You’ve undoubtedly seen the influence of Stephanie Barron if you’ve visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at any point over the past four decades. The museum’s senior curator has shaped the look of permanent galleries and countless special exhibitions—but her latest show finds her in a peculiar role as both curator and subject.
Barron is among the notable sitters in “David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life,” a unified body of four-foot-tall portraits created in the British-born, Los Angeles–embracing painter’s Hollywood Hills studio. All 83 works will be on display at LACMA this spring.
Over the course of three years, each model sat for Hockney in the same chair and against the same backdrop. “It’s the people who visit who are his friends, his community,” she says of the subjects. The colorful canvases include portrayals of cultural figures—architect Frank Gehry, conceptual artist John Baldessari, the Dame Edna actor Barry Humphries—alongside the guy who washes Hockney’s car, his housekeeper and his massage therapist.
“As a curator, it was one of the most fascinating, illuminating and exhausting experiences I’ve had,” Barron says of her three days spent sitting still in Hockney’s studio. “By the end of each session, I would think, Oh well, now I’ll drive down and go to work. But I was exhausted, and I went home and took a nap. Maybe other people just get into a Zen mind. I was very alert during the whole thing because I was really fascinated by what I was both participating in and observing.”
The experience gave Barron insight into the intensity and rigor that Hockney distills into his paintings. As she saw the canvases begin to cover Hockney’s workspace, Barron knew the completed series would be perfect for a local show: The comings and goings of friends and family in the L.A. studio seemed an ideal fit to frame the artist’s long fascination with portraiture.
Though Barron has already seen the works on display in London and Venice (she describes the show as an “out-of-body experience”), she anticipates an even more surreal encounter when she oversees their installation for the U.S. premiere at LACMA. “Of course, the first thing anybody says is, ‘He did your painting? Will you get to keep it?’ Do you think all the people who sat for Rembrandt got to keep their paintings? It doesn’t work that way. You are there for the artist—it’s not that he’s doing you a favor. It’s important to recognize that you are participating in something that he is doing. It’s a privilege.”
“David Hockney 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life” is at LACMA Apr 15–July 29.