A Show of Early Hockney Works Places the Famed British Painter at the Heart of Art and Science

Earlier this month saw the opening of “Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection” at Connecticut’s Bruce Museum. The exhibition shows rarely displayed works by the world-renowned artist, giving a unique insight into his early career starting from his student days at London’s Royal College of Art during the early 1960s.

The Bruce Museum’s tagline is “Where art meets science,” and its CEO and exclusive director Robert Wolterstorff sees Hockney’s practice as a fitting combination of the two: “Hockney is endlessly fascinated with how we see the world and represents it through marks on paper or canvas. That act of seeing, interpreting and creating is at the heart of both art and science.”

The exhibition, curated by Margarita Karasoulas, features 16 works loaned from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection. The couple built up a large collection of Hockney’s works in their Connecticut home over the course of several decades. Edith J. Simpson said “we never believed it was ours to keep forever, so it gives me great joy to share this special collection with the Bruce Museum and the greater community.”

A key work in the exhibition is A Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Semi-Egyptian Style (1961) made when Hockney was 24. The painting was inspired by Constantine P. Cavafy’s 1898 poem Waiting for the Barbarians. Cavafy was one of the first modern authors to write openly about homosexuality, and his work was impactful for Hockney who was living as a gay man before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain in 1967. The artwork won Hockney the gold medal at the 1962 “Young Contemporaries” exhibition at London’s Royal Society of British Artists Galleries.

Hockney’s portfolio is vast and his inspiration has been taken from a multitude of places and styles. French Shop (1971) demonstrates the artist’s Pop Art inspirations, and Japanese House and Tree (1978) shows the influence of Fauvist Henri Matisse.

Some of Hockney’s best-beloved paintings include water: his painting A Bigger Splash (1967) is perhaps his best-known painting and its title was used for the 1973 biographical documentary about the artist’s life and breakup with he artist and author Peter Schlesinger. “Hockney/Origins” includes two pieces from Hockney’s “Paper Pools” series – Diving Board with Shadow (Paper Pool 15) (1978) and Swimming Underwater (Paper Pool 16) (1978), made before Hockney made his move from London to California. The works were inspired by his visits to the artist Kenneth Tyler’s New York swimming pool and they mark the beginning of a new medium in Hockney’s practice -paper pulp. 

The exhibition also includes portraits of friends and colleagues of Hockney’s, including (1972) of his muse the textile designer Celia Birtwell. The pair first met in Los Angeles in 1964, and Birtwell sat for him several times over the course of 60 years. She was most famously depicted in Hockney’s 1970-1 painting , alongside her husband the fashion designer Ossie Clark. 

The Bruce Museum was originally the private home of the Reverand Dr Francis L. Hawks. It was deeded the to the Town of Greenwich by its next owner, the textile merchant Robert Moffat Bruce, in 1908 and its first exhibition was put on in 1912. Its collection now spans more than 30,000 objects and a new exhibition space was opened in April.

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Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com