New Work

“…whatever your looking at, what you experience is, after all, through your own consciousness. So you realize it’s not possible to separate what you are looking at from yourself; at some point it’s connected with you when you are looking at it.     (Hockney, 1993, pp.127)

Green, Space Book, Acrylic on two Canvases, 196 x 122cm.

Here are some images of a painting that attempts to gain a deeper understanding on how to depict objects in space in a way that is more experiential for the viewer when he/she is looking at it. it is informed by the theories of artists such as Braque, Frued, Giacometti, Hockney, Irwin, Picasso, Walters...and the others who are included in the literary review throughout this blog.

The book that we can see on the centre of the table is a book called Hockney's Pictures (Hockney, 2004, Thames & Hudson, London), and is open on a page to show a reproduction of one of his pictures (his term), which is called A Walk Around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatclan (1985). Next to this picture is a quote by Hockney; this is what he said: "A Walk is not about a hotel, but about an attitude to space. At the same time as you acknowledge the space outside, you are still moving round in it. the longer you look, the more spatial it gets" (Hockney, 2004, pp 296).

Hockney, A Walk around the Hotel Courtyard, Acatlan, 1985, Oil on two Canvases, 72x240 in.


This reproduction, with the quote really took me. I agree with Hockney that it gets more spatial the more that I look at it. For me, it does feel as if I am under the veranda, taking a break from the sun - the sunlight in the centre of the picture is drawing me out to walk around that funny horseshoe thing in the courtyard. the shadows cast by the pillars, and the relatively dark tones of the roof make the sun light feel extre clear and hot. The use of inverted, or reverse, perspective also helps (Hockney would argue) to bring things closer, or 'right up to the viewer', making us feel as if we are 'in' the picture.

I would also have said in the past that the colour used by Hockney has been heightened to further intensify the experience of looking at this picture, but having recently visited 'A Bigger Picture' at the RA, Im not so sure any more. While looking at some of his new pictures at this show, I was wondering what liberties Hockney might have taken with the colours he had used; in some of the pictures, the colours are seem extremely bold and contrasting - too much so for 'realistic' scenes from the Yorkshire countryside - others seemed too hazy / misty and almost ethereal. Then, at the end when I saw his videos of the same countryside, it was obvious that he had used colour very accuratley - that seeing something (a Yorkshire countryside, Sunlight in a hotel courtyard...anything) is a very intense experience.

These are some of the things that this picture by Hockney made me want to explore within this new picture of my own.




Green, Study for Space Book,
Pencil on Paper, 30/12/11

   First, some studies were made over the New Year holidays in the dining room in my parents house. I wanted to compare Hockneys knowledge of depicting space, with what I have learnt from him and picked up from some of the other artists whos techniques I have learning from recently. You can see in this first drawing that I included parts of my own body - these parts were visible while I was making the drawing. Artists such as Freud, Hockney, Mason, Pepperell, Picasso, and Walters (and maybe more), have painted/drawn their bodies into the picture from their own point of view. The edge of my nose is visible here also as a drawn line - this is also visible (but also see through) while drawing, and helps to set up the shape of the whole composition. I tried to stick to what I could see as accurately as possible while making this first study. It took about three and a half hourse, and a lot of correcting throughout. While making this drawing, a friend phoned me, and I spoke while drawing. When the call ended, I realised that having the phone so close to my face might be another visual trick I could use to make this space seem more realistic for the viewer, so I kept the phone to my face while drawing. From this happy accident, I got quite excited about the comparison of the extreme close up of my hand holding the phone on the left, the central area of vision (the book on the table) - just close enough for us to look at properly, and the far away door at the end of the passage toward the right. I tried to draw the space within the room as it curved around behind me - resulting in the setee that comes around on the right. Knowledge on how to depict space as it surves around us was gained from making this drawing in November

I took this drawing back to the studio to continue work from it (at this point I had taken no photographs of the space I had drawn). I made this charcoal study in order to simplify what I had done, but also to exagerate some points, and also to add elements that had to be 'glossed over' in the original study due to time. I had already used shaped canvases to do away with corners that usually need filling when using rectanglar / square canvases (A tip from Braque and Picasso when they were making their rounded cubist studies around 1911-14), and also Hockney uses rectangular canvases for his Hotel picture which I was studying throughout making this painting. So, I had my 'field of vision' shape, which had been developed in past work, in the middle of an expanse of paper - I still wasn't sure what to do with the area around the outside (it seems that 'outside' the field of vision just carries on...there is no 'outside' - so we would need an infinate sheet of canvas to paint on, which cannot be done here due to time...and space! (Hockney on the problem of edges; "). The lines I added here around the (non-existent) 'outside' of the visual field, were intended to as an imitation of the rafters under the roof in Hockneys reproduction; for me this element - being under a roof and wanting to walk into the sunshine - was key to making me feel as if I am 'in' his picture.

…you begin to realize what edges do: they’re not just showing us things; they’re cutting off far more than they’re showing us. The edge is the problem. It’s the major problem we have to deal with. I mean, it will always be there, but it can be softened with different ways of looking, a more complex image, and that’s what we now need to do"( Weschler, 2008, pp. 79))

Within the central area of vision (the rounded area in the middle of the drawing) we see with both our eyes together simultaniously. This often causes diplopia, commonly known as 'Double Vision'. This has been explored much by the Welsh artist Even Walters (1893 - 1951) in works such as Stout Man with a Jug, (1930's). I have learnt from my own experience, that when trying to draw something accurately, everything about it keeps changing (-that one point, linear perspective is really not how we (or I, anyway) see and experience the world). With this past experience in mind, plus the work of Walters, I made this study of the Hockney book. It is a 'doubled' image, but not in the same way that Walter's doubles in most of his paictures (which are based on the empirical experience of double vision). My study combines traditional linear perspective with inverted, reversed perspective - one superimposed onto the other. (Incidentally, I think Walters' tries to do something of the same in his Boys at Golf, 1945; in this picture there are three planes - one in which objects are doubled in the centre, and two either side where these objects are repeated, but not doubled. I think he was trying to depict the binocular vision in the central field, and the single vision that can be seen from each side othe the nose through one eye if the other eye is closed). 



Walters, Boys at Golf, c. 1945



 

In another study made for the painting I tried again to work out what to do with the space surrounding the field of vision. To do anything that tried to imitate painting 'beyond' the edge of the field of vision based on reality seems to be practically impossible, so I took some liberties based on what I have read by Merleau-Ponty: “We can no longer draw an absolute distinction between space and the things which occupy it, nor indeed between the pure idea of space and the concrete spectacle it presents to our senses” (Merleau-Ponty, 1948, pp.55). I already had the mobile phone in the picture, which is a device I think can be used to bring the picture plane as close to the viewer as possible; right up to his/her face. I began to wonder if the picture plane could be brought even closer - maybe beyond the viewersd face and into their heads....at the moment, I admit I dont know what I mean by this - its just something thats in the back of my mind. Anyway, I added my eyes, where they would be as if you as the viewer were looking though my eyes at the space depicted, my mouth (which is speaking into the phone), and my brain, which is taking in all this stimulus and making some kind of sense of it all - resulting in the visual perception that I drew from to create the original study. Strangley, the picture as a whole developed into an inverted 'mask' - as if looking through a mask, or through someone elses eyes, into a space. I think this might be related to the 'looking through consciousness' Hockney quote that I used above. 

 Here is a detail of the book as it is in the final picture. It is propped up by a book on Picasso - this was meant to be a sort of little history lesson to myself on where much of my take on the world as an artist is coming from. Picasso and Braque helped us to realise that Renaissence, one point perspective was an invention, that treated everything in the world the same - flatteining it, and also took the viewer out of the world. Hockney (and others working in the fields of physics and philosophy) have through their careers taken this on board and tried to depict the world in a more human way. I chose to paint the picture over two canvases simply because Hockney does this (over 60 canvases these days!). This resulted in a compositional trick that I was very pleased with. I planned it so that the split between the canvasses ran down the centre of the book. As you can see here, the split helps to make the book look 3-D, as well as being multi-perspectival. 

The woodgrain detail painted into the table top was intended as a nod to Georges Braque, who intorduced the technique to cubist painting as a way of making them 'real'. I have tried to use it here more to curve the space of the table top, so that it envelpoes the viewer along with the space within the rest of the room.I also hope that this detail will make the viewer really stare at the picutre, to make sense of the space in their own way - and so hopefully become fully involved in it.  

Apart from his photocollages, Hockney has not included his body withing any of his painting (as far as I know). I have found a Picasso drawing in which he draws his hand while he draws the sketch book he draws on, the same with Freud. This suggests that they did not ignore the fact that they could see their own bodies within the field of vision, that they didnt leave it out of their paintings due to oversight.

Lucien Freud, Room at Benton End, 1941,

Ink and Oil on Paper, 37.2x24.1cm, Private Collection.

This might suggest that they thought that by adding their body into the painting, they were perhaps anchoring the viewer too much into one place, so that they can no longer move around in the picture. In a way it might be bringing the picture back towards the one point perspective (although no longer linear) that they are trying to get away from - the viewer is presented with one point from which to access the picture; from within the artists head looking out - or seeing through the artists consciousness. like the man behind the eye in Descartes book.



David Hockney, Walking in the Zen Garden at Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto, Feb 21, 1983. Photomontage collage, 101.6x158.8cm. Collection of the artist.

New work is currently being made that questions whether my body as I see it in the field of vision is needed to create a picture that is more true to life than a photograph or picture that uses one point, linear perspective. These early studies do use one element of the body that is visible to us when we look - the fiant edge of the nose. Its early on, and I intend to use cutting, collage, painting (in different sizes), and sculrture to fully explore this: