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Lot Essay
Howard Hodgkin's paintings are unique in contemporary art for their enunciation of a pictorial language that challenges the limits of representation and abstraction. Hodgkin's paintings often seek to recapture a moment of lost or fleeting time, as does Haven't We Met with its nostalgic and evocative implications.
"All Hodgkin's pictures can be thought of as the grit of some experience pearled by reflection. They begin where words fail, evocations of mood and sensation more than visual records, but descriptions indubitably of the physical as well as the emotional reality' (J. McEwen, "Introduction" in Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings, exh. cat. London 1984, p. 10).
Hodgkin's largely intimiste approach has inevitably drawn comparisions between his work and that of Vuillard, Bonnard and Matisse. However, unlike these artists Hodgkin has no qualms about departing entirely from objective reality in order to convey more powerfully the emotive power of real experience distilled through abstraction and pure color.
"All Hodgkin's pictures can be thought of as the grit of some experience pearled by reflection. They begin where words fail, evocations of mood and sensation more than visual records, but descriptions indubitably of the physical as well as the emotional reality' (J. McEwen, "Introduction" in Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings, exh. cat. London 1984, p. 10).
Hodgkin's largely intimiste approach has inevitably drawn comparisions between his work and that of Vuillard, Bonnard and Matisse. However, unlike these artists Hodgkin has no qualms about departing entirely from objective reality in order to convey more powerfully the emotive power of real experience distilled through abstraction and pure color.