IN A GREEN SHADE: HOWARD HODGKIN

IN A GREEN SHADE: HOWARD HODGKIN

This is a personal summary of Andrew Marr’s article ‘In a green shade’ published in the Guardian Review newspaper of 27^th September 2014.

The article previews the exhibition Green Thoughts at the Alan Cristea Gallery in Cork Street, London from 11^th October to 15^th November 2014. 

In a green shade: Howard Hodgkin

A writer’s conversation with an artist who produces representational art will be different from a conversation with an artist who produces abstract works.  The former will be concerned with direct matters relating to the subject and the artist’s skills in achieving a representation of it.  The latter may result in ‘reams of commentary, often in rather opaque and self-referential language’; alternatively abstract art may be so ‘genuinely abstract’ that ‘it is simply the thing that it is’ and thus it defies any effective commentary upon it. 

Hodgkin ‘takes up a position that is neither abstract nor, in any conventional sense, representational’.   His works have meanings that ‘are not readily available to the viewer’: he paints memories and emotional states that are ‘representational pictures of emotional situations’, but Hodgkin implies that there is also nuance and deeper meaning as well.

Hodgkin’s paintings provoke, tease and entice.  How should we make our response?  What is it that we seek in these paintings?   Hodgkin’s personal experiences are not our experiences, so we cannot respond at a personal level.  But we may reflect on our own emotional experiences that are brought to mind by the titles and content of Hodgkin’s works.  This makes us look again at Hodgkin’s paintings and scrutinise them.  Colour is the feature that is of the greatest interest.

The brain responds to colours and juxtapositions of colours, and this response can be expressed in a limited way by language.  Particular colours may evoke subliminal responses because of their evolutionary function, but it would be crass to suggest that this is the guide to responding to Hodgkin’s works.  Even so, there is probably a power in Hodgkin’s use of colour that engages with the contemporary collective subconscious. 

Hodgkin now uses colour with an economy and deftness that are a mark of age and experience.  The works in the current exhibition are recent ones: they show noise, emotional struggle and muscularity; they suggest that the artist is ‘not going quietly into that good night’. 

Green Thought is a mysterious piece in the exhibition.   It is based on Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘The Garden’, which concerns ‘the metamorphosis of memory and feeling achieved in art’.  Hodgkin’s works form his autobiography, and in his works of art we too may find ourselves.