Bright Red

an ode to Hockney

We visited a car dealership last Friday. Our car had broken down. The cambelt had given out. We’d had it replaced less than two years ago. Scrap that car, the garage owner advised. Good riddance, it was the most worthless car. Never buy a car built on a Monday morning in Sunderland.

While we were discussing a new car, the news came that David Hockney had passed away. My thoughts went to the exhibition The Arrival of Spring, which I saw about ten years ago. Spring has never been the same since.

Hockney had two qualities that made him very likeable in my eyes. The most important was that he made an art out of looking. He looked better than most other artists, and certainly much better than I did. By painting what he saw, I suddenly saw it too.

That applies, for example, to the hawthorn blossom. I have seen it bloom every spring for years, but it’s always been just a white haze over a tree. Since Hockney, I now understand that there are actually many white garlands in the tree, and now I see them that way. The hawthorn has finished blooming, but I’ve regularly thought of Hockney over the past month.

Hockney tried to explain his own way of seeing. In the 1970s, he created photo collages in which the perspective constantly changed. I thought that was all reasonably clever, but I was not particularly charmed by the result.

In The Arrival of Spring, he tried a new experiment. He had nine cameras mounted on a car, all with slightly different focuses and looking in slightly different directions. It created a complex array of images that, according to Hockney, corresponded to the way we humans look. In our eyes—at least according to Hockney—the world is not a sharp photograph, but a meandering perspective. It also means that no one sees exactly the same thing. Reality does not exist. Everyone creates his or her own unique reality.

The other thing I appreciate so much about Hockney is his work ethic. He got up before dawn and, as far as I know, still painted for hours every day despite his nearly 89 years of age. That deserves respect, too.

Hockney’s world was colourful. That applied not only to his paintings, but also to his clothing. He loved checks. I hope to buy a Hockney suit someday. However, his yellow clogs are just a bit too much for me.

While I was thinking about all of these things, Julie had chosen a car. I noted with approval that it was bright red. Also, it is a Picasso; they didn’t have a Hockney.