Exhibition: R. B. Kitaj – Obsessions

Until 16th June 2013, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

This exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, subtitled ‘Analyst for Our Time’, will feature over 70 major paintings, sketches and prints presenting an overview of all periods of Kitaj’s extensive oeuvre from the 1960s to his death in 2007. It will consider Kitaj’s early presentations of a fragmented world, reflecting his interest in art history and intellectuals such as ‘Aby Warburg’, and his paintings and collages addressing issues of European politics, philosophy and literature such as ‘The Murder of Rosa Luxembourg’ and ‘The Rise of Fascism’. It will also include Kitaj’s remarkable portraits of personal friends and figures he admired such as his portrait of David Hockney, ‘The Neo-Cubist’, and fictional characters from literature such as ‘The Arabist’ His fascination with the relationship between the body, sexuality and history is presented in a series of powerful paintings of bathers including ‘Self-Portrait as a Woman’ and ‘The Sensualist’.

Exhibition: Patrick Procktor – Art & Life @ Huddersfield Art Gallery

Patrick Procktor, Jimi Hendrix III, 1973. Photo c. Estate of the Artist and The Redfern Gallery, London.

Until 10th November 2012

Familiar with the name Patrick Procktor? We must confess that even at the BARS blog the name didn’t immediately ring a bell… and it’s precisely this kind of response that this current exhibition of Procktor’s work at the Huddersfield Art Gallery as part of ROTOR, a two-year series of exhibitions, public events and talks, seeks to challenge and change. During the 1960s Procktor was part of a suitably swinging circle that included such art luminaries as David Hockney and Ossie Clark, and the paintings on show here encompass eminently recognisable figures including Jimi Hendrix and filmmaker Derek Jarman. As the picture illustrating this post amply indicates, Procktor was a brilliantly deft watercolourist who excelled at portrait painting, and in his recent review of the show Independent critic Charles Darwent touches on the correspondences between Hockney and Procktor’s practices. In contrast to Hockney, however, the latter part of Procktor’s like was sadly marked by decline and tragedy – but this exhibition, together with the book by its curator Ian Massey entitled Patrick Proctor, Art and Life, should go some way to incorporating this intriguing figure back into the narrative of 1960s art in Britain.

Film Screening: David Hockney @ Yale Centre for British Art

21 March 2012, 6pm, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Free

The Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven will be showing a documentary film screening and discussion of David Hockney: A Bigger Picture (2009), directed by Bruno Wollheim on Wednesday 21st March 2012. This film is an intimate portrait of the British artist David Hockney as he returns to paint his native Yorkshire. Bruno Wollheim will introduce his film and lead an informal discussion following the screening. The exhibition David Hockney: A Bigger Picture runs at the Royal Academy in London until 9 April 2012.

Coming soon: Picasso and Modern British Art

Tate Britain, 15 February  –  15 July 2012

Picasso remains the twentieth century’s single most important artistic figure, a towering genius who changed the face of modern art. In a major new exhibition at Tate Britain, Picasso and Modern British Art explores his extensive legacy and influence on British art, how this played a role in the acceptance of modern art in Britain, alongside the fascinating story of Picasso’s lifelong connections to and affection for this country. It brings together over 150 spectacular artworks, with over 60 stunning Picassos including sublime paintings from the most remarkable moments in his career, such asWeeping Woman 1937 and The Three Dancers 1925. It offers the rare opportunity to see these celebrated artworks alongside seven of Picasso’s most brilliant British admirers, exploring the huge impact he had on their art: Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney.

Exhibition: David Hockney – A Bigger Picture @ Royal Academy

David Hockney, 'Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 & 29 November 2006', 2006

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, Royal Academy London, 21st January 2012 – 9th April 2012

In January 2012 the Royal Academy of Arts will showcase the first major exhibition of new landscape works by David Hockney RA. 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 and will be shown alongside related drawings and film. The exhibition builds on themes and concerns – including the use of technology in the representation of landscape, and Hockney’s recent re-immersion in the east Yorkshire environment – elaborated in Hockney’s major recent work Bigger Trees Near Warter, which was shown at York City Art Gallery this year and has been subsequently touring other arts venues in Britain.

‘David Hockney RA: 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.

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. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full catalogue – bookings for the exhibition are already open and tickets can be bought here.

 

Exhibition: R. B. Kitaj @ Abbott Hall Art Gallery

R. B. Kitaj, K Enters the Castle at Last, 2004

Kitaj: Portraits and Reflections, Abbott Hall Gallery, until 8th October 2011

This summer Abbot Hall Art Gallery is curating the first major UK exhibition of the American artist R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007), following the Tate’s controversial retrospective in 1994, which drew an unexpected and undeserved trashing from the British press.  Kitaj studied and lived for a large part of his career in Britain, and was initially linked with the ‘Young Contemporaries’ pheonomena that burst onto the British art scene in 1961, but his images combine an interest in popular and vernacular iconography with the legacy of abstract-expressionist brushwork and complex socio-cultural allegories – often linked to his Jewish heritage. The exhibition offers an opportunity for a fresh reappraisal of his artistic achievements, and will feature approximately fifty paintings and works on paper, which have been selected from the point of view of Kitaj’s own concept of painting as portraiture in its broadest sense. Including many self portraits and portraits of some of the leading thinkers, poets and artists of the nineteenth and twentieth century such as Isaiah Berlin, Robert Creeley and David Hockney.

British Masters – We Are Making A New World

3-Part Television Programme with James Fox, starting tonight at 9pm, BBC4

This television programme promises a major re-calibration of 20th-century British paintings, and will be aired tonight at 9pm on BBC4 (if you miss it you should be able to catch up on BBC iplayer). Art historian James Fox argues that British painting from 1910 to 1975 was an extraordinary flowering of genius. He predicts that art historians of the future will rank the period alongside the Golden Ages of Renaissance Italy and Impressionist France.

Drawing upon the work of Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon, Stanley Spencer and David Hockney, among others, Fox explores why, during the 20th century, British painters were often dismissed for being old-fashioned. He reveals how these artists carefully reconciled tradition and modernity, providing a unique creative tension that now makes the period seem so exciting.

David Hockney Talk at York Art Gallery

David Hockney, 'Bigger Trees Near Water'

SAASY and York Art Gallery would like to invite you to a special talk with Hockney expert Marco Livingstone on Thursday 5th May 2011.

Find out more about Hockney’s East Yorkshire landscapes, including Bigger Trees Near Warter, now on display at York Art Gallery. Marco Livingstone is a leading authority on contemporary art, both as a writer and curator. He has written widely on Hockney, including the 1996 Thames and Hudson book on David Hockney and Hockney: Portraits and People, which was awarded the Sir Bannister Fletcher Award for best book on the arts in 2004. He is co-curating the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2012 and is contributing to to the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception. For bookings, call 01904 650333.

Film Screening: David Hockney

A Bigger Picture, with Bruno Wollheim, 3 March, 6.30pm

Join film-maker Bruno Wollheim at the Yorkshire Museum’s Tempest Anderson Hall for an exclusive screening of his documentary on David Hockney, in conjunction with Bigger Trees Near Warter at York City Art Gallery.  The screening will be followed by a question and answer session and a drinks reception. The Yorkshire Museum is five minutes’ walk from York Art Gallery, within the city’s Museum Gardens. £16 per person (includes glass of wine). To book a place, telephone 01904 650333.

Bigger Trees Near Warter @ York Art Gallery

David Hockney’s Bigger Trees Near Warter

York City Art Gallery

12 February – 12 June, 2011

David Hockney’s painting Bigger Trees Near Warter, on loan from Tate, is the largest painting the artist has ever produced and measures 40 x 15 feet (12 x 4 metres).

Featuring two copses, a huge sycamore tree, buildings and early flowering daffodils, the painting comprises of 50 individual canvas panels and takes inspiration from a site at Warter in the Yorkshire Wolds.