Rob Adams a Painter's Blog painter's progress

I am not good at getting to exhibitions, I’m even worse at putting pictures into them. However I managed to get my act together for the RWS at Bankside, which is quite a mixed exhibition with all sorts of styles and approaches on show. I was pleasantly surprised that my offering got in and further delighted that it sold. My next visit was the RBA at the Mall and finally next day Hockney at the Academy. There are always only a few pictures I like in most open exhibitions, hardly surprising when so many different styles are flung together. I found the technical standard at the RWS a fair bit higher than at the RBA where I felt the level of execution was with  a few exceptions rather amateur. Most of the weaknesses in both exhibitions are due to lack of draughtsmanship, which I suppose is hardly a surprise as we gave up teaching drawing a few decades ago and most of the artists are by default self taught. By drawing I don’t always mean accuracy to the thing being painted, correct proportions etc but rhythm, balance and success of carrying out artistic intention. The most successful are those that stuck to a simple graphical, dicing up the picture plane into shapes approach, as soon as more representative content was attempted the weaknesses in basic skills become more evident. Over finished pictures with dead smooth sharp edged brushwork were rather over represented I felt. Ken Howard was easily the the best for me, even though I have seen better work by him, they were head and shoulders above almost anything else on show.

One thing that hit me on all the exhibitions was how crude our appreciation of colour has become. Raw primaries scream from the dead white walls of the gallery spaces in raucous collision, each one diminishing the possibility of appreciating anything more subtle. I do wonder it this is a bi-product of us surrounding our children almost exclusively from birth by fully saturated primaries with only the most garish pinks and mauves thrown in as garnish. No wonder teenagers embrace black and grunge as soon as they get to choose for themselves. Strong colour is associated with happiness, vibrancy with joy in life, it is assumed that they are pleasing by default. I alas find them jarring and the equivalent of mindless pop music piped into every indoor eating or drinking venue.

Which brings me to Mr Hockney. Friends urged me to go, my instinct was to avoid it, but I was urged to “put aside my prejudice” so I did and so queued and paid my tithe. I had the previous evening watched Andrew Marr simpering with admiration at the great man who was only too pleased to roll over and have his tummy tickled with unctuous praise. I do wish people would make programs about living artists that were a little less soggy. They all tend to do only affirmation, no hint of criticism is allowed to creep in, only goggle eyed wonder at the genius of the subject. Not, I would suggest, good for either the public understanding of quality in art or the recipient of such blandishments. Even when dead (I watched the program on Lucian Freud.) the paintings are never questioned, they revelled in what a selfish, antisocial chap he was and of course the salacious news that he did lots and lots of shagging, but that of course only beefs up our already formed “end of the pier” fantasy of how an artist should be.

I digress, back to Hockney. I don’t want to tear down his work, there are, God help us, far far worse. However I a little dismayed at the wall to wall approbation this current work has received. They are crudely painted, he never seems to do anything to mix a colour other than to add a bit of white, other than that they are mostly directly out of the tube. If he is expressing winter or autumn they are earths other than that they are full on primary. For me it was the equivalent of being poked in the eye with a chromatic stick. His mark making is astonishingly unvaried, brushes can make many beautiful and varied strokes but Mr Hockney has it appears to have only found one or two which he combines with “filling in” for flat areas. Some have a graphic Shell Guide type charm, but the the cover artists of the Shell guides were mostly better. Much praise is lavished on his drawing, but I have never seen him do work that is any more than adequate, which is I suppose to be considered good in these sad days. Here is a Hockney drawing:

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(copyright David Hockney)

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I could have picked far worse, indeed I looked quite hard to find one of his best in my opinion, but even so this is an average drawing, he does however have a knack of catching character which shouldn’t be denied. Why his mark making is so dead and unvaried or why the nose appears to belong to another face and the hand so very clumsy is another matter. Below is what I would call a very good drawing by Nicholas Fechin and under that a contemporary drawing by the fashion illustrator David Downton.

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above is copyright David Downton

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You would all be entirely within your rights do disagree (indeed I would expect many people to do just that) but I think the Hockney is by some distance the weakest. The Hockney has neither the sensitivity of the Fechin nor the subtle brevity of the Downton. Below is a Rubens to show what a real “master draughtsman can do!

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It may be that I am being a little unfair as Hockney is not primarily a portraitist, so couldn’t be expected to shine when set against specialists. So here is another in an area he has garnered much praise from critics, including the prickly Brian Sewell (A critic I am not altogether a fan of but at least he is willing to take a tilt at the odd sacred windmill. Who has incidentally trashed the current exhibition in no uncertain terms.) I refer to his pen drawings of friends and others. Below an example:

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To my eye the handling very stiff the mark again without nuance or variation. He draws with a technical pen which allows little expression. Some nice observation nonetheless. (copyright David Hockney)

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A similar drawing by Rembrandt, note the variety of line and the energetic directness of his response to the subject. This is done with a reed pen.

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Maybe a more fair comparison, here is Egon Schiele, though Schiele also uses a fairly unvaried line his elegance, brevity and exuberance shine through I feel. He says a good deal more than Hockney with far fewer lines.

Maybe that is enough lambasting Mr Hockney, it is in any case not really his fault he is, as said I before, far from the dullest star in the sky. The real fault is the unquestioning critical vacuum we live in. If a painter is canonised  by either history or current media all of their works even their failures are sprinkled with the same fairy dust. Poor Mr Hockney probably exists in an atmosphere of wall to wall approbation, who is to blame him if he comes to believe it might be all true. I’ll bet none of his helpers ever say “Golly David that’s a stinker you have just painted!” Maybe I am wrong, I even hope that I am for his sake.

I hardly dare post any of my own poor scribbles after all that, but I promised some blue nudes and here they are! Some can be clicked.

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These were done on a prepared ground of blue grey acrylic. I then used white gouache to establish the lights.

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The model took up this very stiff and rather un natural pose, I considered moving but decided to tackle it anyway. It was never going to be an attractive drawing, but a drawing I can say I learnt from.

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Back to pastel pencils! Two 7 min quickies.

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Got the head too small alas but the lighting was interesting and I had fun putting colour in the background but not the figure, it’s odd how it doesn’t strike you at first, the body seems to inherit colour from the surroundings.

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Last two are different takes on the same pose. The first looking for planar forms the second for more rounded shapes.