The Bigger Picture

February 2, 2012
Celia Scruby

David Hockney’s blockbuster exhibition, ‘The Bigger Picture,’ has been described by the Royal Academy as “boldly moving into artistic territory that no one has explored before.” The demand for tickets to see these epic Yorkshire landscapes caused the Royal Academy’s ticketing website to crash in the week leading up to the exhibition and with tickets being auctioned on Ebay, but for almost double their original price; critics are calling it Hockney-mania.

But how have Hockney’s landscapes managed to receive so much attention, when our contemporary art establishments-museums, galleries and Art schools – seem to be so utterly dazzled by the diamond encrusted ambiguities of conceptual art? Indeed, Hockney mentioned in an interview with Will Gompertz that “people told [him] that the landscape genre was worn out and no longer fashionable.” So, it seems the attention his landscapes have gained is a result of a more subtle innovation.

Though some of the most striking paintings in the exhibition, such as ‘Winter Timber’ and ‘The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate’ are obviously impressive due to their size, there is a compelling quality in his landscapes which lures you towards them like a moth to a flame, but what exactly this essence is, is hard to put your finger on. Until, however, you are told that Hockney made the studies for these vistas with a controversial new medium, the iPad. Hockney says “the landscape genre might be worn out, but the landscape itself can’t be, it needs re-looking at” and by using the tablet the 74 year old artist goes one step further. He recaptures the Yorkshire Broads crystallising his home county in the high resolution pixels of the ambient iPad screen. What the iPad lends to Hockney’s work is an emanating luminosity.

Hockney comments that the fact that the iPad is “illuminated” allows you to see that same quality as in his paintings. And you really can see this in his grasses and leaves, alive with layers of artificially bright greens. Rather than create a paradox between the natural subject of Hockney’s pieces and the technology he uses, the iPad draws attention to living quality of the landscape through Hockney’s attention to the light in his colours.

Hockney started drawing on his iPhone in 2008 using an app called Brushes, sending images he had created to his friends, very literally with the touch of a hand. One of the things Hockney enjoyed about working with this technological medium was the opportunity it gave him to distribute his work which was so profoundly new. He could make a drawing of the sunrise he saw from his bedroom window at six o’clock in the morning and an hour later send it out to people, Hockney remarked how his friends “got a very fresh picture of the sunrise two hours earlier and they all loved it”. The immediacy of being able to capture a moment and exhibit it is thrilling, like being presented with freshly-picked flowers which grew in a garden just hours earlier; the instantaneity of recording the subject allows a vivacious quality to remain intact. Hockney adds that “if I had a pencil and paper by my bedside the sunrise wouldn’t be that interesting.” Once Hockney mastered drawing with the Brushes App, he began to see that the iPad was a terrific new medium and a very clever tool he could use.

The accessibility and speed of which you can draw with the iPad is something Hockney found very useful in capturing his landscapes. He mentions that “The paradox of East Yorkshire is that the landscape is essentially unchanging but its weather is very changeable, altering the light and colour as the clouds pass over head.” With the iPad, Hockney found that he could establish the basic colour and the tone of the sky in two seconds and put in some faint clouds in three seconds. Watching Hockney ‘paint’ on his iPad is fascinating; in the interview with Will Gompertz, Hockney is filmed earnestly making deft marks on the screen, his finger skating on the surface with unrestrained freedom. According to the speed to which Hockney’s finger moves over the screen dictates the weight of the mark he makes, a quick stroke leaves a wispy strand while a more deliberate jab creates a thick smear. The sensitivity of the gadget is remarkable and the intimate relationship between the physical human touch and the iPad’s technical response to it makes it unsurprising that Hockney admitted “to getting so carried away sometimes that I wipe my fingers at the end thinking that I’ve got paint on them.”
However, there has been criticism of Hockney’s touch screen revolution, and some accuse him of effectually cheating by using the iPad as a means of “painting” because it removes the need for paint brushes, canvas and even paint itself. And, there have been claims that this negates the skill needed to accomplish the interplay between the artist, the paint and the tools. However, Hockney makes the very good point that technology affects things all the time and especially art. He reminds critics of the iPad that “you couldn’t have had impressionism without the invention of the collapsible tubes so you could take paint outside”. In the same way painters manipulate paint to convey an image, Hockney manipulates the properties of the iPad to the same effect. For him painting is about three things: the hand, the eye, and the art, and to him, the iPad is a direct point conglomeration for this trio. For Hockney it’s a no brainer: “who wouldn’t want one? Picasso or Van Gogh would have snapped one up.”

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