David Hockney at the Serpentine

In Another Abstraction Resting on a Blue and White Checkered Tablecloth, an expressive colour field canvas is positioned on the table. Its large bands of flat colours – red, black, and orange – are immediately suggestive of the work of Mark Rothko. Likewise, in Abstraction Resting on a Grey and White Checkered Tablecloth, a canvas with dragged, squeegee-like marks recalls the visual language of a Gerhard Richter painting. This body of works marks a departure from earlier examples in which works of art appear in more conventional terms, mounted on walls or easels. In works such as Sparer Chairs (2014), and Tyler Dining Room (1985), for example, artworks remain fixed within the interior and behave within the pictorial space as artworks should. In the Serpentine paintings, by contrast, they are positioned quite dominantly within the composition, commanding the viewer’s attention.  Curiously, Hockney approaches the titling of these works in a uniform manner. By naming each work a variation of ‘Abstraction Resting on a Checkered Tablecloth’, Hockney avoids distinguishing one ‘abstract’ from another. The painting within the painting is not identified by artist, style, or subject, but reduced to the generic description of ‘abstraction’ regardless of whether it is readily recognisable as a work of another artist, such as Rothko or Richter.

Both Richter and Rothko’s work is situated within the field of abstraction. Rothko (American, 1903–70), who was associated with the American school of Abstract Expressionism, is best known for his colour field canvases which consist of colourful rectangular forms. Richter (German, b. 1932), is one of the most influential artists of his generation, whose career is defined by the wide-ranging exploration of how painting can exist between abstraction and photorealism.  Hockney’s employment of such recognisable painterly motifs within the Serpentine paintings is hardly surprising.  His engagement with abstraction began early: in 1958, he travelled to London to see the first exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s work in Britain at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Yet while he dabbled in abstraction during his studies at the Royal College of Art, he chose to distinguish himself from many of his contemporaries by turning away from the Abstract Expressionism and returning to the figure. Later, in the 1990s, his growing disillusionment with naturalism, together with the success of the Moving Focus series and his experimentation with Cubist techniques throughout the 1980s, informed a renewed shift towards abstraction. His lithographs of the following decade exemplify this development, such as Untitled (For Joel Wachs).

In the three-remaining still lifes within the Serpentine exhibition, Hockney turns to motifs drawn from his own practice. In Abstraction Resting on a Red and White Checkered Tablecloth, the ‘abstract’ within the painting directly references his 1993 screenprint, Above and Beyond. In the other two paintings, the references are less explicit but still legible in relation to recurring formal devices within his oeuvre. The loose and bold linework of Abstraction Resting on a Green and White Checkered Tablecloth, for instance, evokes Hockney’s mark-making in his long-standing treatment of water, particularly in his representations of pools. However, the abstract form in Abstraction Resting on a Blue and White Checkered Tablecloth is more ambiguous in nature. Here, Hockney fuses colour and shape to create an abstract mass.  The boundaries of this abstraction are arguably less defined than the other four, and in turn disrupts the viewer’s understanding of what we are looking at in this artwork. Such disruptions in traditional forms of representation are not a new approach for Hockney. It is, in fact, a device Hockney has employed throughout his oeuvre and has borrowed from art historical traditions for inspiration. 

Hockney’s Serpentine paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, demonstrated in works such as the aforementioned Moving Focus series. In this body of work, we encounter Hockney’s examination of perspective, inspired by Renaissance fixed-viewpoint paintings and principles of Chinese scroll painting. The influence of Cubism and Pablo Picasso is particularly evident in the portraits of the series which provide a dynamic record of the sitter over a period of time. Picasso had a lasting impact on Hockney and has consistently identified the artist as a guiding force, crediting him with revealing new ways of structuring pictorial space and representing a lived experience. Picasso’s capacity to fracture, reassemble, and animate form enabled Hockney to envision alternatives to single-point perspective, allowing the image to reflect the movement of the eye and the temporality of perception itself. Remnants of Picasso’s enduring influence on Hockney are evident in the Serpentine paintings, which reflect the artist’s continuous exploration of alternatives to single-point perspective.

Hockney has directly referenced Picasso in works such as Artist and Model (1974), where he seats himself across from the Spanish master in an imaginary meeting, as well as in The Blue Guitar portfolio (1976 – 77), which borrows imagery as well as the tonal and emotional qualities from Picasso’s Blue Period. Elsewhere in works such as Homage to Michelangelo (1975), Hockney utilises motifs of another artist. In this example, Hockney adapts imagery that visually echoes the preparatory drawings of Renaissance master, Michelangelo.

Throughout Hockney’s career, we see a sustained engagement with art-historical traditions, which is arguably most monumentally realised in his work A Year in Normandie (2020-2021), on display at the Serpentine. This ninety-metre-long frieze, inspired by Chinese scroll paintings and the eleventh-century Bayeux Tapestry, encapsulates Hockney’s enduring ability to transform art-historical traditions into uniquely imaginative works of art. In turn, the still life paintings in the Serpentine exhibition may be understood as part of a longer lineage within Hockney’s practice, one in which he repeatedly engages with the work of other artists and adapts their creative innovations to extend and enrich his own practice.

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