ArchiveExhibition
Hockney's Eye: The Art And Technology Of Depiction
15 Mar-29 Aug 2022
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Cambridge CB2 1RB
Overview
One of the most influential artists of our time, David Hockney (b.1937) takes over Cambridge this spring and summer with an exhibition across The Fitzwilliam Museum and The Heong Gallery, Downing College.
Through both traditional and cutting-edge ways of making art, the exhibition explores Hockney’s obsession with how we see the world, and how our world of time and space can be captured on the surface of a flat picture.
In his use of cameras, digital drawing, the iPad, and digital film, Hockney follows a tradition of creative experiments with optical devices that goes back from Ingres’ proposed use of the camera lucida to Canaletto’s camera obscura and to the birth of Renaissance naturalism in the 15th century.
In The Fitzwilliam Museum’s picture galleries, Hockney’s drawings, paintings and digital artworks are shown in a series of provocative encounters with works by artists including Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, John Constable and Andy Warhol.
The display at The Heong Gallery charts Hockney’s pioneering modern experiments from the 1960s to the present day in bringing hand, eye, and optical instruments together, with the iconic Grand Canyon I (2017) among the many glorious and daring works on display.
David Hockney, Self Portrait, 22nd November 2021 (detail), Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 30". Credit: © David Hockney. Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson
David Hockney, Le Parc des Sources, Vichy, 1970, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 120". Credit: © David Hockney. Photo: Fabrice Gibert. Devonshire Collections
David Hockney, Viewers Looking at a Ready-made with Skull and Mirrors, 2018, Photographic drawing. Credit: © David Hockney assisted by Jonathan Wilkinson
David Hockney, Grand Canyon I, 2017, Acrylic on canvas 48 x 96" (hexagonal). Credit: © David Hockney Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt
David Hockney, Portrait Surrounded by Artistic Devices, 1965, Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72". Credit: © David Hockney Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt Collection Arts Council, Southbank Centre, London
David Hockney, Rubber Ring Floating in a Swimming Pool, 1971, Acrylic on canvas 36 x 48". Credit: © David Hockney Photo Credit: Fabrice Gibert
David Hockney, The Scrabble Game, Jan. 1st, 1983, Photographic collage Edition of 20 39 x 58". Credit: © David Hockney Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt
David Hockney, 17th April 2020, No. 2, iPad painting. Credit: © David Hockney
David Hockney, 12 Portraits after Ingres in a Uniform Style 1999 - 2000, Pencil, crayon and gouache on 12 sheets of paper using a camera lucida (22 1/8 x 15" each) 44 1/4 x 90" overall. Credit: © David Hockney
