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拍品专文
‘The paintings and charcoal drawings of felled trees, logs and the truncated tree trunks that Hockney refers to as “totems” … are among the most affecting in their acknowledgement of the natural cycle of life, decay and death’
– Marco Livingstone
‘How poignant it is, then, that it was through friendship, devotion to family and a sense of loss that Hockney came to paint Yorkshire and, through this prolonged love letter to his native land, to understand the depths of his feeling for his country and explicitly for the north of England, where his roots are as deep and firm as those of the trees on which he has expended such affectionate and respectful attention’
– Marco Livingstone
Spanning over a metre in width, Felled Totem, September 8th 2009 takes its place within David Hockney’s extended painterly love letter to the countryside of his native Yorkshire. Painted in 2009, it belongs to the series of so-called ‘totems’ inspired by felled trees and truncated stumps in Woldgate, just a few miles outside Bridlington. Having visited the area repeatedly for nearly eight years leading up to his mother’s death in 1999, the artist returned to the county of his childhood in 2004. After decades spent in California, and several years chasing spectacular vistas in Europe, Hockney was struck by the timeless, unspoiled beauty of his homeland. The revelation coincided with a passionate return to painting from life: working outdoors as well as in a nearby warehouse studio, he sought to capture the ever-changing splendour of his quiet corner of the world. Channelling the influence of Van Gogh and Monet, Rembrandt and Claude, Turner and Constable, the present work offers a vibrant snapshot of nature’s cyclical majesty. Shot through with vivid green, it captures the early autumn light of northern England with the same saturated intensity as Hockney’s Pacific sunsets. Whilst its subject matter posits the work as a kind of memento mori, it is simultaneously a joyous celebration of life, infused with Romantic heroism and grandeur. ‘How poignant it is’, writes Marco Livingstone, ‘that it was through friendship, devotion to family and a sense of loss that Hockney came to paint Yorkshire … where his roots are as deep and firm as those of the trees on which he has expended such affectionate and respectful attention’ (M. Livingstone, ‘The Road Less Travelled’, in David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, exh. cat., Royal Academy, London, 2012, pp. 25-26).
Hockney’s engagement with the East Yorkshire landscape – via paint, drawing, photography, film and later the iPad – gave rise to one of his most distinctive bodies of work. His first paintings stem from the late 1990s, made at the request of his friend Jonathan Silver, who was battling the final stages of cancer at the time. Silver’s death in 1997, followed by that of Hockney’s mother two years later, would ultimately give rise to a newfound yearning for northern England. Keen to explore landscape painting afresh, Hockney had initially toured Norway, Iceland, Spain and Italy in search of inspiration, before opening his eyes to the beauty on his doorstep. As Christopher Simon Sykes explains, it was a place that ‘held emotional ties for him. His ancestors had worked the land there, as he himself had done as a teenager on Foxcovert Farm. He began to really explore the area, driving off the beaten track up every little road he could find’ (C. Simon Sykes, David Hockney: A Pilgrim’s Progress, New York 2014, p. 360). Hockney was fascinated by the way in which the landscape, though seemingly unchanged for fifty years, was simultaneously in constant flux. ‘Van Gogh was aware of that, when he said that he had lost the faith of his fathers, but somehow found another in the infinity of nature’, he explained. ‘It’s endless. You see more and more’ (D. Hockney, quoted in M. Gayford, A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, London 2011, p. 32). The ‘totems’ series, culminating in the vast Winter Timber (2009), stands among his most profound odes to this concept, capturing the changing weather and light conditions in a manner that recalls Monet’s seasonal variations. The felled tree assumes an almost human presence: a reminder that, with the passing of time, we are all eventually returned to the earth.
– Marco Livingstone
‘How poignant it is, then, that it was through friendship, devotion to family and a sense of loss that Hockney came to paint Yorkshire and, through this prolonged love letter to his native land, to understand the depths of his feeling for his country and explicitly for the north of England, where his roots are as deep and firm as those of the trees on which he has expended such affectionate and respectful attention’
– Marco Livingstone
Spanning over a metre in width, Felled Totem, September 8th 2009 takes its place within David Hockney’s extended painterly love letter to the countryside of his native Yorkshire. Painted in 2009, it belongs to the series of so-called ‘totems’ inspired by felled trees and truncated stumps in Woldgate, just a few miles outside Bridlington. Having visited the area repeatedly for nearly eight years leading up to his mother’s death in 1999, the artist returned to the county of his childhood in 2004. After decades spent in California, and several years chasing spectacular vistas in Europe, Hockney was struck by the timeless, unspoiled beauty of his homeland. The revelation coincided with a passionate return to painting from life: working outdoors as well as in a nearby warehouse studio, he sought to capture the ever-changing splendour of his quiet corner of the world. Channelling the influence of Van Gogh and Monet, Rembrandt and Claude, Turner and Constable, the present work offers a vibrant snapshot of nature’s cyclical majesty. Shot through with vivid green, it captures the early autumn light of northern England with the same saturated intensity as Hockney’s Pacific sunsets. Whilst its subject matter posits the work as a kind of memento mori, it is simultaneously a joyous celebration of life, infused with Romantic heroism and grandeur. ‘How poignant it is’, writes Marco Livingstone, ‘that it was through friendship, devotion to family and a sense of loss that Hockney came to paint Yorkshire … where his roots are as deep and firm as those of the trees on which he has expended such affectionate and respectful attention’ (M. Livingstone, ‘The Road Less Travelled’, in David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, exh. cat., Royal Academy, London, 2012, pp. 25-26).
Hockney’s engagement with the East Yorkshire landscape – via paint, drawing, photography, film and later the iPad – gave rise to one of his most distinctive bodies of work. His first paintings stem from the late 1990s, made at the request of his friend Jonathan Silver, who was battling the final stages of cancer at the time. Silver’s death in 1997, followed by that of Hockney’s mother two years later, would ultimately give rise to a newfound yearning for northern England. Keen to explore landscape painting afresh, Hockney had initially toured Norway, Iceland, Spain and Italy in search of inspiration, before opening his eyes to the beauty on his doorstep. As Christopher Simon Sykes explains, it was a place that ‘held emotional ties for him. His ancestors had worked the land there, as he himself had done as a teenager on Foxcovert Farm. He began to really explore the area, driving off the beaten track up every little road he could find’ (C. Simon Sykes, David Hockney: A Pilgrim’s Progress, New York 2014, p. 360). Hockney was fascinated by the way in which the landscape, though seemingly unchanged for fifty years, was simultaneously in constant flux. ‘Van Gogh was aware of that, when he said that he had lost the faith of his fathers, but somehow found another in the infinity of nature’, he explained. ‘It’s endless. You see more and more’ (D. Hockney, quoted in M. Gayford, A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, London 2011, p. 32). The ‘totems’ series, culminating in the vast Winter Timber (2009), stands among his most profound odes to this concept, capturing the changing weather and light conditions in a manner that recalls Monet’s seasonal variations. The felled tree assumes an almost human presence: a reminder that, with the passing of time, we are all eventually returned to the earth.