British Artist David Hockney’s California Dreaming

“[I]t was here that I found a scene that did not exist elsewhere. I suppose I was like a child in a sweet shop. The California beach was like heaven,” British painter David Hockney says in Christopher Simon Sykes’ David Hockney: A Rake’s Progress: The Biography, 1937-1975. The first volume of a proposed two-part biography, Sykes’ first volume follows Hockney—perhaps the most canonically accepted artist alive today—from his humble beginnings in Bradford huddling with his family from the “blitz” to his ascent in the art world and discovery of love and inspiration in a Californian paradise. Written with Hockney’s authorization and cooperation, but not his endorsement, David Hockney: A Rake’s Progress might be the final gesture that cements Hockney’s proper place in the art history pantheon. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "British Artist David Hockney’s CaliforniaDreaming."


[Image: David Hockney. A Bigger Splash (detail), 1967.]

Late Bloomer

“I was twenty-one before I saw a good picture,” Sir Matthew Smith once said of his insular upbringing in the shadow of his pious, businessman father. Born October 22, 1879, Smith eventually resisted his father’s attempts to place him in the world of business and, despite ill health, willed himself into the world of art. In 1908, Smith traveled to France to study at the Slade, the art school run by Henri Matisse. Although he most likely didn’t study directly with Matisse, Matisse influenced the entire curriculum of the school. Smith’s Dulcie (above, from 1915) shows how he took the style of Matisse in his Fauvist days and adapted it to his own uses. The connection with Matisse opened up doors to Smith that allowed him to exhibit with the likes of Matisse, Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, and Georges Rouault all before World War I erupted and forced Smith to return to England. Because of this influence of Matisse, Smith seemed “more French than English” upon his return, according to one contemporary, in terms of his handling of color to elicit emotion. Smith neatly smuggled Matisse across the Channel and overnight opened the eyes of his countrymen to the next big thing in painting.

Within a few years of returning to England, Smith found himself drafted into the war. He suffered shrapnel wounds in combat that taxed his already frail health, but the experience of war exacted a greater toll on his mind, beginning a cycle of creativity alternating with depression that would plague the rest of his life. Smith eventually established a London studio near that of Walter Sickert, whose (in)famous “Camden Town” nudes set the standard for the nude form in English painting in the early twentieth century. In Model Turning (above, from 1924), Smith slowly turns away from Matisse’s influence and turns toward a style closer to that of Sickert’s. The red skirt and blue and purple cushions hark back to Fauvism, but the instability of the figure itself generated by the roughness of the brushwork is pure Sickert. Actually, Smith exceeds even Sickert’s penchant for molding the figure in color like a sculpture rather than through line.

Smith continued to progress in a more Sickert-esque direction. In one of his many portraits of his friend and fellow painter Augustus John (above, from 1944), Smith handles the subject roughly. John referred to his portrait as “another hemorrhage for Matthew” in acknowledgment of the bloody, gory way Smith painted flesh even in the portraits of friends. As the pace of his cyclical depression increased, Smith’s view of life and humanity seemed to darken considerably. The young Francis Bacon admired Smith’s troubled style and patterned his own work after it. In many ways, Smith is the link between Sickert and Bacon, the two most important painters of the nude in English painting in the twentieth century. Smith’s evolution from Fauvism, one kind of beastliness, to the later brand of beastliness in his final works demonstrates how the late bloomer more than made up for lost time.

Music Lessons

“All art constantly aspires to the condition of music,” Walter Pater famously wrote. That phrase ran through my head when I stood in front of James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother (above, from 1871), better known as simply Whistler's Mother. Standing there years ago at the Musee d’Orsay in front of one of the most famous paintings in the world, I found myself liking it even more—the opposite reaction to my encounter with the Mona Lisa. Born July 14, 1834, Whistler excelled at art of shameless self-promotion, giving such friends (and later enemies) as Oscar Wilde and Gustave Courbet stiff competition for the publicity hound crown. In his art, however, Whistler stows away his bravado and often achieves a delicate balance of harmony and tone that truly aspires to the level of compositional perfection of a Beethoven piano sonata or Mozart string quartet. Unfortunately, the titles in which Whistler hints at his intentions are such mouthfuls that shorthand such as Whistler’s Mother soon displace his original goals, which only close attention can truly appreciate. Like a fine symphony, a Whistler painting cannot be rushed.

Two years after painting his mother, Whistler attempted a similar portrait of the author Thomas Carlyle known as Arrangement in Gray and Black no. 2 (above, from 1873). The similarities between the two paintings are obvious, but the individual portraits embedded within the similar color palettes couldn’t be more individually unique. Around this time, Whistler added musical titles to non-portraits as well, such as the infamous Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, which John Ruskin mocked as “flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.” Whistler, in response, sued Ruskin, eventually winning the libel case but receiving only a farthing in damages and thus ruining himself financially. I find it truly amazing that Whistler could keep the two sides of his personality so equally—the tender colorist who painstakingly worked out fragile harmonies of tone until they rang true to his “ear” coexists with the raging public figure for whom no publicity was bad publicity. Perhaps it was the yin of the artist that allowed the yang of the public persona to exist without going entirely out of control.

John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, and Walter Sickert, among many others, counted Whistler as a powerful influence. When I look at one of Sargent’s bravura portraits that feature a seemingly infinite range of whites, I think of works by Whistler such as Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian (above, from 1888-1900), in which Whistler not only captures the textures of the woman’s clothes in their individuality but also brings them all together into one powerful single effect. Like the Japanese art Whistler so loved, his tonal studies posing as portraits speak in a soft voice that demand attention. Unfortunately, the brashness of Whistler’s life and the mad dash of modern living conspire to push us along as if there were nothing to see here, instead of an entire symphony crammed into a single panel.

Under the Influence

When James McNeill Whistler learned that Walter Sickert had paid for art school, he told him to stop going and not to waste his time after wasting his money. Instead, Sickert became Whistler’s assistant, learning Whistler’s thin, atmospheric style first hand. When Sickert traveled to France in the 1880s and met Edgar Degas, he soon fell under the stylistic spell of Degas, taking on the heavy-handed impasto technique of the French master. For Whistler, it was either his way or no way, so he and Sickert soon parted ways. Sickert’s Whistler's Studio (above, from 1918) shows the affection Sickert still held for Whistler, whose studio Sickert worked in after Whistler’s death. Born May 31, 1860, Sickert was a typical eccentric of the Victorian era, with all its studied affectations and repressed (and badly expressed) sexuality. Today, Sickert is known mainly for two things—his amazing, Degas-inspired nudes and the accusation that he may have been Jack the Ripper.

Sickert’s nudes and the Ripper theories go hand in hand today. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell shoddily “solves” the mystery of the Ripper murders primarily by seeing Sickert’s paintings as a long confession of the crimes. Sickert contributed to this theory by calling one painting The Camden Town Murder sometimes and How Will We Pay the Rent? other times. Everything hinges on whether the woman is alive or not. The other nudes in Sickert’s oeuvre, such as Mornington Crescent Nude (above, from 1907), thus become additional examples of his “violence” against women. Of course, to accept that, you need to see Sickert’s impasto style as violent rather than an aesthetic choice he picked up from Degas, who himself has been accused of misogyny. I see a lot of Degas in the painting above, especially in the beautiful use of blue and the almost pulsating brushstrokes. The painting just seems too alive to me to believe that the woman is dead.

Sickert continued to drink in influences as he himself began to become an influential painter and teacher of other artists. Sickert founded the Camden Town Group shortly before World War I, helping bring the ideas of Expressionism and Post-Impressionism to England. In Mornington Crescent nude, contre-jour (above, from 1907), Sickert takes the impasto so far as to obliterate the woman. The vibrant color of his Degas-inspired nudes gives way here to dreary browns, expressing the impoverished lifelessness of the poor so prevalent in Victorian England. Again, such obliteration later served as more “evidence” in the case for Sickert being the Ripper. Reading such motives into paintings is always problematic, with the sensationalism of a famous murderer adding another dimension of speculation. Divorced from all the theories, Sickert’s nudes represent some of the most innovative approaches to the human body in modern art, setting off a chain reaction in British art that continued through Francis Bacon down to Lucian Freud even today.

Life After Death

Is it ever possible to “know” an artist? Even artists of the present fall beneath a blanket of critical analysis that covers over their true uniqueness and individuality, if you still even believe in the concept of “truth.” Sam Smiles’ J.M.W. Turner: The Making of a Modern Artist looks at the case history of J.M.W. Turner, a nineteenth century artist who was himself aware of the vagaries of history and tried to cheat death through a bequest to his native land that he believed would shape his reputation for future generations. Instead, the directions of his will were thwarted and his reputation soon became stretched and reshaped to meet the requirements of future critics who, amazingly, enlisted him into the ranks of modern art, providing “evidence” by association of both his greatness and the greatness of the modern artists they looked to promote. Would Turner have wished for allegedly unfinished works such as Disaster at Sea (aka Fire at Sea; above, from 1835) to become the foundation of his reputation as a “modern” artist? Would it have mattered if he didn’t?

Smiles begins by analyzing Turner’s own approach to the concept of legacies and reputations. From early on in Turner’s career, he painted homages to writers such as Alexander Pope (Pope’s Villa at Twickenham, 1808) and fellow artists, such as his portrait of Raphael in Rome, from the Vatican, Raffaelle, Accompanied by La Fornarina, Preparing His Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia (above, from 1820). In the 1820s, Turner painted works related to earlier artists such as Raphael, Rembrandt, Canaletto, and Ruisdael, “renovating the tradition they represented,” Smiles writes, and giving “a significant part of his output an art historically aware and self-reflexive quality.” Turner paints with an eye to the past while simultaneously keeping an eye on his own future. These commemorations reflect Turner’s personal sense of calling as an artist, Smiles believes, in which “the benefit of art lies in its power to engage and stimulate the mind,” with any commercial benefits being “incidental” to the greater societal good. Turner witnessed the deaths of this contemporaries Benjamin West and Thomas Lawrence (going so far as to paint a watercolor of Lawrence’s funeral) and pondered his own mortality and the posthumous fate of his work.

Smiles masterfully argues the state of Turner’s mind by painting a full picture of the state of the arts at that time, which can be described as nothing short of chaotic. The wills of both West and Lawrence, designed to protect their legacies and benefit the nation, were thwarted after their deaths, impressing on Turner even more the need to protect his own legacy and, thus, the future of British art and society. While bequeathing his oeuvre to the nation, Turner left explicit instructions that Sun Rising Through Vapour: Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish (above, from 1807) and Dido Building Carthage be hung in the National Gallery alongside paintings by Claude Lorraine both to show the line of influence and to show that British works could meet the standards of the Old Masters. Turner’s will also made arrangements for a charity specifically for the benefit of poor and “decayed” artists, knowing that his own material success eluded many others who had also dedicated their lives to the arts. Alas, after Turner’s death in 1851, challenges by Turner’s cousins thwarted his will as well, the first link in the chain of events that has shaped our idea of Turner ever since.

John Ruskin, who had assumed the role of Turner’s champion while alive, continued to dominate the conversation after Turner’s death. Ruskin’s “iconographical” interpretations, valuing fidelity to nature and natural effects, hinged on seeing “unfinished” works such as Disaster at Sea (top of post) as interesting as glimpses into Turner’s mind at work rather than as finished conceptions. Ruskin sees post-1845 Turner paintings as the work of an artist in “decline” both artistically and morally—inseparable concepts in Ruskin’s Victorian worldview. As Ruskin’s power waned, more formalist readings of Turner’s art arose, valuing the “unfinished” works, many of which were only being then publicly displayed as the huge bequest was catalogued and restored, as the “true” Turner, i.e., the visionary who “invents” the Impressionist style. Rain, Steam and Speed—The Great Western Railway (above, from 1844) “contains a first rate Monet,” writes one critic in 1902, “if not, indeed, more than one.” A 1906 exhibition of Turner’s late works obliterates the line between “finished” and “unfinished” works seemingly for good, opening up the critical field to adopt Turner as a Impressionist after the fact and, much later, to apply all types of modernist labels to the long-dead painter. Walter Sickert calls Turner “more modern than any living painter” in 1925, expressing the prevailing mood of Turner as more twentieth than nineteenth century artist, literally born before his time.

Smiles outlines the critical campaign for the soul of Turner with broad strokes but manages to give enough detail to keep the story both concrete and riveting. The tales of Turner’s fate at the Tate Britain made me wish I had looked at the exhibit with a more discerning eye while there. The British Council’s post-World War II exploitation of the “modern” Turner “to showcase the vitality and modernity of British culture” becomes a cautionary tale of government intervention in the arts for political ends. Lawrence Gowing’s 1966 exhibit at the MoMA, Turner: Imagination and Reality, completes the coronation of Turner as a modern artist through an installation usually reserved for modern artists and an emphasis on the most modern-looking (i.e., Abstract Expressionist-looking) paintings, completely free of any historical context that Turner himself would have experienced while working on the paintings. “Gowing’s Turner thus occupied an eternal present,” Smiles writes, “and for that reason could offer lessons to all contemporary artists wrestling with the same problems.” Turner’s desire to serve society through art lives on, but radically different from how he intended. John Gage’s 1969 book Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth arrives on the scene as a corrective to Gowing’s designs, presenting a Turner “more obviously historically placed and intellectually responsive to his age” and “better understood when his cultural milieu was restored to him” than Gowing’s historically abstracted, time-travelling Turner.

Will the “real” Turner ever stand up and be recognized? Is it the nineteenth century living and breathing man or the twentieth century modernist icon? Turner is simultaneously all and none of these things, larger than any one idea and yet too elusive, as all great artists, to be permanently pinned down to any single label. Smiles seems to come down on the side of those looking to recover the historical Turner as much as possible. “For all its difficulty, and even while aware of its ultimate frustration,” Smiles writes, “we must still make the attempt to encounter the past in all its specificity and otherness.” While speaking of Turner in particular, Smiles raises much larger general questions for both the art historian and the non-professional art lover. For art historians, Smiles shows the consequences of curatorial decisions, which always remain choices of inclusion and exclusion that impact not only the artist but the entire fabric of art history’s larger tapestry. For the non-professional art lover, Smiles awakens us to look critically at exhibitions and ask the classic crime-story question, “Quo bono?”—who benefits? In other words, whose agenda is being served by curatorial choices, and why? J.M.W. Turner: The Making of a Modern Artist turns commonplace shibboleths of art history (Turner the Impressionist, Turner the Modernist, etc.) and makes us question them and see Turner afresh. Turner himself could wish for no greater legacy than that.

[Many thanks to Manchester University Press and their American distributor Palgrave for providing me with a review copy of Sam Smiles’ J.M.W. Turner: The Making of a Modern Artist.]

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

James McNeill Whistler rose like a rocket on the art scene in the Victorian Age and plummeted almost as quickly due to his incendiary personality. Whistler, who was born on July 14, 1834, drew the ire of art critic John Ruskin with his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (above), which Ruskin called a fraud and a “flinging [of] a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Few artists have captured the fleeting effects of fireworks as well as Whistler, the painter of the ephemeral, the fleeting, and the delicate—he even signed many of his paintings with a stylized butterfly of his own design, his personal emblem.

Whistler’s momentary effects captured in paint aspired to the condition of music. Many of his titles borrow musical terms to relate his subtle effects, such as his Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket and Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (above). As the symphonist turns a theme over and over, examining it from ever angle and documenting every nuance, Whistler delves into the color white and turns it inside out in search of the essence of whiteness. (When I saw this painting in person, I was stunned by the beautiful subtlety, as well as by the bravura animal head of the rug, baring its fangs at the woman’s feet.) Only John Singer Sargent, who was influenced by Whistler, “knows” white as intimately. Whistler knew the model in the painting, Joanna Hiffernan, intimately, too. Unfortunately, Gustave Courbet may have used her as the model for his The Origin of the World (no direct link; I have a G rating to protect), perhaps the most “intimate” nude ever, which led to a falling out between Whistler and Courbet.


Whistler titled his 1890 memoir The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. He wasn’t kidding. Whistler created a vibrant persona to match his vibrant art. In Europe, he affected the manners of a Southern gentleman down on his luck. In America, he assumed the guise of a cosmopolitan European—a dandy always ready with a cutting quip. (See Randall C. Griffin’s Homer, Eakins, and Anschutz: The Search for American Identity in the Gilded Age for a great discussion of Whistler’s persona in context.) Despite being born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Whistler claimed during the libel trial with Ruskin over Nocturne in Black and Gold: Falling Rocket that he was born in Russia. “I shall be born when and where I want,” Whistler declared, “and I do not choose to be born in Lowell.” Whistler’s strident forging of personality often conflicted with many who once were friends. Oscar Wilde, Whistler’s fellow dandy and quipster, saw his friendship with Whistler end when Wilde declared his homosexuality publicly in 1895. Whistler sued Walter Sickert, a former follower. But the greatest conflict came with Ruskin, whom Whistler took to trial in 1878. Whistler won, but only a token settlement of a single farthing. Whistler remains a strange contradictory figure: a painter of beauty and gentle subtlety who could inspire the deepest personal animosity.

[This belated birthday to Whistler is brought to you courtesy of the technical difficulties I experienced a while back.]

Murderously Good Painting

One of the suspects in the unsolved case of Jack the Ripper and a pretty good painter to boot, Walter Sickert entered the world on this date in 1860. Sickert took the techniques of Impressionism and added a more somber, psychological, Victorian veneer, as can be seen in his famous Ennui (above).

Sickert worked briefly as an actor before working as an assistant to James McNeill Whistler, who encouraged Sickert to paint. Sickert soon traveled to France and met Edgar Degas, whose strong draftsmanship and choice of urban subjects influenced Sickert’s development.

Ennui shows two people in a drawing room full of somber color, each looking off in their own little worlds, so close to one another yet completely disconnected. Sickert captures these expressions of ennui perfectly, choosing colors that harmonize with the overall mood as well as using strong drawing to create a sense of tension. Sickert’s choice of a claustrophobic interior to present the interior life of everyday people bears a strong resemblance to similar scenes Edward Hopper would paint from an American perspective decades later.

But the truly juicy angle to the life of Walter Sickert comes from his possibly being Jack the Ripper’s assistant or even the Ripper himself! (Not to be confused with Jackson “Jack the Dripper” Pollock.) Mystery writer Patricia Cornwell believes that the painting above, titled Camden Town Murder (named after another, non-Ripper, sensational murder of the time), shows Sickert with his victim. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, Cornwell presents her case for Sickert being the Ripper. Cornwell apparently bought 31 of Sickert’s paintings and envelopes and stamps he may have licked in hopes of finding enough DNA to close the case. In her personal episode of C.S.I.: Art History Edition, Cornwell may even have destroyed one of Sickert’s paintings in her quest.

Regardless of all the sensational fanfare of crime fact and fiction, Sickert remains one of the finest British painters since J.M.W. Turner.