Page 33 - Studio International - May June 1975

Gallery's Dinner at West Hill (completed In the most literal way then, each of than eighty paintings, when most
in 1966). First, here is how I read it on a Howard Hodgkin's paintings presents a prominent artists are prolific and working
literal level. Hodgkin's works are, in his riddle; a collection of statements which in series; why their gestation is so slow
own words, about 'one moment in time exists only to bring the unstated into (sometimes as long as five years); and
involving particular people in relation to being before our eyes. Many contain why they are limited in scale, lacking the
one another, and also to me'. The scene explicit allusions; thus it was Bernard public intention we have come to expect
is a dinner-party; the white line that Cohen who gave the dinner-party at from any serious painter in our time.
divides the picture is simply the line of West Hill, and the wavy line at the top His dependence on the unknown leaves
the dinner-table, across which, on the (which I interpreted earlier as 'a kind of him without certainty that he will ever
right, are the egg-like heads of the guests. Empyreal') is partly meant as pastiche complete another work, and this has
On the left are other figures, a standing of the visual language Cohen was then always caused difficulties with dealers.
presence, and another, apparently in an using. Again, in Mr and Mrs Jo Tilson Several do remain incomplete, and
armchair. But the red areas in the centre the subject's spectacles stare comically several are destroyed.
are what we focus on; this is, so to out, from a build-up of Tilson-like Robert Bresson defined originality as
speak, the experiencing agent, the 'Eye'. repeated objects, carpentered and `attempting to do what everybody does,
As in several of Hodgkin's paintings we brightly coloured. Linguistic allusions of and not succeeding'. Howard Hodgkin
have first of all to feel our way into the this kind are not, I think, in-jokes, but starts from the most natural and near-to-
point of view of this spectator, to rather a natural extension of Hodgkin's hand of premises — the representation of
`become' him. For the meeting of these concern with the subject; in much the people he knows, at a moment of meeting;
personalities has generated in this same way that Hermetic Cubism but, in the act of painting, he finds
spectator what is literally 'another presented not only the clarinet but also himself drawn, almost against his
level'; the everyday scene has been the music it existed to make, so in intention, into areas that are more and
overlaid by the more or less mystical presenting a painter Hodgkin includes more complex and difficult. One
perception it has given rise to. Above the also his visual language. imagines that it is with a real sense of
guests and all around them hover, like There is however a further dimension. failure that Hodgkin in each successive
auras or Platonic essences or dancing Looking at a group of Hodgkin's work feels himself being drawn out of
thought-shapes, these blue flakes; `portraits', 3 it becomes clear that his depth. Yet it is from this repeated
suspended in their rising or their falling, Hodgkin does take a witty and almost `not succeeding' that there has built up a
and passing at the top of the picture into a malicious pleasure in annexing another formidable body of work, of an
kind of empyreal. artist's language (especially if it's rather originality the more integral for being
Like many of the artist's works then, a pure one), in a kind of virtuoso quite unsought. The areas of feeling
the painting is about a 'breakthrough', demonstration of his linguistic openness. staked out by the art of Howard Hodgkin
a moment of 'grace'. But it is the It is true that each language constitutes a are among the most intangible; friendship,
language that defines the subtle world; but the best of Hodgkin's works relationship, communality. It is an art of
emotional content. On the one hand, the contain many worlds. I think the most psychological moments, but not those
picture has obviously been allowed to valuable aspect of his work is the sense it more obviously 'key' moments that
take on a formidable autonomy; it has a conveys of a 'multiverse', of a deeply Munch selects for recall in his Frieze of
very solid, sculptural presence. Yet one tolerant and open view, which only this Life. How then are these subtler emotions,
has only to look a little closer to see how kind of Babel of styles could achieve. which cannot really be embodied in any
much has gone on underneath, how How consciously Hodgkin repudiates explicit gesture or dramatic action, to be
whole areas have slid or been covered up, any single or pure language is shown in expressed in painting ?
how unstable it all is. Despite the his relation to Matisse. Matisse has Vuillard in his intimist years had
definiteness of the final image, the become almost as much a quarry for provided one obvious precedent: and in
strong colour and the geometric shapes, subsequent artists as Cezanne before Vuillard the vehicle of thought and
we feel that each of these signs has been him; there are so many directions in feeling is not the figures, but the
not made, but 'broken through' to, as which he seems to point. But what patterning of walls and gowns, against
though by grace. It is a language of unifies all his work is his aspiration to a whose emotionally charged rhythms the
unknowing, refusing any systematic or condition of freedom. Sometimes (in the figures are impassively silhouetted. But in
ready-made language of forms. twenties) it was descriptive; but in other our time the painter has much more
So there is a need for a powerful and works throughout his life — in The direct resources of language. As Hodgkin
structured image, which yet carries the Moroccans for example — the freedom wrote in a statement of 1966,5
sense of a totally fluid and anarchic consists in a kind of mental leap from the `figurative painting is about a specific
world. The shapes have an exaggerated object as perceived to the object as it experience involving the figure. The most
arbitrary air, as though proclaiming that exists in the mind, where the world is complete expression of such a subject
they are only 'grasping at straws'. recreated in terms of sequence and would not necessarily involve
Behind the gay and patterned fabric rhythm. In looking at a work like description'. What in Vuillard had to do
yawns the void; based on an insecure Dinner at West Hill, Matisse's definition service as, literally, the 'pattern in the
premise, the whole structure can safely of a painting as an 'ensemble of signs' carpet', can now be stated directly. The
come tumbling down. And it is this seems peculiarly relevant; not signs in pattern of blue marks in Dinner at
conflict which gives rise to that any static sense, but signs continually West Hill refers only to feeling, and to
melancholy humour, born out of a sense rediscovered and snatched at. feeling viewed as that which breaks into
of the uncertainty and transience of our In 1968 Hodgkin discussed Matisse and transfigures physical reality.
emotions, which gives the underlying with Phillip King,4 and again and again Hodgkin is attempting, as he says,' a
mood to all the artist's work. There is a he returned to this theme. kind of 'amalgam' of 'the individual with
sense here of a bedrock, of a very actual `All his life I think he was very his surroundings, together with the
starting-point, of particular people in a suspicious of academic or relations of the individuals among
particular room, spiralling off into intellectually based system painting . . . themselves'. Obviously, then, his
essences, ideas, references. Why, we ask, any systematic way of representing the subject-matter demands a language which
does such an obvious thing have to be figure . . . of forms which could fall partakes equally of the physical and the
presented in such a mystifying way ? I into being just forms.' metaphysical, the material and the
think this has to do with an acute sense in Phillip King agreed : abstract. We must have not only the
Hodgkin's of personality as an enigma, `His most abstract works, if one can room and the figures, but the emotional
as something overpowering, use that work, are almost always the reality to which they give rise.
imponderable. To look at an individual — most extreme simplification and direct This use of pattern as a shorthand for
it is like staring into the sun; there's no expression of much earlier forms.' feeling is illuminating about abstraction
way of tackling it directly. And so you Hodgkin's own refusal of any ready- in general. Our narrowly historical thesis
get 'portraits' that are fundamentally made language goes far to explain why makes abstraction originate seventy years
oblique, that are an almost incantatory he has remained little known to the ago among an avant-garde in their desire
attempt to 'conjure up' a presence by general public. It is in large part the for 'experiment', or 'freedom'. Yet such
whatever means lies to hand. reason there are so few works, hardly more images have always existed in every

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