In January 2012, the Royal Academy of Arts will showcase the first major exhibition of new landscape works by artist David Hockney. Featuring vivid paintings inspired by the East Yorkshire landscape, these large-scale works have been created especially for the galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts.
‘David Hockney: A Bigger Picture’ will span a 50 year period to demonstrate Hockney’s long exploration and fascination with the depiction of landscape. New work that dates from 2005 captures the beauty of the changing seasons, the cycle of growth and the journey that Hockney has taken through his beloved landscapes in Yorkshire.
The exhibition will also reveal how Hockney has embraced new technology, including his early use of the Polaroid, his innovative use of the colour photocopier, and more recently his iPhone and iPad. The exhibition will include a display of his iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using 18 cameras, which will be displayed on multiple screens and which will provide a spellbinding visual journey through the eyes of David Hockney.
Using an iPad has brought Hockney new freedom in his country forays.
The 74-year-old can “take it everywhere with him instead of carrying oil paint and brushes and watercolours and colour pencils and ink,” one of the exhibition’s curators, Marco Livingstone, said at the press launch Wednesday.
“You could work instantly when inspiration took you. And he can instantly send it to his friends.”
The iPad art is created using the Brushes application, drawn with the finger or a special pen.
They “have their own quality”, Livingstone said.
Once printed out, “they look like sort of paintings but they are on paper. They look like watercolours but the colour is more dense. They look like gouache but the colour is more transparent.”
Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney attended Bradford School of Art before studying at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1962. Hockney’s stellar reputation was established while he was still a student; his work was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, which heralded the birth of British Pop Art. He visited Los Angeles in the early 1960s and settled there soon after. He is closely associated with southern California and has produced a large body of work there over many decades. David Hockney was elected a Royal Academician in 1991.
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
Saturday 21 January – Monday 9 April 2012
10am–6pm daily (last admission 5.30pm)
Fridays until 10pm (last admission 9.30 pm)
