Regular readers may recall that I went to the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at Yale back in March and failed to post about it. I did write several paragraphs on it, but they came out painfully slow and labored. I'm not sure why; I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the paintings (which I liked enormously, to say the least), but when sitting down everything became difficult and vague. I don't think I spent enough time thinking in the galleries, though I also must admit that it's harder to write a positive post well--ambivalence is my favored mode for writing. In any event, I pressed along, with the thing slowly growing, getting rather long before I had come close to the point, until a moment came when I stopped and looked at the sentence I had just written with horror. It was the beginning of a new paragraph, switching in tone and subject from lengthy introductory considerations to the paintings themselves--and it was utterly vacuous, empty and pompous nonsense. Worse, looking back, I could see that the rot had set in long before--the whole thing had gone wrong quickly, and any salvage job would have to be more like a complete rewrite. I wasn't up to it, as you can imagine, so: no post. I did just go back and look at it again, though, and while I found it no better for the passage of time, I did like this quote I had saved:
Interviewer: Do you ever feel the audience has failed you?
Hodgkin: No, no. Being an English artist, I've learnt who is the boss.
And some links: clips of interviews with Hodgkin from the BBC (one of which has the last quote) and answering questions about Seurat, his 2003 gallery show at Gagosian reviewed at artcritical.com, an interview with Kenneth Baker courtesy of the Tate, and a rather overblown feature from the Guardian. Also, the New York Times review and slideshow, Richard Lacayo's blog post on the show at Time's website, the previously discussed Big RED & Shiny review, and a so-so image of one of my favorites from the show. And that will have to be that. Oh, except: the catalog for the exhibition is disappointing, with two mediocre essays and a square format that leads to many images running across the fold.
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