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Lot Essay
‘Alone in my studio, working on my pictures, more than anything, I long to share my feelings’ (Howard Hodgkin)
Held in the same private collection since 2005, In Venice (1999-2005) is a lustrous exemplar of Howard Hodgkin’s intimate painterly language. It centres on a sequence of electrifying, richly veined brushstrokes. Swathes of incandescent orange, blood red, emerald green and dusky black march diagonally across a central panel. This central accretion of paint is enclosed by two frame-like surrounds, painted in vivid ultramarine. Hodgkin’s strokes manifest the bristles of his paintbrushes, while the paint’s surface froths and congeals as if in motion. Numerous details are hidden in this apparently simple picture. Orbs of impasto pulsate beneath the shadowy colours to the right. Hodgkin’s use of a wooden base rather than canvas allows the paint to leap off the solid surface. The woodgrain is sometimes visible, underscoring the work’s presence as a painted object. The transcendence of Hodgkin’s resonant colours contrasts with the wood’s physicality. This fusion of the ineffable with the material harks back to the gold-ground paintings of 14th-century central Italy, which translated heavenly stories onto earthy wooden panels.
Venice held a particularly special place in Hodgkin’s inner landscape. It was the site of a career triumph—his British Pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale—and he returned repeatedly in the years that followed. Like Turner before him, he was drawn to the floating city’s liquidity and brilliant light, where the searing Adriatic sun meets the rippling water. Although In Venice superficially resembles the action painting of the post-war Abstract Expressionists, Hodgkin viewed himself as a painter of memory and emotion. He captured instances of heightened feeling, akin to the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s spots of time. As he once said: ‘I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional states’ (H. Hodgkin quoted in E. Juncosa (ed.), Writers on Howard Hodgkin, London 2006, p. 104). In Venice eloquently translates Hodgkin’s reminiscences of the otherworldly Italian city into a gem-like, universal work of art.
In Venice belongs to a crucial phase in Hodgkin’s artistic development. In the 1990s, the already celebrated painter began to radically simplify the forms he placed on his surfaces, while at the same time wielding his brush with renewed urgency and vigour. ‘During the past five years or so,’ wrote David Anfam in 2003, ‘Howard Hodgkin’s art has appeared to change more momentously than in perhaps any other phase since the 1970s. A new looseness, daring and ostensible spontaneity have entered his pictorial arena’ (D. Anfam quoted in M. Francis and E. Wingate (eds.), Howard Hodgkin, New York and Los Angeles 2003, p. 7). During this period, Hodgkin’s mark-making was contemplative and highly intentional. In Venice was executed over a period of seven years, yet despite the work’s lengthy gestation period, Hodgkin’s strokes demonstrate a rush of swiftness, as if the colours have exploded across the picture plane instantaneously.
In Venice exists in two documented versions, a rarity in Hodgkin’s oeuvre. The first version set the central maelstrom of colour within a border of blazing red and orange. For the final version Hodgkin enlarged the work with a second wooden surround, and painted this new frame in broad brushstrokes of vivid, oceanic blue. ‘The more evanescent the emotion I want to convey,’ said Hodgkin, ‘the thicker the panel, the heavier the framing, the more elaborate the border, so that this delicate thing will remain protected and intact’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in P. Kinmonth, ‘Howard Hodgkin’, Vogue, June 1984). In Venice preserves the beauty and ardour of a fleeting moment.
Held in the same private collection since 2005, In Venice (1999-2005) is a lustrous exemplar of Howard Hodgkin’s intimate painterly language. It centres on a sequence of electrifying, richly veined brushstrokes. Swathes of incandescent orange, blood red, emerald green and dusky black march diagonally across a central panel. This central accretion of paint is enclosed by two frame-like surrounds, painted in vivid ultramarine. Hodgkin’s strokes manifest the bristles of his paintbrushes, while the paint’s surface froths and congeals as if in motion. Numerous details are hidden in this apparently simple picture. Orbs of impasto pulsate beneath the shadowy colours to the right. Hodgkin’s use of a wooden base rather than canvas allows the paint to leap off the solid surface. The woodgrain is sometimes visible, underscoring the work’s presence as a painted object. The transcendence of Hodgkin’s resonant colours contrasts with the wood’s physicality. This fusion of the ineffable with the material harks back to the gold-ground paintings of 14th-century central Italy, which translated heavenly stories onto earthy wooden panels.
Venice held a particularly special place in Hodgkin’s inner landscape. It was the site of a career triumph—his British Pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale—and he returned repeatedly in the years that followed. Like Turner before him, he was drawn to the floating city’s liquidity and brilliant light, where the searing Adriatic sun meets the rippling water. Although In Venice superficially resembles the action painting of the post-war Abstract Expressionists, Hodgkin viewed himself as a painter of memory and emotion. He captured instances of heightened feeling, akin to the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s spots of time. As he once said: ‘I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional states’ (H. Hodgkin quoted in E. Juncosa (ed.), Writers on Howard Hodgkin, London 2006, p. 104). In Venice eloquently translates Hodgkin’s reminiscences of the otherworldly Italian city into a gem-like, universal work of art.
In Venice belongs to a crucial phase in Hodgkin’s artistic development. In the 1990s, the already celebrated painter began to radically simplify the forms he placed on his surfaces, while at the same time wielding his brush with renewed urgency and vigour. ‘During the past five years or so,’ wrote David Anfam in 2003, ‘Howard Hodgkin’s art has appeared to change more momentously than in perhaps any other phase since the 1970s. A new looseness, daring and ostensible spontaneity have entered his pictorial arena’ (D. Anfam quoted in M. Francis and E. Wingate (eds.), Howard Hodgkin, New York and Los Angeles 2003, p. 7). During this period, Hodgkin’s mark-making was contemplative and highly intentional. In Venice was executed over a period of seven years, yet despite the work’s lengthy gestation period, Hodgkin’s strokes demonstrate a rush of swiftness, as if the colours have exploded across the picture plane instantaneously.
In Venice exists in two documented versions, a rarity in Hodgkin’s oeuvre. The first version set the central maelstrom of colour within a border of blazing red and orange. For the final version Hodgkin enlarged the work with a second wooden surround, and painted this new frame in broad brushstrokes of vivid, oceanic blue. ‘The more evanescent the emotion I want to convey,’ said Hodgkin, ‘the thicker the panel, the heavier the framing, the more elaborate the border, so that this delicate thing will remain protected and intact’ (H. Hodgkin, quoted in P. Kinmonth, ‘Howard Hodgkin’, Vogue, June 1984). In Venice preserves the beauty and ardour of a fleeting moment.