I hope that readers are not getting fed up with my regular mentions of David Hockney’s insistence on the importance of looking. Over the past week, however, I have come to a realisation that this is sometimes more complicated than it might at first seem. “Looking” isn’t simply a matter of opening your eyes and permitting objects in front of you to register on the retina. Significantly, there is a process of selection, or perhaps the “direction of attention” might be a better way of putting it, and art itself can act as an important factor in selection or direction.
This realisation came to me while walking in the Derbyshire countryside during the past week. One of the glories of the area at this time of the year is the flowering of the hawthorn bushes. Entire hillsides can be clothed in white flowers, and walking along an ordinary lane can acquire something of the feeling of passing under a succession of bridal arches. It came to me, however, that I am now seeing this phenomenon in a very particular way, as a direct result of attending the Hockney/Van Gogh exhibition last month, in Amsterdam. Viewing his recent large landscapes of East Yorkshire I was struck by the frequency of his depiction of hawthorns in blossom, but more than this, by the particular stylisation of the way in which he paints them. At the time I found these rather unconvincing, and perhaps even that he had got into the habit of rendering the blossoms in a kind of pictorial short-hand.
The startling thing about my walks during the past week, however, is that I now find that I view the trees in flower through the eyes of David Hockney. I am “looking” at the blossoms, certainly, but my looking and the details of what I perceive are mediated by the memory of their depiction in art. What is more, at least for the time being, it has become hard not to see them in this way.
Just as it has become difficult for us now to see sunflowers without thinking of Vincent Van Gogh, or to view the countryside of East Anglia without being reminded of John Constable, for me at least I find it difficult to detach the experience of walking through hawthorns in blossom without seeing a David Hockney landscape. This should not be surprising, because that is what art does. It tutors our perceptions and shapes our experience of the world. Art doesn’t merely copy the world: it actually makes the world.
And now (as they say) for something completely different. I recently sold one of my pictures of Almscliff Crag, and had an idea of another image I could use to replace it. This turned out to be quite a satisfyingly creative experience, as I experimented with the medium of ink wash, which is new to me. Next week I will need to go and collect the image I sold from the restaurant in which it is hanging, and replace it with the new one. Because time is short I decided that I would re-cycle a frame already in use. The card mount had to be cut from a fresh sheet, however, because the two images are not identical in size.
Every time I do this I tell myself that it is a mistake. I cannot work with the precision and refinement of finish provided by a professional framer–and yet I keep doing it! The result will do for the time being, but in the longer run, when there is no longer the same urgency to display it, I will need to get another mount cut professionally. At least now, when I mutter under my breath about the cost of frames, I will be able to remind myself that I am actually paying for a significant level of skill and judgement.