the arrival of spring in woldgate, east yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven)
2 january 2011, no. 2 (one of a 52 part work)
ipad drawing printed on paper, 144.1 x 108 cm
Image © David Hockney. All Rights Reserved.
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From: David Hockney - A Bigger Picture, UK Book.
20.01.12: painting details
'The ipad is becoming a fantastic tool for me. What is really good about it is its speed. No other medium using colour is as fast. You can get things down very fast, meaning you can capture quick lighting effects like nothing else. The spring is just spectacular this year, and I am getting it down.'
David Hockney in an email to Marco Livingstone, 30 April 2011
Hockney embraces new technology and makes it seem his own. Here it is the Brushes app on his ipad that has open up a vista of new possibilities. The Arrival of Spring, No. 2 is just one of numerous works of art that stand up to any other medium.
Interestingly, when Hockney accepted the Royal Academy's invitation to mount an exhibition in 2007 (which would turn out to be A Bigger Picture exhibition) the ipad didn't exist. So how Hockney completely mastered it in so short of time is astonishing. And whenever I thing of the Brushes app I think of Hockney, so successfully has his usage been.
But then again is it surprising? Working with the ipad is faster even than watercolour and, crucially in this series, Hockney has been able to sketch more speedily than with any other medium in the unpredictable outdoors of East Yorkshire. Light and colour can be captured in seconds with a stylus and the aforementioned app. Fleeting things which may otherwise have passed unnoticed now can be captured by the master and live on forver.
Of course, it has opened up the rather boring debate on whether you consider a work of art created on an ipad to be the equivalent of an artwork painted on canvas. In my eyes it is. Of course it is. The finished piece is what counts and seeing this piece as an example how can anyone not be moved by the beauty of it? The bright colours, the pinks and the greens in the foreground, are made vivid by the thawing snow. It has the lightness of touch seen in a Matisse, a Dufy or a Chagall.
Gorgeous colours.
He made 94 drawings from which this ipad drawing comes from, 51 of which are included in A Bigger Picture exhibtion. Above each is the date on which it was drawn.
Text: Paul Page, 2012
20.01.12: a bigger picture book & exhibition
David Hockney - A Bigger Picture, UK Book.
Accompanies the acclaimed 2012 Royal Academy Exhibition. Details: here. Details: exhibition.
Book Available: Amazon.co.uk
David Hockney Biography
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