David Hockney at LACMA

Yesterday we saw a brief film at LACMA that chronicled David Hockney’s work in recent years. While Hockney is famously associated with Los Angeles, he is from England, and felt the need to return home. The film was about this journey home, and the work that came out of this period.

The film was a fascinating look at arguably one of the most famous living artists, and one of my personal all-time favorite artists. When he returned to England, and left the warm weather and blue skies of Los Angeles behind, he was inspired by the nuances of weather and landscape that we don’t experience in Los Angeles – foggy, misty mornings, grey skies, and the rolling hills of the countryside. He began a series of landscape paintings, and this turned out to be one of the most prolific times of his career.

It was fascinating to see Hockney go through periods of rejecting technology, and then embracing it. He has, throughout his career, used photography as a medium in various forms, but when he began this series of landscapes, he had rejected photography, stating that he was tired of looking through a hole at the world – that painting captures something that photography cannot.

While I agree with these sentiments, photography soon became important to him once again, as he embarked on the largest painting of his career, to be installed at the Royal Academy in London. This massive landscape painting was composed of fifty individual canvases, the total composition measuring 15 x 40 feet, and the only way he could see this large painting during various stages of completion was through the use of photography and technology on his computer.

After the film, we had the rare experience of being addressed by Mr. Hockney himself, which was a welcome surprise. Hockney received a standing ovation from the crowd, and proceeded to tell us what he was working on since the film, which documented the period of 2004-2007. Interestingly, technology has once again come to the forefront of his art, as he is enjoying drawing with a new medium – his iPad. We had the unique experience of seeing what Hockney was working on today, via his iPad, presented by him and in his own words. He has recently become fascinated by the process of drawing on his iPad, as the drawing can be documented, and then played back, so one can see the process from beginning to end.

It was inspiring to see that Hockney, who is 70+ years old, remains curious. His process is continually evolving, and he is continually making work. It was wonderful to see that he is embracing new technologies, in ways that I have been hesitant to do, as I am an oil painter, and oil painting largely predates current technology by hundreds of years. I learned from him that one can embrace new technology and remain true to self and one’s art. And one can always stay curious.

Downtown Los Angeles

It is almost as if an apocalyptic event happened in downtown, not so long ago, but it’s over now, and people are finally coming out of hiding to greet the sun. The street population is thin, but the infrastructure is there--wide sidewalks, stately buildings, and a steep one-block trolley ride--all signs of a once-bustling downtown. One can imagine the Los Angeles of the ‘20s and ‘30s, like many American cities of the time, as a vibrant place filled with energy.

But Los Angeles is not any American city. In fact, I have never been to another city like Los Angeles. With the arrival of the automobile, and the expansive spider-web of freeways that followed, the region has become a vast metropolis built on the low-density model. Skyscrapers do dot the landscape, but they share it with single-family homes with yards and pools, shopping malls and strip malls. Even the Santa Monica Mountains bisect Los Angeles. This construction of freeways and tract housing left downtown nearly abandoned.

Downtown is being reborn, and it is once again a vital and growing part of the city. Downtown is now one of the most important cultural centers in Los Angeles, home to the MOCA, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a booming gallery district. In 2004, Galley Row was born.

Art Walk, an event in downtown that happens every month, brings thousands of Los Angelenos to Downtown, so many people that the pedestrian scene almost feels like New York. It is an exciting event, and the artistic energy is almost palpable. As the low-density model becomes less popular, and more people and artists move into the newly converted loft spaces, downtown may once again be the beating heart of this vast landscape.