Contemplative yet joyful, The Arrival of Spring is a new exhibit at the Pace Gallery on West 25th Street which features recent prints, drawings and videos by David Hockney. All the art work in the exhibition was inspired by the gradual change from winter to spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire. Hockney spent two summers there as a teenager, working on a farm nearby. He returned to Yorkshire in 1999, after years of living in Los Angeles.
The first rooms you enter at the Pace gallery are filled with charcoal drawings Hockney did in Woldgate between January and May 2013. “They are five separate views of Woldgate, and with each one I had to wait for the changes to happen. Some were too close to the previous ones and I realised I was being impatient. I had to wait for bigger change. I thought it was an exciting thing to do. It made me look harder at what I was drawing,” noted Hockney in his artist statement.
What I found truly spectacular were the works Hockney created on his iPad. Each work, bursting with color, depicts a specific day between January 1 and May 231st 2011. While the charcoal drawings are very detailed with fine lines, with the iPad drawings Hockney took a different approach. “These were drawn knowing they would be printed a certain size. The mark making is very varied for this reason.”
The exhibit will be on view until November 1st. Don’t miss it.
New York Art Finds 