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Showing posts with the label David Hockney

David Hockney's Walking Man

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With his blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy, A Bigger Picture, David Hockney has achieved the almost impossible. He has got the British public excited about art. I don't mean the people who usually go to exhibitions and buy art books, I mean people who normally wouldn't have any interest in an exhibition, or any opinion save, "A child of two could do it." Having an aversion to crowds, I haven't seen the show, only the catalogue. Friends who have seen it have divided sharply into two - those who are exhilarated by the vibrant colour, the ambition, and the artist's responsiveness to the landscape and seasons of his native Yorkshire, and those who find the whole thing shallow and glib. The iPad drawings have come in for particular scorn, while the charcoal drawings seem to have pleased everyone. The iPad and iPhone drawings reproduce well, but it may be that the lack of surface, and that vital sense of the craftsman's hand, is disappointing in a gall