David Hockney & Howard Hodgkin Transcript
For the Sunday of Pride I’ve chosen two works that to me represent new friendships, new relationships, and the people that we might have met over the weekend so far.
The first piece that I’ve chosen is a watercolour by David Hockney of his boyfriend, Peter Schlesinger, which was painted in 1967. What I like about this particular painting is that it’s quite an intimate depiction of Schlesinger in the home, sat on a chair with his legs up, quite comfortable, almost caught off guard; it’s almost like a glimpse into their relationship. It’s quite a quick drawing and watercolour, so it’s almost like it was captured within the moment. You can almost imagine Hockney staring at Schlesinger whilst he was sat in the chair, gazing lovingly perhaps at his new boyfriend. It’s Hockney capturing that passion of those new relationships within this work which really grabs my attention.
The second work that I’d like to talk about today for the Sunday of new friends and new relationships links in quite nicely with the Hockney work. Schlesinger was often the muse of Hockney during the 1960s and that California period where Hockney often painted swimming pools, and that iconic painting of Hockney’s ‘Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool’ reminds me of this second work by Howard Hodgkin. Reminds me because the title of this work is ‘David’s Pool At Night,’ in reference to a visit that Howard Hodgkin and Peter Blake had paid David Hockney in California in 1979. This is the second version of an original painting, it’s a print and hand painted. Hodgkin became friends with Hockney in the 1960s along with those artists that were emerging in London at that time: R.B. Kitaj, Patrick Caulfied, etc. and what I like about this particular work, and the previous work that I’ve just shown you, is this emerging friendship that happened, although not a relationship with Hockney in the same sense that Schlesinger was his partner, but a longer lasting friendship actually that lasted right up until Hodgkin’s death in 2017. After Hodgkin came out in 1975, and this painting and print was made in 1979, it’s obviously that friendship and that acceptance of friendship that must have been a great support for Hodgkin during that period.
Queering The Whitworth 