Hockney doubles down again

David Hockney (Bradford, 1937) is neither eccentric nor discreet. Beneath a placid British demeanor lies a man who has created his own style built on painting with a lot of color and a lot of light. In fact, he explains that he moved to California precisely for its light and that if he later returned to Europe (Normandy) it was for the same reason.

While some artists have felt the need to choose between comedy or tragedy, Hockney celebrates the balance between these two elements that coexist in life. He is a man of contrasts. He escapes Los Angeles because of the smoke, but once in France he is happy to discover that it is a more smoking society than the American one. He celebrates bohemian life, but recognizes that its discomforts make it impractical. He is sociable and dozens of people parade through his studio every year, but it is in the company of his dogs that he feels best.

Hockney is a man difficult to pigeonhole.

There are, however, some constants in his works. Color and the capacity for innovation are two of the most notable.

Regarding the first, it is a special way of treating color that unites his more urban stage and his more rural stage, making his work recognizable. Portraits, landscapes, architectures... all are easily recognizable. The book they published with art critic Martin Gayford was titled Spring cannot be cancelled (Thames and Hudson, 2021), a manifesto in favor of color and the vitality that accompanies spring.

However, it is the second constant—his vocation to innovate—that motivates this text.

Throughout his career, he has used different media for creation. In the sixties, he began to use photography, but it wasn't until the early eighties that he unleashed the potential of this discipline with his joiners. The practice consisted of photographing a person, a space, a landscape... any everyday scene from different angles. Once the photographs were developed, he created a collage. The final result is a composition, cubist-inspired, that allowed the viewer to see different angles of the same thing in a single photograph. By forcing the perspective, he gave the viewer more information about what was photographed than could be offered with a conventional photograph or even with a real gaze. The practical applications of this technique have transcended the limits of art and have been used in other disciplines. In our country, for example, the architect Enric Miralles used a similar resource to gather information about land or buildings.

Returning to Hockney, over the years he has not been afraid to investigate or explore new techniques. He has used Photoshop, 3D scanning, painted with an iPad... But now, at eighty-six years old, he doubles down.

Last 2023, David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) premiered at the Lightroom (London). The Lightroom is an immersive room like so many that have been appearing in different cities around the world in recent years and that have come to stay. Large rooms, with screens on walls that allow the viewer to enter an unthinkable experience a few years ago. At home, we are lucky to have the IDEAL center.

For some years now, audiovisual projections with an informative purpose about artists have become popular in this format. We have seen some about Van Gogh, Monet, Dalí... The format allows the viewer to enter the author's universe, understand the particularities of their work, and get to know the character without the need to see an original piece. It is the documentary taken to a higher level.

However, these rooms allow going further. Beyond this informative function, they open the door to new forms of creation. The IDEAL room, in fact, programmed a show with the Sonar festival called Koraal-Magma. The fusion between a musician, John Talabot, and the video art studio Desilence generated an artistic piece-performance that enveloped the spectators. That was not dissemination; it was art.

It's not that monographic projections about Dalí or Van Gogh are not art; they are, just like a documentary is. But they are projections about a third party who, in the cited cases, can no longer sign the creation for obvious reasons.

And that's where Hockney plays hard. The author is the first great living artist to sign his own immersive experience where dissemination and the creation of new work made for immersive spaces coexist.

The projection lasts about 50 minutes. In the informative part, one can see, among other things, adaptations to this new format of the opera sets created by the artist over the years. The Magic Flute, Tristan und Isolde, Turandot... projected on all six sides of the cube. Explanations on technical issues such as the use of perspective developed by Brunelleschi, color, light...

But what gives the exhibition the status of a Hockneyan work of art is the creation and experimentation shared by the author.

During his time in California, Hockney popularized among his circle what came to be known as Wagner Drives. The performance began an hour before sunset. He would invite friends to Malibu, and there the journey along the road crossing the mountain would begin. As they ascended, the soundtrack of West Side Story played in the car, but once at the top, the show began. Hockney had studied that if he started the route at a specific time of day and synchronized the curves, speed, and Wagner's music, he created a unique and unrepeatable romantic performance. Although these Hockneyan performances became popular, only a few were able to get into the artist's car to experience it firsthand.

On some of his trips, however, the artist recorded the journey from different angles and turned this performance into a piece of video art. All that was missing was a worthy space to loop such a piece, and the Lightroom must have been it. Without leaving central London, one can get into the back seats of Hockney's Mini while listening to the comments the artist had until then reserved for his most intimate performances. A piece of video art by Hockney in an exhibition of and for Hockney.

There are also new perspectives. The artist records his iPad screen while drawing to later reproduce it on screens. In this way, the viewer can see the creative process "from" "within" the piece itself and accompany Hockney throughout the process until the final piece that expands the collection of digital Hockneys. For some years now, he has been using his iPads for his creations which can be visited on his website.  In that experience, the artist records his iPad screen while working. Thus, the viewer not only sees the final piece, but also the entire creation process accompanied by relevant explanations with the artist's voice-over.

A Bigger Splash will remain hanging on the white walls of the Tate Britain and let no one take that away from us. But it is undeniable that the Brit from Los Angeles who lives in Normandy, as he describes himself, pushes boundaries. He pushes the boundaries of art, dissemination, the museum... and with this installation, he has added his creation to the transformation process in which many museums and cultural institutions are immersed.