WORKING WITH ART WORKS TO HELP DAVID HOCKNEY WORK BETTER

‘Meet me at the art museum’ is a sure way to discover how art works, starting with the installation.

Don’t have time for a trip to downtown Portland?

Leave it to boomerpdx to fill in the frame.

Sometimes the art work delivers in mysterious ways.

The top shot is a work by David Hockney showing at the Portland Art Museum, the brick building across the SW Park Blocks from the Oregon Historical Society.

If you’re not familiar with the neighborhood it all sounds so high tone.

Art. History. And you. Now we’re all set?

To get the feel for the area, an event was under way around the base of the Teddy Rosevelt on a horse statue, the base where Teddy used to ride before another local event took him and Abe Lincoln off their feet.

Many shirtless men and ‘down on their luck’ folks formed a circle around the base with more waiting their turn.

Was it a living art installation? Where’s David Hockney when you need him.

 

In Front of House Looking South, 2019

That’s the name of the feature work, In Front of House Looking South, 2019.

I framed the shot through a hole in the wall to see who stopped long enough to take a look.

 

 

 

If a work of art is a window into a different time and place, and you see it though another window? I’ll do the math:

That’s two pictures in one.

Where do you get that experience with an artist of such great reputation?

 

David Hockney’s work can be found in numerous distinguished public collections around the world, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Portrait Gallery, London; The Tate Gallery, London; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

 

Why Museum Walls Have Holes For Art Works

If you’re into immersion art and dive in headfirst, you might need a lifeguard.

These are the lifeguards of an art museum experience, otherwise you might forget who you are and what you’re doing there.

More than that, you might see a piece of art that sold for a million bucks, know that you can do one better, and need to rush home to cash in.

It starts with the green sign above the door.

 

 

I walked around Paris on a Rick Steves tour looking at old artist studios, looking at the doors from the streets with labels like ‘Picasso Painted Here’, ‘Van Gogh Here’, with the guide telling this story:

 

“Artists didn’t wanted Picasso looking around their studios because he could do what they did, do it better, do it faster, and have it on the market sooner.”

 

The artists?

 

It’s hard to imagine a more prolific place and time for artists than Montmartre in the Belle Époque.

From around 1872 to 1914, the high hill in Paris’ 18^th arrondissement was home to a proverbial Who’s Who of the world’s greatest painters.

Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Maurice Utrillo and Paul Cézanne set up studios here, working among the windmills, vineyards and narrow winding streets often recreated in their paintings.

 

This is David Hockney painting David Hockney looking at paintings by David Hockney.

 

 

I took it for a spin.

 

 

PS:

Art Fan: I’m struggling to see the point of his work, a connecting theme.

Me: This is from the catalogue:

He (Hockney) also takes inspiration from the continual advancement of modern technology to evolve his approach and visual vocabulary, utilizing tools such as copy machines, photo editing software, iPhones, and iPads.

Also me: If you could take a picture and work it through as many versions as you can think of and sell it for enough to buy a house you may have a theme.

 

PSS:

I camped on a sofa in front of the same paintings Hockney contemplates in his painting and picked them apart like a good art patron.

One had a glint of light coming off the base on the same side as the shadow, another had the table cloth distorted through the clear glass vase.

It was so much fun I shared it with my wife when she came to ‘find’ me.

There are three kinds of art museum visitors.

The first wishes they’d gone to art school like Mark Rothko and create one of a kind pieces of complex work that look deceptively simple.

They fall in love with the tools, the technique, the color and shape, staring at a painting for hours to say, “Such flair with a brush stroke.”

The second wishes they’d been an Art History major to better understand the genesis of the art world that culminates in what we see today.

They read every label of every painting, every print, every lithograph, looking for clues at the scene of the modern art crime.

The last one is the art radar who walks through galleries challenging everything on the wall and on the floor to beep and light up their screen.

They extend the same challenge to the art installation and the gallery space created to hold it.

If you don’t know who’s who before a visit, you’ll know afterwards.

Yesterday our group was a good blend of it all. How good?

I’m a new member of the Portland Art Museum. That good.

Thanks to David Hockney for the inspiration.