And
BIGGER it certainly is.
I cannot think of a more inspirational art exhibition - Rothko at the Tate, a small group of Turners at the Scottish National Gallery (shown only in January because of low light) Calder now at LACMA, and Stonehenge is a mystical experience I will never forget as well as Ian Hamilton Finlay's LITTLE SPARTA in the Pentland Hills just south of Edinburgh, Scotland….but an exhibition…..in a museum?
Hockney rocks.
A BIGGER EXHIBITION is a mosaic that splits time, honors colour, and takes the viewer on the most delicious surrealistic roller coaster ride.
Over 390 works presented on two floors in 18,000 square feet of space, here is a cornucopia of art - a plethora of water color, his sketch books, his iPad drawings that come to life start-to-finish right before your eyes, massive video installations - 18 screens at a time - using all 4 walls of a room for a 360 degree view of Woldgate Woods in East Yorkshire, and a massive oil of The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, 32 3 x 4 foot canvases combined to turn the heat up in your heart.
Gasp.
The museum was a zoo, of course, and I was gasping in the midst of hundreds of people with open mouths and wide eyed in the experience of colour - mountains orange, water yellow, roads purple through tunnels of green, fields pink - orange logs on purple fern, iridescent ablaze dappled and deep, fiery and violent - riots of colour - a joy - a joy - so huge, so brilliant - so surrealistic - almost cartoonish - (almost I said) and nature so big - so real - I felt I had slipped down the rabbit hole and looked around for my own brush and canvas. It all just made me want to paint.
But I'm busy writing. Isn't that painting?
And Get THIS:
Mr. David Hockney figured out after the investigation of cubist photography, and breaking apart
that space, that he could do the same thing with the canvas so he didn't have to get up on a
LADDER to paint the arrival of spring in Woldgate. Genius. Superb.
Are you following me?
Canvas after canvas
PLANNED to be painted to fit together - easily transported - the same way he used multiple video screens to create Woldgate Woods in virtual size, splitting time and space and dimension.
Now I can gush.
This exhibition was like hitting a warm spot in a cold river, and the 45 minute video of Mr. David Hockney and his friends in his convertible, top down, driving through canyons on California highways made me feel as if I was right there in the car with him.
Fantastic. Take me along on
this ride.
Marvelous.
Am I just getting this and everybody else knows? WHO CARES! It is so exciting. If I start to speak of influences, if I say Matisse - Renoir - Picasso - Velazquez - Frances Bacon I would only take your mind away from Mr. David Hockney so let me say pink roads and orange trees and blue walls and gratitude for sunlit green. What a delight, an inspiration, a folly, a split fern wild cup, a bell ringing splendor, a figure in time, like Calder balancing it all on the edge of a mobile. The colour is the doorway, a giggle, the royal road, a bridge to the heart.
There was so much to see it was overwhelming.
The down side? Far too many people and traveling no. where...but filling…
the heart, the aha, the Yes in me to the brim.
Go.
Please.
Go experience this
ART and report back.
A BIGGER EXHIBITION ends January 20th, and disappears - traveling nowhere.
Thank you Mr. David Hockney.
The above photo was taken at the entrance to the exhibition so nothing is without permission.
http://www.famsf.org
http://deyoung.famsf.org/press-room/fine-arts-museums-san-francisco-announce-major-exhibition-david-hockney-s-newest-body
Outside the De Young, nature's paintbrush.
