For a few months, David Hock­ney was the most expen­sive artist in the world, after his mas­ter­work Por­trait of an Artist (Pool with Two Fig­ures) sold at auc­tion for $90 mil­lion in Novem­ber 2018. (He was out­sold last May by Jeff Koons, who set the pre­vi­ous record in 2013.) The sale says all kinds of things about the state of the art mar­ket, but Hock­ney has always been dri­ven by a need to make things, not to prof­it, a com­pul­sion as relent­less as that of one of his heroes, Vin­cent van Gogh.

A Por­trait of an Artist’s cre­ation, told in the 1974 film A Big­ger Splash, is the sto­ry of a labor of love. Hock­ney paint­ed and repaint­ed and repaint­ed, giv­ing up once then start­ing over again, work­ing with a very van Gogh-like inten­si­ty. Oth­er­wise the influ­ence may not be obvi­ous from his most famous, and most expen­sive, can­vas. After his “L.A. swim­ming pool peri­od,” how­ev­er, Hock­ney moved on to oth­er sub­jects and oth­er media.

In the late 90s, he returned to the York­shire of his boy­hood when his moth­er became ill. He took up plein air land­scapes paint­ing in oils and water­col­ors. Hock­ney describes this tran­si­tion in a March 2019 inter­view above from the Van Gogh Muse­um. In part, he says, he want­ed to answer a chal­lenge. “I knew land­scape was seen as some­thing you couldn’t do today,” he says. “And I thought, ‘why?’ Because the landscape’s become so bor­ing? It’s not the land­scape that’s become bor­ing, it’s the depic­tions of it that have become bor­ing. You can’t be bored of nature, can you?”

You also can­not become bored of van Gogh. He knew, Hock­ney says, how to “real­ly look. He saw very clear­ly. I mean, very, very clear­ly.” Van Gogh expressed the clar­i­ty of his vision in lucid, lyri­cal prose. Hock­ney begins the short inter­view above with a quote from a Decem­ber 1882 van Gogh let­ter: “Some­times I long so much to do land­scape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh one­self, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expres­sion and a soul.” The pas­sage gets a know­ing nod from Hock­ney, who has had much more to say on this theme late­ly.

Both van Gogh and Hock­ney describe their expe­ri­ences with land­scape paint­ing as a kind of inten­sive art ther­a­py. Hock­ney, now sequestered in Nor­mandy while France is in lock­down, has sug­gest­ed that oth­ers should do the same dur­ing this time, as a way of reliev­ing stress and appre­ci­at­ing their place in nature. Peo­ple should put away their cam­eras (and, by def­i­n­i­tion, their phones). “I would sug­gest peo­ple could draw at this time,” he says, “Ques­tion every­thing and do not think about pho­tog­ra­phy. I would sug­gest they real­ly look hard at some­thing and think about what they are real­ly see­ing.”

Hock­ney has come away from his time paint­ing nature with some par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigu­ing insights. “In a way,” he says above, “nature doesn’t real­ly have per­spec­tive. I’ve noticed trees don’t fol­low the rules of per­spec­tive…. Per­spec­tive is a stran­gling, I think. It’s not real­ly mak­ing space, it’s stran­gling space.” It’s an obser­va­tion we can apply to rigid ways of see­ing at real­i­ty, none of which seem to make much sense any­more. We won’t all be as vision­ary or as dri­ven as van Gogh or David Hock­ney, but time spent learn­ing to “real­ly look” might be time well spent indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch as David Hock­ney Cre­ates ‘Late Novem­ber Tun­nel, 2006’

Down­load David Hockney’s Play­ful Draw­ings for the iPhone and iPad

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Not only did Andy Warhol miss out on the inter­net, but the inter­net missed out on Andy Warhol. Sure­ly, these days he would be pro­lif­i­cal­ly post­ing to his Insta­gram and YouTube from home, indulging mul­ti­ple celebri­ty and pop cul­ture obses­sions. Warhol’s Polaroid aes­thet­ic and pio­neer­ing of the self-as-brand helped cre­ate 21st cen­tu­ry online cul­ture. Maybe he was the orig­i­nal “influ­encer,” though Warhol was more of an insti­ga­tor. But he’s become too famil­iar for us to appre­ci­ate his unique­ness, sug­gest Gre­gor Muir and Fion­tán Moran, cura­tors of an exten­sive Tate Mod­ern Warhol exhib­it fea­tur­ing 100 works, which is now only acces­si­ble via the 7‑minute video tour above.

“Every­one owns Warhol” (though few own a Warhol), argue Muir and Moran. “He is one of those rare artists who tran­scends the art world, hav­ing become wide­ly known as one of America’s most famous artists, if not one of America’s most famous Amer­i­cans.

Over time, Warhol became—and still is—a big brand, which is just how he want­ed it.” Warhol showed how indi­vid­ual artists could cir­cum­vent the star-mak­ing sys­tem, cre­ate their own brand­ing, and com­man­deer the cul­ture with man­u­fac­tured fame. He “helped shape a century’s worth of pop cul­ture,” writes Luke Abra­hams at Harper’s Bazaar, “and helped launch the cult of celebri­ty.”

Whether that lega­cy deserves more praise or blame I leave to you to decide. In either case, our posthu­mous judg­ments can­not dimin­ish Warhol’s sin­gu­lar achieve­ments in graph­ic art or his rad­i­cal approach­es to film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and—through his pro­mo­tion of the Vel­vet Under­ground—music. Behind the aloof, eccen­tric per­sona is a per­son­al sto­ry the Tate exhib­it explores as well, through Warhol’s immi­grant and queer iden­ti­ty and his con­cerns with death and reli­gion. Archi­tec­tur­al Digest reports on the addi­tion­al resources the online exhib­it offers:

For vis­i­tors look­ing to dive deep­er into the exhi­bi­tion and the artist dur­ing the lock­down, there’s also the room-by-room exhi­bi­tion guide; arti­cles about Warhol, from an inves­ti­ga­tion into his rela­tion­ship with his moth­er to a per­son­al tale writ­ten by his friend Bob Colachel­lo; a pod­cast about per­sonas; and even how-to videos demon­strat­ing Warhol’s print­mak­ing process. 

Tate dig­i­tal direc­tor Hilary Knight knows there’s no sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal, which is maybe an iron­ic idea when it comes to Warhol. “We are not try­ing to repli­cate a muse­um vis­it,” Knight says, but “we can still offer a rich, deep, and inspir­ing expe­ri­ence of Tate online.” Though abbre­vi­at­ed and vir­tu­al, this deep­er dive into Warhol’s life and work does that indeed. Find more detailed on the exhi­bi­tion, and each room, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fied: Four Videos Explain His Ground­break­ing Art and Its Cul­tur­al Impact

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

Lou Reed’s Mix­tape for Andy Warhol Dis­cov­ered by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor: Fea­tures 12 Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Songs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“Who is Banksy?” asked an Art­net roundup of pos­si­ble sus­pects in 2016. One might well respond, “who cares?”—a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion Artnet’s Hen­ri Neuen­dorf answers. At least a few years ago, before some oth­er things got seri­ous­ly out of hand, the iden­ti­ty of the noto­ri­ous gueril­la street artist turned inter­na­tion­al man of mys­tery was “an obses­sion that seems to have gripped the world.”

One answer, assessed by cura­tor and street art expert Car­lo McCormick, was arrived at through the use of geo­graph­ic pro­fil­ing, a “sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis tech­nique used in crim­i­nol­o­gy to locate repeat offend­ers.” McCormick rates its con­clu­sion as prob­a­ble, but also finds it “scary” to bend such meth­ods to such ends, an anx­i­ety res­o­nant with con­cerns over sur­veil­lance tech used to track COVID-19 vec­tors.

Anoth­er ques­tion is whether it mat­ters who Banksy is. “The improb­a­bly ornate fic­tion is always going to be more com­pelling than the sim­ple mun­dane truth.” Do we real­ly need to ruin the illu­sion? If those who want to remain anony­mous can be tracked with algorithms—while the rest of us vol­un­teer our per­son­al data dai­ly in a cul­ture of com­pet­i­tive oversharing—is there any room left for pri­va­cy? Now that we’re trapped inside for days on end with fam­i­lies, room­mates, part­ners, pets, maybe our only per­son­al space is in the loo (where we’re still inclined to bring our phones).

 

View this post on Insta­gram

 

. . My wife hates it when I work from home.

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy) on Apr 15, 2020 at 10:45am PDT

Banksy’s lat­est work, post­ed on Insta­gram, plays with all of these themes and shows he doesn’t have a prob­lem defac­ing his own prop­er­ty, and shar­ing an inti­mate por­trait with his mil­lions of fol­low­ers. Hell, it’s almost a self­ie, minus the preen­ing, duck-faced self.

As Daria Harp­er writes at Art­sy:

The noto­ri­ous­ly elu­sive street artist Banksy debuted his lat­est work in a rather pecu­liar place: his bath­room. With much of the world on lock­down due to the COVID-19 cri­sis, artists like Banksy have been forced to get inno­v­a­tive with their artis­tic prac­tices. The artist post­ed pho­tos of the new art­work on his Insta­gram page yes­ter­day with the cap­tion: “My wife hates it when I work from home.”

Is this real­ly Banksy work­ing from home? (“One par­tic­u­lar­ly baf­fled com­menter,” notes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “wrote: ‘You are one of the world’s most famous artists… and THAT’S YOUR shit­ty lit­tle BATHROOM????’”)

Is there real­ly a Mrs. Banksy? Lit­tle Banksies run­ning around the yard, wear­ing coro­n­avirus face­masks and hood­ies? Is he on the verge of out­ing him­self? At least we know he’s still got toi­let paper.

Maybe you find this tan­ta­liz­ing win­dow on the artist’s inner sanc­tum cred­i­ble evi­dence of his mun­dane real life. Maybe the sig­na­ture rats destroy­ing his crap­per are his cab­in-fever dream. Or maybe, as usu­al, he’s just tak­ing the piss with this cre­ative instal­la­tion. We await com­ment from Mrs. Banksy.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

Banksy Paints a Grim Hol­i­day Mur­al: Season’s Greet­ings to All

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness