Grand Rapids — Perspective Should Be Reversed, a show of David Hockney prints, is the Grand Rapids Art Museum’s major exhibition for the summer and early fall. Concluding November 2nd, it’s an astounding collection of work.
It’s the best show the GRAM has had in years, simply because Hockney’s work is so impressive, the aura of his colored visions so powerful, that it drowns out the facile attempts to inject political ideology by the curatorial staff.
The exhibition spans two floors, both of the contemporary rotating galleries, a first for the GRAM since I’ve been a patron. This shows how important the show is to the institution, with practically the entire museum, save the permanent collection, dedicated to Hockney.
After touring the first floor exhibit and remarking, “Wow, what an impressive show,” I was shocked to see it continued on the second floor. It’s a voluminous collection of Hockney’s work, spanning the entire breadth of his printmaking oeuvre, from his earliest sketch-like lithographs to more recent digital drawings from his iPad.
Printmaking isn’t what Hockney is known for. Most know him for his paintings and maybe his photography. His large-scale acrylic paintings of pools and figures in Los Angeles in the 1960s are the most notable, along with his Polaroid photo collages of similar subjects.
It’s very cool to dedicate a show to an impressive, yet lesser known, body of work. A savvy move for a smaller museum. It’s far easier to secure a massive collection of Hockney prints than his more in-demand paintings.
A landmark figure of the groundbreaking pop art movement, Hockney functions in art historical terms as a sort of British Andy Warhol. Certainly, he’s one of the most important figures in the last 100 years of British art.
Hockney is an art world mega-star. Hosting an exhibition of his work is a major achievement for the institution, one worth celebrating as a cultural milestone for West Michigan.
It makes sense to dedicate such a massive show to a truly globally important artist. Hockney’s total sales rank in the top 10 for living artists. His work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) held the record, until a few years ago, for the most money ever paid for an artwork.
Hockney’s work is colorful and almost childlike, with his mark-making often like children playing with markers. There’s a delightful contrast between the hyper-mediation of his larger than life color palette, with his deliberate imperfection.
Hockney’s landscapes are primarily concerned with perspective, the expansion of space and form beyond normal perception. Even his depictions of people often render the figures as foreground elements for the voluminous interior spaces which feel more like the true subject of the work.
The GRAM showcases this well, with a considerable amount of colored wall paint and lighting strategies employed to bring gravitas and contrast to the work. They’ve created a distinct space for the work, transcending the expected confines of a museum environment in a distinctly Hockney-esque way.
It’s a fun show to visit, whether you know a lot or very little about art. I was delighted to see it because I’ve been rather hard on the institution in the past, angered by the over the top politicking injected into their exhibitions.
I’ve excoriated the museum for only showing art about suffering rather than joy and constantly wokescolding their audience like some sort of liberal schoolmarm. I felt like the art-going public deserved more, and the institution would better serve them by simply showcasing great art and letting the audience interpret it for themselves.
The sheer aura of Hockney’s work has forced this in its own right. There are a few attempts in various splotches of long-winded wall text to throw in some political ideology, but they’re drowned out by the work itself.
Yes, Hockney is gay. This isn’t news to anyone. Frankly, it’s not even a central element of his work, beyond a few scattered portraits of young men embracing.
At no point does his work suggest anything close to the political ideologies of wokedom, with all of the exhausting debates over identity and representation.
There are a few attempts to position his work in that context by the curatorial staff, but the closest they get is a few blurbs about AIDS in a timeline of his life.
Simply put, Hockney’s work is bigger than all of that. It’s an examination of the basic capacities of human perspective, a synaesthetic embrace of blended sensory perceptions of the world. It’s not nearly so small as any contemporary ideological issues.
When the artist’s work is truly great, the museum has no choice but to let it exist on its own, without the preening and primping of curatorial wall text.
Hockney’s work most definitely cannot be limited by such attempts at categorization, at framing it within a certain perspective, because he does indeed flip such notions of perspectivization on their head, as the show’s title suggests.
This is what public museums are for, and what the majority of the museum-going public expect. They go to the museum to see great art and feel something from it, not to be pandered to or lectured.
This is a landmark exhibition for the GRAM in two senses: It’s a magnificent show from an immensely important global art figure, and it’s a show that demonstrates the true potential for the institution’s role in West Michigan.
I hope the curatorial staff take note of their success here and get out of their own way in future shows. Sadly, I won’t hold my breath.
It’s worth going to see before it closes, mostly for the art but also to support a better vision for what the museum can be—a place for great art with vision beyond the present day, not the myopic ideologies of the moment.
Bobby Mars is art director of Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
