Continued (3)

Hodgkin also has a passion for fervent colour and this is a constant preoccupation in his work. For this exhibition at IMMA, the artist has made the striking decision to paint the gallery walls lemon-gold and ‘Grecian Spa’, a shade of light green, to allow the paintings to resonate and to allow for a greater fluidity. Some areas have been left white in order to create a pause. Like Matisse whom he admires, Hodgkin’s use of colour is initially seductive. It is also poignant, as he uses it as a means of inducing emotional content. His predilection for ripe colour emanates from the tradition of nineteenth-and twentieth-century French Painters. Italy too, with its historical associations and strong sense of colour is an important inspiration. Italy, 1998-2002, with its controlled tautness, equally contains and overwhelms the viewer. The twilight tones inherent in Venice Sunset, 1989, are reminiscent of Nolde’s Sundown over the Tideland, 1939-40.  By way of contrast, vermilion and green harmonies are used to great effect in Americana, 1999-2001, reminiscent of the colouring in Otto Freundlich’s Green Red of 1939 or the Fauve works of Matisse.

Pattern is also a significant concern for Hodgkin. He demonstrates surface through pattern and reinforces the mood of the work in View from Venice, 1984-5. In the outwardly simple painting A Rainbow, 2003-4, he investigates the use of mark-making, evident in his singular adaptation of traditional marks such as the stripe, curve and spot. His unique pictorial language transforms otherwise common daubs and bands of colour into what could be traces of prismatic effects of light captured in rain passing over a pastoral landscape.

Howard Hodgkin has followed his own path with conceptual coherence, evident in his passion for colour, his mastery of scale and his harnessing of memory and emotional situations. As his work has progressed he has developed a unique style alongside a compelling sense of artistic identity. Over the past almost-five decades of work included in this exhibition, it is apparent that his language has grown more confident. As he remarked during an interview with David Sylvester, ‘To be an honest artist now, you have to make your own language, and for me that has taken a very long time. Gradually, as you make your own language, the more you learn to do the more you can do, and the more you include.’

At every turn he gently reminds us that these images are cultivated from subjective memory and that through his remarkable technical virtuosity he has brought them to life. His surroundings have provided him with the basic facts, but memory is his salvation. Through his singular style of metaphysical art, he recognises that it is not everything to be a painter, or to represent everyday existence; rather, it is necessary to allow paintings to become a metaphorical projection. He creates his own world and he is the catalyst through which the paintings themselves come alive.

Karen Sweeney
Assistant Curator: Exhibitions

CHORONOLOGY

Howard Hodgkin was born in Hammersmith, London in 1932.
He was evacuated to the USA during the Second World War, where he lived on Long Island from 1940-43. Between 1949-54, he studied at Camberwell School of Art and at the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, where he also taught. Following shows in Britain and Europe in the 1970s, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1984, with a selection of 24 paintings, which exposed his work to an international audience and the exhibition travelled to London, Washington, New Haven and Hannover. In 1985, he was awarded the second Turner Prize. He was knighted for his contribution to art in 1992 and awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Oxford. In 1995, a second retrospective was organised by the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, which travelled to New York and Düsseldorf. In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour. 

The Irish Museum of Modern Art would like to thank Howard Hodgkin for his enthusiasm and commitment to this project and for his singular vision. We are grateful to all of the museums and private collectors who have lent works for this show. We would like to thank Tate; the artist’s studio and Gagosian Gallery, London.

Texts © The Irish Museum of Modern Art and the author
Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Howard Hodgkin at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
22 February – 7 May 2006

Edited by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions All images by Howard Hodgkin © The artist, 2006; courtesy Gagosian Gallery, London, New York, Los Angeles

The exhibition is curated by Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate and Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA

Exhibition organised by IMMA Dublin and Tate Britain in association with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

An illustrated catalogue with new texts by Colm Tóibín and Enrique Juncosa, plus specially selected existing texts by Julian Barnes, Bruce Bernard, William Boyd, Bruce Chatwin, James Fenton, Alan Hollinghurst, Anthony Lane, and Susan Sontag accompanies the exhibition. It is published by The Irish Museum of Modern Art in association with Tate Publishing (price €21.95).
Front cover:
A Rainbow , 2004, oil on wood, 76.2 x 171.7 cm, Private Collection, courtesy Martin Browne Fine Art Sydney
ISBN 1-903811-58-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electric, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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