[Howard Hodgkin's paintings - Top: Hello
Middle: Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word
Bottom: Blushing]
Howard Hodgkin's latest paintings at the Gagosian Gallery are beyond superlatives. They are recent paintings on wood during 2007 and 2008 and they are the first he has exhibited for a while. The most recent exhibition of his work in London at the Tate Britain was a retrospective,which was also very memorable and affecting.
His paintings look like visceral responses in colour, but they are actually painstakingly created, or should that be "paintstakingly", many taking years to complete.
Hodgkin talks about his paintings: "My pictures are finished when the subject comes back. I start out with the subject and naturally I have to remember first what it looked like, but it would perhaps also contain a great deal of feeling and sentiment. All that has got to be somehow transmuted, transformed or made into a physical object, and when that happens, when that's finally been done, when the last physical marks have been put on and the subject comes back...well, the painting is finished."
The gallery is a perfect space and the paintings just look beautiful, if only I lived there with them. My two favourites were Ozone and Blushing, but all were very powerful.
The Gagosian gallery is offering a double whammy at the moment as there is also Marc Newson furniture on display. Newson's use of materials is very clever. Newson says, "Sometimes I start with the material, sometimes the idea. In this case the materials were the inspiration. Often the context of materials strikes me more than the materials themselves. Context is new, not materials."
You could effortlessly live with all this furniture and gaze all day with awe at the lines and shapes. Again beyond superlatives.
I've never been to this gallery before. It's just tucked away near King's Cross station, it's worth making a note to pay a visit.
Howard Hodgkin: 3 April -17 May 2008
Marc Newson: 4 March - 19 April 2008
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