David Hockney by Christopher Simon Sykes

Author:Christopher Simon Sykes [Sykes, Christopher Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385531450
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-02T22:00:00+00:00

After Schlesinger had returned to UCLA, Hockney turned his hand to another portrait, this time of his old friend Patrick Procktor. It was the first of a series of portraits he was to paint over the next ten years, in which he sought to re-educate himself as a draughtsman and test his powers of observation. In The Room, Manchester Street he further developed his use of perspective, to create an illusion of space, and used backlight effectively to show off the figure of Procktor, standing, campily holding a Sweet Afton cigarette in his left hand. The shadows on the floor and the patterned carpet created by the cool silvery light pouring through the venetian blinds are also beautifully subtle. Made from a mixture of drawings, photographs and life, the painting depicts Procktor’s London home and studio at 25 Manchester Street, which the artist André Gallard described as being “rather like going into a film set: as if you had stepped back into 1880.”33 In fact, as Hockney described it, you never really knew what you were going to find there. “In 1967 Patrick’s studio looked clean, neat and office-like. The next year it looked like a den in the Casbah—it seemed to change as often as Auntie Mame’s.”34 In the portrait, which brilliantly captures Patrick’s theatrical bearing and extravagant hand gestures, it has the former appearance. Though honoured to have been the subject of such an important painting, Procktor never really liked the portrait, which he considered to be unflattering.

While Hockney was still working on this painting, one of his other portraits won him the most prestigious art prize in England, the publicity for which took his fame to a new level. The John Moores Prize for Contemporary Painting was held biennially at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. First awarded in 1957, when it was intended to be a one-off event, it was the brainchild of John Moores, the founder of the Littlewoods department store and the football pools company, who was a keen amateur painter, and who wanted to celebrate the best of modern art in Britain. Open to all, its subsequent success ensured that it was soon regarded as the country’s leading showcase for avant-garde art. In its tenth year, Hockney won with Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool. “Preview at John Moores Exhibition at Liverpool,” wrote Laura in her diary. “We were very proud and pleased to see David on Television he being first prize-winner at the Exhibition. Almost all the papers had write-ups with photos of both David and his picture. We had many congratulations around.”35 In a typically generous gesture, Hockney put half the considerable prize money of £1,500 towards a trip to Australia for his parents, to visit his brother Philip.

The Room, Manchester Street was completed in January 1968, just in time to be included in his fourth one-man show at the Kasmin Gallery, a striking exhibition of seven large canvases, which he called A splash, a lawn, two rooms, two stains, some neat cushions and a table … painted.

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