Television
Imagine: David Hockney – A Bigger Picture
BBC1
“Scratch the tinsel in Hollywood to find the real tinsel”. The words bring a wonderful throaty laugh from a Yorkshireman in Los Angeles, mythologised as a playboy painter, hedonist, liberated gay, fashion icon and a truly gifted artist.
In Imagine: David Hockney – A Bigger Picture, Bruno Wolheim’s intimate and engrossing documentary, made over a three-year period, David Hockney sits in his Californian home and speaks directly to the camera, after four decades living in America, as he approaches his 70th birthday. “I felt quite alone really”, he says in a sombre, hangdog way. “I just suddenly thought I’ll go back for a while. I’m feeling very empty here.”
Cut to a quiet road in the east Yorkshire countryside and Hockney is looking out onto a splendid English rural scene. He has a large canvas balanced on an easel, a slanting table with painting accessories on it, one hand in his pocket and the other controlling his personal magic wand, a paintbrush. He has come back to his roots to revitalise his artistic energies by getting out into the world and experiencing the weather and cloud changes as he paints almost a canvas a day.
Hockney looks like a stereotypical painter and decorator as he goes about his business – with flat cap, splattered overalls and cigarette – and demonstrates a remarkable work ethic. He absorbs the scenery and is emphatic in his conviction that painting is far more perceptive and accurate than photography when capturing such images. Photography, he concludes, simply just cannot compete with painting at all.
In order to prove his point, he agreed to be filmed while he is working, confident that what appears on his final canvases would be far superior to the filmed images on television.
Having been a passionate photographer in his remarkable career, Hockney has now moved away from wanting to see the world through a lens and witnessing things through a “window”, to needing to be actually in it – to be part of it physically and in all seasons. He seems particularly obsessed with roads, lanes and tracks as they meander into the distance, suggesting loneliness and mystery. The landscape of Yorkshire clearly invigorates him, geographically and artistically distant from his decades painting LA swimming pools, naked men and sunshine.
He reckons there is “a fabulous lot to look at” in nature and it is always available to replenish the artist’s imagination, because “you can’t think it up.” He holds the strong belief that a painter needs the hand, eye and heart to succeed. He talks with authority and warmth, an occasional chuckle and a self-deprecation that belies his genius but enhances his normality and connection with the real world. Family and roots are still important to him.
The film took us on a journey towards the completion and exhibition of Hockney’s epic creation Bigger Trees Near Water, a compilation of 50 canvases, assembled into a 40 feet wide by 15 feet high centrepiece for the Royal Academy’s 2007 Summer Exhibition. It was a joy to behold, a wondrous artwork to cherish and a statement of intent that there is still much life and vigour in this outstanding painter.
It would be too easy to see such a work as a kind of swansong, but Hockney has little interest in considering his legacy. “I don’t think too much of the morrow”, he mused with his cheeky grin. “I wouldn’t bother about my legacy. Somebody will look after it or, if they don’t think it’s that interesting, they won’t.” Of course, somebody should and somebody will.
This was excellent television, beautifully produced, interesting, informative and entertaining. Now there’s a manifesto to reinvigorate the goggle box
Joe Cushnan
