Look, mate. No, seriously: look. Slow down, open your eyes, calm your mind and just look. That’s what David Hockney wants you to do in this exhibition that pairs a stunning renaissance composition by Piero della Francesca with two works by the Yorkshireman that reference it. He wants you to take the time to consider, think about, absorb and really, genuinely look at the art.
Piero’s painting sits in the middle of the wall, flanked by the Hockneys. The older work has had endless words – adoring words – about it over the years, but it’s justified. Christ stands somberly as he’s baptised in the river Jordan, angels stand to the side, a dove spreads its wings over his head, a man undresses awkwardly nearby. It’s angular, stark, full of symmetry and geometric nuance. It’s beautiful, somehow modern.
And Hockney was besotted. He studied it, obsessed over it. He looked at it.
It appears recreated as a poster on a screen in Hockney’s painting of his friend Henry Geldzahler, alongside Degas’s bather, Van Gogh’s sunflowers and Vermeer’s woman at a virginal. Hockney apes the greats, reproduces their work as cheap posters, something memetic, imagery to be shared and worshipped.
Hockney apes the greats, reproduces their work as cheap posters
And then it appears again, part-reflected and backwards in a mirror behind a portrait of his parents. His father stares at a book in his lap, his mother stares out at you.
Everyone is seeing, looking, analysing, images are being repeated, twisted, substituted, copied. The painting of his parents is gorgeous and soft and airy, 70s Hockney at his best. The other work is clever but less successful as a painting.
But look, London needs yet another Hockney exhibition about as much as it needs another Pret. And equally, in an effort to make this show appealing and friendly, they’ve forgotten to give you any information about any of the paintings or artists, leaving you a little lost as a viewer.
But the whole thing is dizzyingly layered, drowning in ideas of the gaze, of the value of art, of religion, of influence and adoration. And then before you know it you’ve been here half an hour trying to untangle it all, you’ve been here half an hour looking, and Hockney’s job is done.
