Hockney, Piero della Francesca and the attentive gaze

London,

In his latest book, See what you’re missing. The world seen through artWill Gompertz was chatting with David Hockney about his constant exploration of ways of seeing nature, which is his permanent source of inspiration (it is known that he has used photographs, stage sets, collages, filming of rural roads, iPads…) and he reflected on his usual look towards masters of the past: Matisse, Gainsborough, Fra Angelico, Hopper… and also Piero della Francesca. He remembered the one in Sansepolcro when contemplating Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)which in 2018 became the most expensive work by a living author sold at auction, although that does not matter now: its division of space and time could be related to those of The flagellation of Christ from Italian, dated around 1455.

But it is not the only composition by this painter that the British artist has been attracted to: the National Gallery in London is exhibiting, as part of its second centenary programme, two of his paintings that incorporate reproductions of The Baptism of Christprecisely part of the collection of the museum now headed by Gabriele Finaldi and a piece that Hockney has confessed to wanting to own just to contemplate it every day for an hour. One of them is My Parents (1977), which was difficult for the artist to produce and came after two previous attempts to make a double portrait of his parents, Kenneth and Laura Hockney; after them, a version of the Baptism is reflected in a mirror, on a cart, and the other is Looking at Pictures on a Screendated the same year, in which Henry Geldzahler, a close friend of the Englishman and curator of 20th century art at the Metropolitan in New York, stares at a screen in Hockney’s own studio on which we see four images of compositions held by the National Gallery hanging, including that Della Francesca.

Beyond establishing comparisons and reflecting on the evolution of the history of painting, the purpose of this exhibition is to invite the public to appropriate Hockney’s attitude when visiting this and other museums: a slow gaze that is vital for this artist when it comes to discovering beauty in almost any environment, however mundane it may be. As Gompertz explained in the essay cited, in relation to his creations in the pandemic, Where you or I would see nothing more than a bouquet of seasonal flowers, he discovers nature in its full bloom, full of uncontainable life and resplendent colors. He has taken the time to really look, to not settle for a superficial glance, and his investment is rewarded with growth through the revelation of transcendental beauty. It takes no more to know how much you can gain by following his advice to look closely.

This exhibition is also an opportunity for this centre to reaffirm its continued role as a binder of approaches, those of artists, works and spectators, constantly put in communication in so many museums, even if unconsciously, and on certain occasions with fruitful results.

Born in Bradford, Hockney did not visit London until he was eighteen; at that time, the National Gallery did not hold temporary exhibitions, but he began to go there often while studying. His favourites were already Fra Angelico, Piero, Vermeer and Van Gogh and The Baptism of Christ He was impressed from the start; he had previously known the reproductions, but standing in front of the originals gave him a completely different experience. This devotion to the Trafalgar Square museum is now, in a way, rewarded by this visual conversation between centuries that serves as a reminder of the pleasures and benefits that come from such attentive viewing.

The Baptism of Christby the way, is the earliest surviving painting by Della Francesca, who used mathematical principles to order his design, generating a visually harmonious and timeless image. Yet it is set in a landscape familiar to its first viewers in central Italy, who were thus personally linked to this momentous episode in the New Testament, in which earth and heaven are united in the sacrament and the divine nature of Jesus is announced from on high. In these works by Hockney, too, every detail and every element is presented to us as carefully balanced and offset; symmetry and geometry matter.