Page 50 - Studio International - January 1968

reality of close contact where it is made. In A neat dazzlingly naive solution of sophisticated pictorial tion to be conveyed is given implicit but precise
lawn (painted from a photograph taken by problems-is exposed by the seriousness of others, definition by the poems themselves, and Hockney
Hockney) the human context, the house, is re- the humanity of the Cavafy series or the breadth of has stretched himself here to express a wider range
markable for the absence of human life. In paintings like the Rocky Mountains with tired Indians. of experience than is often found in his painting.
Tarzana the human relationship is made conspi- The Cavafy prints, due to be issued soon in book Occasionally, and particularly in the recent
cuous by the inhumanity of the context. The form, offered Hockney subjects which he could works, the trap of a given situation is seen not as
alternative is not between happiness and unhappi- enter into with complete integrity, and a literary open and menacing, but as already closed. A
ness, ease or unease, but between the reality of context for the whole work which relieved the bigger splash is formally a very tight painting.
involvement-which may be pleasant or not-and embarrassment some people must feel at the very Nothing disturbs the emptiness of the scene. Even
the unreality of dislocation. private situations implied by some of the paintings. the splash in the swimming-pool, painted from a
Occasionally Hockney's interest in the technical (A portrait of Patrick Procktor in the Kasmin photograph, is frozen by the time and patience of
processes of interpretation is pursued beyond the exhibition serves to remind us that there is some- its execution. The bright Californian sky flattens
range of the subject-matter. In many of the swim- thing of the nature of a cabal in Hockney's world- the forms and bathes all in a uniform techni-
ming-pool paintings in particular the mannerismsa a private area in the paintings from which most of color daylight. The world is the world of the
tend to overlie the content, hiding rather than us are excluded.) In the Cavafy prints, as in all photograph. There is no continuity and no possible
revealing whatever subject-matter the picture may Hockney's best works, the artist's line is disci- development. The figure whose plunge is recorded
have. The coy cleverness of some of the works-the plined by the nature of his involvement. The emo- by the splash will never surface in this world. q

Above left, A bigger splash 1967
acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 in.
Above, A neat lawn 1967
acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 in.
Far left, Cavafy series No. 10, One night 1966
etching-aquatint, 14 x 9 in.

Left, Two friends 1963
oil on canvas
42 x 48 in.
Private collection