David Hockney at the Royal Academy

[giggirl]

To me David Hockney is a truly inspirational artist and after my first Hockney exhibition (many many moons ago) the way I saw landscapes was changed forever.

I suddenly remembered at the weekend that I hadn't yet got my tickets for the Hockney Royal Academy exhibition. To my horror, when I went to book I found that almost every date and time slot was sold out. I managed to get tickets for Easter weekend but only just.

If, like me, you'd been meaning to book but hadn't quite got around to it, then can I urge you to click on this link and book whatever you can get. Don't let it be the one that got away.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hockney/

[steveo]

I've just watched half a programme about the show and turned it off.

If you saw one of those recent pictures in a charity shop, you'd think it was by some local amateur.

[Pam50]

Sorry Steveo, I beg to differ. I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition. The paintings are wonderful and an absolute joy to see. I'm so very glad I wasn't put off by the few negative reviews around.

GigGirl, hope you find it just as engaging!

[woodrot]

Brian Sewell wasnt impressed.

Not sure what this means.

[steveo]

He said about the RA summer show, "If he (Hockney) had any courage he'd enter one himself anonymously."

[Ridgley]

Woodrot said

Brian Sewell wasnt impressed.

Is he ever!

[giggirl]

If I only went to things that Brian Sewell liked then I wouldn't get out of the house much.

[KidKruger]

Went a couple of weeks ago I thought it was good he is a clever painter.

I particularly likd what he'd done with the video screens, though had to watch a while to get it.

The stuff done on iPads was good, then I realised it was done on iPads.

Clever bastad.

[Mick Mac]

I'm going Friday night but could only get tickets for 1030pm so will be feeling very "arty" by then.

[Sue]

If anyone is in Oxford there's a good Graham Sutherland exhibition on at the moment.

Somewhat different landscapes to David Hockney's :)

ETA: And entrance was by donation, not bloody ?15 :))

[Bluerevolution]

It was like looking at dry paint.

[Ladygooner]

They are not showing any Hockney tickets as available on line but if you phone up you can get tickets quite easily. Anyone been to the Lucien Freud or Picasso exhibitions yet?

[Sue]

Bluerevolution Wrote:

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> It was like looking at dry paint.

xxxxxx

Watching dry paint?

:))

[citizenED]

Went to the Hockney last Thursday. Very impressive. Too much work to be honest; it could have done with a serious edit. However, amid all that vibrant colour, expressive handling and luxurious paint, the best things were the smaller charcoal drawings. Wow, the man can draw.

[Mick Mac]

?15 seems pretty cheap to me.

[Sue]

Mick Mac Wrote:

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> ?15 seems pretty cheap to me.

xxxxxxx

Presumably that's because you're not living on a pension or otherwise unwaged.

[Mick Mac]

No Sue, it's based upon the quality of what you get for your money. Whilst I feel for peoples personal circumstances these are never going to be the overriding factor in setting a price for a major exhibition, which they could easily have priced significantly higher, but instead the RA have set a price that is within reach of as many people as possible. Surely.

[Sue]

I wasn't referring to the value or otherwise of the ticket price, I was referring to your statement that it "seems pretty cheap."

I meant, to a lot of people including myself, ?15 isn't "cheap", regardless of how great value for money it might be.

If I misunderstood what you meant, then apologies.

[Townleygreen]

Brian Sewell also thought that the cost of a ticket was way too steep

[Mick Mac]

Sue - I dont think its possible to say something is cheap without taking into account what you are getting in return. To me cheap means inexpensive, and value for money. And having been there last night I thought it was excellent value for money, therefore cheap.

I think Brian Sewell is complaining more about a charity charging for entry. But who knows he just seems to want to have a general whinge about the whole exhibition.

This exhibition is at the Royal Academy because it will bring in a multitude of punters and, with the outrageous admission price of ?14, mightily increase the profits of the grand old whore of Piccadilly, masquerading as a charity.

In old age [Hockney is 74] he has acquired a clumsy bravura and he strokes, stabs and dabs the canvas with seeming confidence, but in truth much of this is the stuff of habitual gesture, of industry, repetitive, for he knows no other way of covering such an acreage of canvas. He is surrounded by sycophants, none of whom has the honesty to tell him what he needs to know - that he has fallen far from the saturated brilliance of his last brief fling with quality, the Grand Canyon drawings and paintings of 1998 or so, one of which acts as a benchmark in the scene-setting first room of the exhibition; no one has warned him that in dogged repetition what fire he once had has become a thing of ash and ember; and no one has dared suggest that though all the cocksure recent stuff dashed off for the exhibition works well as braggadocio, it is ultimately dull.

Indeed, half these pictures are fit only for the railings of Green Park, across the way from the Royal Academy, and would never be accepted for the Summer Exhibition were they sent in under pseudonyms.

As for Hockney's rivalry with his master, Claude, this is sickening impertinence, contemptible.

Hockney is not another Turner expressing, in high seriousness, his debt to the old master; Hockney is not another Picasso teasing Vel?zquez and Delacroix with not quite enough wit; here Hockney is a vulgar prankster, trivialising not only a painting that he is incapable of understanding and could never execute, but in involving him in the various parodies, demeaning Picasso too

[????]

*coughs, holds hand up and whispers

I don't think Hockney's that great either

[Mick Mac]

You and Brian Sewell should go for a beer together.

[????]

He's not my type

[maxxi]

I think some of it looks like a post-modern Pissarro tribute act...

http://img.artknowledgenews.com/files2007/DavidHockneyWoldgateWoods.jpg

No?

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/57856000/jpg/_57856838_hock10.jpg

Sure?

[Sue]

Probably a designer dress at ?5k or whatever may be considered "value for money" by some people.

That doesn't make it "cheap".

To say ?15 is "cheap" is coming from the perspective of somebody who isn't on a very small income.

I run music gigs, and we give a 33% discount to people who are unwaged, even though we generally have to pay the musicians a lot of money.

It would be nice if galleries did the same. Some of them do.