Page 25 - Studio International - May 1966

and tone have no autonomy, as for instance colour does,
and no governing character such as may be found in the
grain of stone or the markings of wood.
But if drawing is the most lyrical of the visual arts, it is
also likely to be the most socially-oriented, taking its cues
directly from nature or from the everyday world of men
and events. The drawings of David Hockney are a case in
point; they are an illuminating and transforming reaction
to the facts of common life. The descriptive verve and
simplicity of Hockney's work, its seemingly-clever under-
standing of worldly things, are inseparable from its variety
and clarity of feeling. The underlying strength of this
work, considered as a whole and apart from its aesthetic
quality, is that the complex man, and not merely the
artist, the intellectual, or the critic, was available to the
stimulating experience. A Hockney drawing discovers its
attitudes in process of being made; such ambiguity as it
may possess is all of a piece and belongs to the person and
the occasion. In short, Hockney does not impose a way
of seeing upon what he sees; the drawings are, in effect,
dialogues, rather than monologues.
Hockney's subject matter may be a figure, a landscape,
a genre scene; the treatment may involve understatement
or fantasy, and even sometimes a prosaic forthrightness—
his drawing can be like a bold statement made in affected
company. What strikes one finally is that Hockney's
search is for larger meaning in the visual event, but with-
out programme. There is no conscious satire. He simply
explores the relevance of what has caught his notice; it is
as if what he sees is tested at once against what he knows.
His drawings are an act of appreciation— though not
necessarily of approval; they represent a coming to terms
with his observation, not only with what stimulates him
Above Below initially but with what remains and continues to move
Police building 1966 Coloured tree 1965
Pen and ink Pencil and crayon drawing 141 x 161 in. him long after the event. Present experience and rem-
10x 12+ in. Private collection (Kasmin) London iniscence interact to make the image ; there is an emotional
and intellectual understanding of the sheer quality of
experience that changes the fugitive scene into an essence.
But the source of the image in the real world is never for-
gotten. The trees may be abstractions; their appearance
is translated into other terms, but terms that preserve or
that play upon tree qualities. Vital relationships are never
destroyed for the sake of a visual trick. And there is never
the abstraction of meaning; a Hockney drawing is always
explicit, for this artist is not a maker of emblems or
symbols; he belongs to the tradition that produced
Hogarth, Rowlandson, and—yes—even Beardsley—all of
them artists variously devoted to the poetry of reality.
Some of Hockney's drawings are pure celebrations.
I prefer Hockney's black and white drawings to his
drawings in colour (he does so himself). The line drawings
are particularly fine. They are brilliantly economical and
unfussed. The quality of the line relates to the energy of
the form, without resort to expressiveness. Often, space
and mass are rendered in the same stroke. Yet this work
does not seem stripped down, a short-hand; instead, it is
ample through reflecting the essentials of the scene—as it
were—bodily. There is just the right degree of stillness or
animation asserted by the line itself.
Hockney's ability to render the energy of form as an
expressive contour allows him to control our sense of
volume. Ordinarily, he has little or no need for descriptive