LONDON — Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look marks the National Gallery’s 200th birthday by bringing one of its oldest paintings together with works by one of Britain’s most celebrated living artists. Piero della Francesca’s “The Baptism of Christ” (c. 1437–45) is flanked, triptych-style, by David Hockney’s 1977 paintings “My Parents” and “Looking At Pictures On A Screen.” The artists’ pairing points to the museum’s historic and continuing relevance in bringing art to British and international audiences — and as a resource for working artists, asserting its key role in the most current contemporary art. In the catalog’s forward, Director Gabriele Finaldi cites Hockney’s longtime love and use of the collection as inspiration behind the show: It is a “birthday message,” where people can return again and again to take “a longer look.”
Hockney’s sentiment foregrounds another role of the institution: to inspire artists. Captions explain that until the 1940s the National Gallery was reserved for artists two days a week, and from 1838 to 1869 it shared premises with the Royal Academy. A poster from Hockney’s guest slot on its Artist’s Eye exhibition series, in which contemporary artists were invited to respond to the museum’s permanent collection, demonstrates its ongoing policy to support cutting-edge art making. Emphasizing its significance even further are gushing letters from Hockney; in 1979 he told its then-Director Michael Levey, “I love the collection of the National Gallery,” and requested permission to copy and photograph details of its paintings.
We can thank Hockney for choosing Piero, whose early Renaissance religious works dabbling in the innovation of single-point perspective arguably have had less impact on the collective imagination than big-hitting names like Raphael and Leonardo (both active when perspective had reached relative maturity). Yet the artistic inspiration conveyed by this juxtaposition is convincing and compelling, and shows that art history is a continuum of development and influence. Not only does Hockney directly cite Piero’s “Baptism” in both works, incorporating it as a reproduction pasted onto the walls in the scenes, but he highlights the secondary importance of using postcards and photographs for study (reinforced by a nearby copy of the Artist’s Eye exhibition catalogue, entitled Looking at Pictures in a Book, open to a passage in which Hockney expresses the joy of owning and pondering even of a cheap reproduction of Piero).
Lead curator Susanna Avery-Quash noted in a talk that the three paintings are hung level to each other to underscore the perspectival parallels. Indeed, Piero’s treatment of space is reiterated by Hockney’s, in which simple faceted interior objects (such as the picture screen, chairs, or cabinet with tilted mirror) fulfill a similar structural function, and create the illusion of receding depth. Likewise, Piero’s rendering of figures in (now-faded) opaque tempera lends a flat, linear quality echoed visually by Hockney’s surface modeling, both in stark contrast to the oil-based sfumato that dominates later Renaissance art.
Hockney’s letters and musings are threaded throughout the show’s catalogue. Despite this slightly reverential feel, the core message of visual analysis and close looking is an apt mantra for the National Gallery, to drive home the relevance of its collections.
Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look continues at the National Gallery (Trafalgar Square, London, England) through October 27. The exhibition was curated by Susanna Avery-Quash.
