the discipline of supremism, where geometric paintings seemed to be as if from a heaven or outer space, rather than from our own planet, the third rock that rotates around our galaxies sun.3 For two excellent visual examples of the Popova cubism connection, follow this link: http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_131_2.html
In the two paintings on display in the Guggenheim collection, Portrait of a Woman and Birsk from 1915 and 1916 clearly show the direction she was moving in during that time. She was definitely moving from Cubist techniques toward her “Painterly Architonics.”
In Portrait of a Woman, released in 1915, this work is very rhythmic. The colors, here, are split complimentary. They are not exactly complimentary hues according to the color wheel; they work in a complimentary way, creating balance and contrast in the design, and a sense of positive and negative space. Because the rhythms repeat in such a structured way, I am thinking that this is a formal composition, though cleverly fools you into thinking that it is informal. The use of letters within a painting was another Avante-Garde technique, which the well-trained Popova includes. The guitar placed at the top of this complex composition brings out the musical element, making the rhythmic nature of this painting into full musical harmony.
In Birsk, released in 1916, a lot of the same techniques are used in terms of color and contrast. The shapes here become more mechanical looking, though. You can see the promise of the Russian Avante-Garde movement here, a futuristic utopia where technology can save us and we all live in peace. As a result, for people who like to live in peace, it is hard not to like this design.
Late in her quickly played out life, as she progressed as an artist into making her art more useful, she created useful textile designs for the State to manufacture. Below is an example:
http://hammersite.com/hammersite/RequestBid?Lot=com.webridge.entity.Entity%5BOID%5BCD3BC7D2889AA44BA56CB271C88D9E64%5D%5D
Her influence to the modern art community is unarguably enormous, especially when the idea of making art more useful.
“The amount of work she produced and the vitality of it was astonishing. One of the nice things about Russia then was that there weren't the same gender distinctions. It means a lot to me that she was a woman working at this time. That period of painting in Russia was very fruitful, yet people really only think of a few names like Kandinksky or Rodchenko. I like Popova because she was a real cross-boundaries type of artist. She was typical of that very exciting period when artists thought they were doing something useful and behaved as if they were, which doesn't often happen.” Brian Eno 4
“The emphasis was on integrating art into society, in making art "for the people." 5
Artists who have been influenced by the works of Popova and her Avante-Garde colleagues include: 1960’s Avante-Garde pioneers John Cage who considered himself to be a polyartist and Marcel Duchamp who made the useful urinal into a work of art, Andy Warhal of the 1970s who utilized the Campbell’s tomato soup can as art and even Jean-Michel Basquiat, a popular artist in the 1980s who used street images and materials as art.
“What a wild time the Russian artists had in the years just before and after the revolution. Artists were intoxicated with such advanced styles as cubofuturism, suprematism, and constructivism. Many painters -- like Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, andLiubov Popova -- were eager to do theater design because it offered the opportunity to get beyond the flat canvas and to incorporate three-dimensional and moving elements into their work.” - John ZeamanWorks Cited:
1.) Boguslawski, Alexander. Liubov Sergeevna Popovna. 1998-2005. http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/popova.html. 2.) Hughes, Robert (reported by Mary Cronin and Kathryn Jackson Fallon). ART: Sold! It went crazy, it stays crazy, but don’t ask what the market is doing to museums and the public; 1989. Time Inc.
3.) Milner, John. Popova: Radical Shifts. Art in America; May 1971. 79,5. Research Library Core pg. 43
4.) Cripps, Charlotte. Forgotten Heroes Brian Eno: The musician on the Russian artist. The Independent. London: Independent Newspapers (UK) Limited.
5.) Zeaman, John. Design and Dogma Converge a Worker’s Modernist. The Record (Bergen County, NJ) 02-22-1991 6.) Zeaman, John. When the Avant Garde Stole the Show; Old Russian Theater. The Record (Bergen County, NJ) 02-22-1991
Paul Stahr, The American Illustrator
by Kevin Ronkko 12/22/2011
The American Illustrator, Paul Stahr is well known in particular for his pulp illustrations, though he also illustrated posters, propaganda, and magazine covers. He was also gifted as a beer brewer. He studied illustration with George Bridgman in 1905 and went on to work for a lithography company (pulpartist.com).
Here are some links to some of his works that I have found appealing.
One example of the work of Paul Stahr can be seen on this 1922 Saturday Evening Post illustration:
This illustration is clever. In the foreground is a confident, sexy, and adventurous young woman who suggests with feathers that she is ready to paint the town. In the background is a picture of an older woman who is acting as the homunculus as events unravel. The illustration is very detailed and fine.
He is most famous for his pulp illustrations. I Couldn?t help but to file a link to the Argosy ?pirate of wall street? cover:
This illustration by Paul Stahr is titled ?pirate of wall street? and I just had to post it, as it seems so timely. The crime novel couldn?t be more excellently represented. I?d just love to see this on a billboard while driving on the interstate.
There are many more examples of his work, but I decided to just link to two, as they are my favorites.
Work cited:
Pulp Artist. Catalog. Web. 6 Nov. 2011
