Exhibition Critique: Howard Hodgkin: Study Task 5

Exhibition Curation

I think that generally the exhibition was curated well there was an interesting mix of work from throughout Hodgkin's life, presented nicely in chronological order. It showed an interesting transition the figurative to pure abstraction and it was clear that the works in each room had been carefully considered. I liked that in the first room there were some of his figure sketches from art school. It was interesting to see how the themes from these related to his more developed practice (memory etc.). The panels next to the works were also informative and helpful. I was amazed by the amount of depth they went into, including quotes related to the specific pieces. There was also an artist book on one of the benches, which was useful in providing more information and putting the exhibition work in retrospect with his whole life.

However, I did feel that the panels next to the work where very repetitive as each re-outlined the same themes which ran through all of his work. They were too fluffy and didn't get to the point. It would have worked better to have a single text in each of the rooms outlining the key themes. I learned a lot but I did feel like the many panes were a bit of an information overload and the work wasn't given the space to speak for itself. I spent more time reading than looking. In the second part of the exhibition there were also a couple of rooms which came off a central one which weren't numbered. This did make it slightly confusing and the order of rooms was unclear unless you checked the dates on the specific pieces. There was also one wall in the exhibition, which was painted a bright mint green. It was clear that this was done for a reason because the placs next to the works were matching in colour. However, it wasn't clear to me why. I found it too garish and it made the works difficult to look at. It also didn't match the vibe of the rest of the exhibition.

The Work


I thought that it was interesting that this exhibition was in the National Portrait gallery, when the majority of the images presented were abstract. However, each was titled with the name of a person and was classified by Hodgkin himself as a 'portrait'. I thought that the focus on memory was also interesting and Hodgkin's ability to paint from pure memory was mind-blowing (particularly in his earlier work). In each image he appeared to have taken a snapshot from reality and distilled it using shape pattern and colour. The level of detail that he'd have to remember to do this is incredible. This is something that I personally admire because I could never do it myself. I have no ability to recall detail and all images in my minds eye are blurred. I think that maybe I need to make an effort to be more observant. I also think that his mushing together of two major influences - pop art and abstract expressionism in his earlier work was interesting and his work definitely showed an awareness of a wider context. This was interesting because these movements are pretty much the antithesis of one another but he just took what he wanted from each.

However, I did find some of his creative concerns quite disinteresting and far out. He has this obsession with the canvas being seen as a literal three dimensional object. He strived to make this clear by creating no illusion of space in his images. This is obvious in his late work where he uses no perspectival lines and he mixes colour on the canvas so that certain ones don't come forward or go back. He also wanted the frame to become a part of the image. He did this by painting in/ painting on a literal frame as a way of containing and protecting the emotion within the image. 'The more elaborate the frame the more evanescent emotion that needed to be protected'. I just felt that he had lots of concerns that didn't quite fit together and and all of which were very abstract and far out. None of them were made clear in the images themselves and I had to do a lot of reading to understand them. They are very far from my own artistic concerns, which is probably why they didn't excite me (is this because the focus isn't on image making?).

Although, I didn't agree with most of his concerns, I did love his earlier work. I thought that the way in which he abstracts an image by flattening the space and his use of pattern to do this was really interesting. It is a really great way of breaking down and distilling an image from life, something that I would like to try to bring more of into my observational drawing.