A big picture, a big critique
Great! Here, in Connaissance des Arts, is a review that takes up only a few lines, but its reading alone justifies the purchase of the magazine. Why is this paper, soberly signed M.J., so enthusiastic? It is precisely because he himself is so enthusiastic. It's a change! Enthusiastic about a work that it would be easy, even tempting, to bury artistically with a murderous formula.
So let's start by looking at the painted thing itself. It is approximately a square dominated by the blue of a clear sky. The composition is structured around the almost still bare branches of a tree emerging from winter. They are rather gnarled, which makes them look almost as cheerful as if they had been painted by Van Gogh. But impressionistic white flakes start to brighten them up. It is as if lily of the valley bells had fallen from the sky onto the branches. A hut is perched at the top of the trunk, with just enough height in the frame to identify the ladder giving access. The symbolism is clear.
But what of it? How is this almost naive painting en-thou-sias-mante? Connaissance des Arts very nicely finds the words to say so, evoking in particular an art of "making the pop colours coincide...with the euphoric impression of a truth of light and space, a truth of nature, inseparable from our happiness to exist." The way in which the painter "dares to reinvent the most worn-out, even kitschy motifs by rediscovering all their poetry" is also judged formidable.
Poetry. The word is said. It is both a feeling and a sensation. But it never comes without reason. It is therefore precious to see critics experiencing it publicly. They don't dwell on the fact that a canvas like No. 125 was painted by an 84-year-old Englishman, stranded by the Covid in Normandy, etc., etc. They prefer to measure the technical audacity of the painting. It is easier to understand why this little blue square, which is so wonderful because of its carefully considered simplicity, deserves to be signed David Hockney. When it reaches this level of finesse to distinguish art from emptiness, criticism is an art.
Photo: David Hockney: N°125