Howard Hodgkin:Come Back Dull Care
1999
Oil on wood
9 1/4 x 12 1/2 inches
I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations.
Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin. ‘Come Back Dull Care’, 1999
Detail from ‘Come Back Dull Care’
In the late 1960s, borrowing the English novelist Anthony Trollope’s phrase, John Russell of Art News described Howard Hodgkin as a specialist in depicting “The Way We Live Now”. In contrast to the trance-like paintings of American Abstract artists, such as Jackson Pollock, Hodgkin’s paintings are deeply intertwined with his daily life, experiences, and connections. Starting this theme in his 20s, in the 1950s-1970s his paintings contained more representational items of his meals, travels, and settings before progressing into complete abstraction in the 1990s. During this period he also transitioned to using found wooden panels and frames; at times using a flat panel onto which he constructed a frame through painted strokes of a single colour, other times combining a panel and frame into one plane and painting over the edges, morphing the two into one canvas.
Detail from ‘Come Back Dull Care’
Often working on his paintings over years with little to no revision, each piece reminds the viewer that Hodgkin’s life was filled with emotion and doing, all of which he translated into oil-on-wood. The layers of paint and the time spent in between their application creates a feeling of vibrancy, both in colour and in the life he communicates to viewers. Abstracting his life into colour, Hodgkin sought to capture personality and experience in a way that each viewer could find themself in.
In the late 1990s, Hodgkin’s paintings were characterised by a period of intense reds, greens, and a deep blue. Come Back Dull Care (1999) is emblematic of his work at this time, painted upon his signature found wood panel and frame. Painted in layers of crimson and bright green, the oil paint is worn away at the ridges to reveal the colours underneath. A large swath of blue sits within the centre of the painting, translucent in places to allow the pre-existing greens and sky blues to peek through. Overlapping, hiding, and exposing, these layers of pigment form a portal into Hodgkin’s memories of the 1990s for viewers to enter into.
More Info
Enquire
‘I don’t think you can lightly paint a picture. It’s an activity I take very seriously,’ said Hodgkin on his practice. The painter is known for his immersive use of substrates, often painting over the frames with broad strokes of bright colour, resulting in works that are invariably expressive, profound, and yet playful in nature.
Fauvism was a particular influence on Hodgkin’s work; ‘Time Literary Supplement’ (1980) recalls the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard with its use of vivid colours that haphazardly cover the frame. Hodgkin’s contribution to Fauvism is an added sense of abstraction and materiality, while still flirting with figuration.
Hodgkin’s first solo exhibition was held in London in 1962; throughout his prolific career his work would be the subject of numerous exhibitions including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Tate, London, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Venice Biennale.
As well as an artist, Hodgkin was a prolific collector of art, amassing a collection that spanned from antiques and 17th century Ottoman tiles to works by William Hogarth and William Blake. Hodgkin’s partner, Anthony Peattie, stated that his collection ‘in some mysterious way fed his art’.
B. United Kingdom1932 – 2017
Biography
Howard Hodgkin (b. 1932, London) remains one of the defining figures of post-war British art. His daring abstract paintings often utilise broad, bravura brush strokes filled with vibrant colour. The painter’s gestural style of paint application (which almost exclusively takes wood or paper as a substrate) often covers the frame, an ostentatious transgression of painterly traditions. His works show a debt to the likes of Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947), for example, who Hodgkin discovered in the 1940s, and from whom he would derive his distinctive use of colour. The painter’s intention was, through his art, to express the intangible: thoughts, feelings, and the fleeting of time.
Hodgkin was educated at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, 1949 – 1950, before studying at Bath Academy of Art, 1950 – 54. His first solo exhibition was in London, 1962. In the years following, the artist grew in popularity and began to stage exhibitions across the world. By 1984, Hodgkin was included in the Venice Biennale, before boasting a solo exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and winning the Turner Prize in the following year. In 1995-96, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, presented a groundbreaking solo exhibition of Hodgkin’s work. In 2006, Hodgkin enjoyed his first retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, an exhibition which then travelled to Tate Britain, London, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. His works are held in many permanent collections internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The British Museum, London; Centro de Arte Moderna, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Sao Paulo, Sau Paulo; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; The National Gallery of Washington, D.C; and The Tate Gallery, London, among others.