Tag: david hockney

Larry Stanton

The Portrait Work of Larry Stanton

Born in June of 1947 in Rockville Center on the south shore of Long Island, Larry Stanton was a portrait painter who was lived and worked  in Manhattan, New York. His father, a graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School of Music, moved his family in 1948 to a dairy farm in New York’s Catskill Mountains to provide a country environment for the family and a source of income for his work as a freelance music arranger. Due to the foundering of both the farm and his musical aspirations, Stanton’s father often experienced periods of frustration and temper which affected the family. However, despite the familial tensions, both he and Stanton’s mother encouraged and supported Stanton’s early artwork. 

After graduating high school, Larry Stanton studied on an art scholarship at New York City’s Cooper Union for one semester. He worked in the following months at various odd jobs including mailrooms and an ice cream parlor. During this period, Stanton embraced his gay identity and gained some notoriety in New York City’s gay community. He became acquainted with banker Arthur Lambert in the summer of 1967 and the two were immediately drawn to each other. Upon returning from a trip with Lambert to London, Stanton followed him in the fall of that year to Los Angeles, where Stanton took a new financial position. 

In February of 1968, Stanton enrolled in Los Angeles’s Art Center College of Design where he received his first formal training in drawing and painting. After applying himself intensely to his studies, he became convinced it was possible to make a career in art. During his time at the college, Stanton met many people who would become lifelong friends, including Alice Sulit, an art student from the Philippines, and English painter David Hockney. In the fall of 1968, Stanton traveled with Lambert to Hockney’s residence in London where he met another major influence on his life, Henry Geldzahler, the Curator of Contemporary Art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Upon the return to New York, Larry Stanton moved into a Manhattan rent-controlled apartment owned by his father, who was relocating to retire in Florida; Lambert returned to his financial work in California. With a scholarship from the New School, Stanton began  to study printmaking and drawing; his studies were further supported by a grant for printmaking from the Tiffany Foundation. In January of 1970, Stanton had his first exhibition of drawings at New York City’s Gotham Gallery. This show was followed by a period of travel, accompanied sometimes by Henry Geldzabler, to Italy, Tunisia and sub-Saharan Africa. Upon his return, Stanton found a basement studio space in the Italian section of Greenwich Village where he could continue his painting. 

In early 1972, Arthur Lambert moved back to New York and noticed a change in Stanton. Stanton had begun drinking alcohol more frequently and had become less committed to painting. He began to pursue filmmaking and produced a few films on David Hockney. Stanton also began bringing back to his place young men he met on his travels around the city. By late 1977, he was not socializing as much and complained of lingering feelings of anxiety. Stanton’s mother, with whom he had a close bond, succumbed from cancer in 1979 after a three year struggle. The loss of this bond, intensified by the depressive effects of his developed alcoholism, resulted in Stanton having a psychological collapse for which he needed hospitalization.

From this trauma, Larry Stanton emerged a sober, non-smoking artist with an intense commitment to his art. Stanton moved his studio to a larger location nearer his apartment which enabled him to work on larger canvases. By 1983, his studio was attracting young writers and artists who admired his work and sought his company. In his apartment and studio, Stanton created a series of portraits in charcoal, oil crayon, pencil, and pen, as well as paint, drawing friends, familial relations, and people he met while wandering the streets of New York. Many of the people who posed for him would later die from the AIDS epidemic.

Holly Solomon, a prominent art dealer, commissioned two portraits, one of herself and one of her son. She later placed two of Stanton’s oversized portraits in a group show at her Soho gallery. Following this show, Stanton’s work was given an exhibition at the Aaron Berman Gallery in Brooklyn. In 1984, his work was included in a major group exhibition at the Queens, New York, city-owned exhibition space, PS1, which focused on emerging new artists. Stanton’s work was also presented in a group exhibition at the East Village’s Magic Gallery. With these shows, his work was gaining increased attention as he developed a consistent quality and a mature personal style. 

Beginning in February of 1984, Larry Stanton began to have health problems, initially shingles and later periodic unpleasant skin rashes. After numerous tests, the doctors assured there were no signs of immunity problems; there were no specific AIDS testing at this time. In August, Stanton developed a persistent and sore throat and was diagnosed with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a fatal fungal infection of the lungs and major cause of death for people with HIV/AIDS. Larry Stanton died, at the age of thirty-seven, of AIDS-related illness on October 18th of 1984. 

After Larry Stanton’s  death, a collection of his work was shown at New York City’s Charles Cowles Gallery in 1987. From May through July of 2021, the Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery in the Chelsea area of New York City held “It Doesn’t Thunder Every Day”, an exhibition of twenty works on paper by Stanton that captured the faces of a generation of people lost in the early stages of the AIDS epidemic. Larry Stanton’s work is housed in the permanent collection of New York City’s  Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

Notes: A full collection of Larry Stanton’s paintings and drawings, as well as personal tributes and remembrances by friends such as Arthur Lambert,  Henry Geldzahler and David Hockney, can be found at: http://www.larrystanton.net

A recent collection of poems by gay poet Winthrop Smith entitled “Take Down Portraits: Drawings and Portraits by Larry Stanton” was published by Chiron Review Press. Bringing the portraits back to life, Smith’s poems imagine the encounters between Stanton and his sitters, which reconstruct the experience of New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Larry Stanton”, circa 1968

Second Insert Image: Larry Stanton, “Man in Jockstrap”, circa Early 1970s, Pencil on Paper, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Arry Stanton in His Village Basement Studio”, circa 1981

Fourth Insert Image: Larry Stanton, “Joey”, 1975, Pencil on Paper, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “larry Stanton, Fire Island Pines”, circa 1980

David Hockney

David Hockney, “Jungle Boy”, 1964, Etching and Aquatint Printed in Colors, Printed on Mould-Made Paper, Published by Associated American Artists

This etching is from a formative part of David Hockney’s life: the years from 1961 to 1964, That period spans part of his time at the Royal College of Art, where he was a student form 1959 to 1962; his first years as an independent London artist; and a period in which his printmaking focused entirely on etching. During this time, Hockney had his first visit to the United States, funded by an art prize for one of his prints. It was also during this period that Hockney created his renowned “A Rake’s Progress” series of etchings after his return to London.

David Hockney’s early print work are examples of his raw talent and ability to transform the artistic medium he works with. He began making prints as a student in 1961 because he could not afford paint supplies. He mastered the medium and made prints with abandon, using the medium to reflect upon his life as a young art student in London at that time, creating a portrait of the artist as a young man.

“I started doing graphic work in 1961 because I’d run out of money and I couldn’t buy any paint, and in the graphic department they gave you the materials for free. So I started etching, and the first I did was Myself and My Heroes. My heroes were Walt Whitman and Gandhi. There was a little quote from each of them, but for myself I couldn’t find anything – I hadn’t made any quotes – so it just said, ‘I am twenty-three years old and wear glasses,’ the only interesting thing I could think to say about myself.” -David Hockney, 1976

David Hockney

David Hockney, “Man In Shower in Beverly Hills”, 1964, Acrylic on Canvas, 166.4 x 166.4 cm

Hockney formed his first impressions of Los Angeles from books and magazines he read before he visited the city. While still in London in 1963, he painted an invented shower scene, “Domestic Scene, Los Angeles”, now in a private collection, which included an image of two men taken from the homoerotic American magazine ‘Physique Pictorial’.

When Hockney went to Los Angeles six months later, he was particularly fascinated by the use of water for irrigation and recreation in the semi-arid environment. He delighted in experimenting with various methods of depicting drops and sprays of water, attracted by the ‘idea of painting moving water in a very slow and careful manne. Hockney painted swimming pools and lawn sprinklers, but was equally intrigued by showers.

“Americans take showers all the time … For an artist the interest of showers is obvious: the whole body is always in view and in movement, usually gracefully, as the bather is caressing his own body. There is also a three-hundred-year tradition of the bather as a subject in painting. Beverly Hills houses seemed full of showers of all shapes and sizes … They all seemed to me to have elements of luxury.” – David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney, “Pearblossom Hwy. 11- 18th April 1986, #2″, Chromogenic Print, J. Paul Getty Museum

“Pearblossom Highway (the painting) shows a crossroads in a very wide open space, which you only get a sense of in the western United States… . [The] picture was not just about a crossroads, but about us driving around. I’d had three days of driving and being the passenger. The driver and the passenger see the road in different ways. When you drive you read all the road signs, but when you’re the passenger, you don’t, you can decide to look where you want. And the picture dealt with that: on the right-hand side of the road it’s as if you’re the driver, reading traffic signs to tell you what to do and so on, and on the left-hand side it’s as if you’re a passenger going along the road more slowly, looking all around. So the picture is about driving without the car being in it.”     – David Hockney

Thus David Hockney described the circumstances leading to the creation of this photocollage of the scenic Pearblossom Highway north of Los Angeles. His detailed collage reveals the more mundane observations of a road trip. The littered cans and bottles and the meandering line where the pavement ends and the sand begins point to the interruption of the desert landscape by the roads cutting through it and the imprint of careless travelers.

David Hockney

David Hockney’s Birthday: July 9

Septuagenarian artist David Hockney is known for a lot of things—his remarkable skills as a painter, photographer, and draughtsman, his contributions to the Pop art movement, and the open exploration in his work of gay love as early as 1961 with such works as “We Two Boys Together Clinging”. Quotes by David Hockney:

“Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form… its colour can be man-made and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well. If the water surface is almost still and there is a strong sun, then dancing lines with the colours of the spectrum appear everywhere.”

“Bohemia was against the suburbs, and now the suburbs have taken over. I mean, the anti-smoking thing is all anti-Bohemia. Bohemia is gone now. When people say, well wasn’t it amazing saying you were gay in 1960, I point out, well, I lived in Bohemia, and Bohemia is a tolerant place. You can’t have a smoke-free Bohemia. You can’t have a drug-free Bohemia. You can’t have a drink-free Bohemia. Now they’re all worried about their fucking curtains, sniffing curtains for tobacco and stuff like that.”

“Nobody’s taking any notice of the avant-garde any more. They’re finding they’ve lost their authority. They thought they would get authority by damaging the other, earlier establishment. But by doing that you damage all authority.”

“Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.”

David Hockney

David Hockney, “Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool”, 1966, Acrylic on Canvas, 152 x152 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England

“Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool” is an acrylic on canvas painting by British pop artist David Hockney completed in 1966. It depicts the rear view of a naked man climbing out of a swimming pool outside a contemporary house.

The painting depicts the communal pool of the apartment block at 1145 Larrabee Street, Hollywood, which was then the home of art dealer Nicholas Wilder. A naked Peter Schlesinger, then 18 years old, is shown climbing up and out of the pool. Hockney, in his characteristic style, simplifies and flattens the image, and the rippling surface of the water is abstracted into wavy white lines on blue, similar to a comic or an advertisement.

The figure in the painting is based on a polaroid photograph Hockney took of Schlesinger standing up against the hood of his own MG auto. In 1967, Hockney’s painting won the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, England.

David Hockney

David Hockney, “Lightning”, 1973, Lithograph and Screenprint in Colors on Wove Paper

In 1965, David Hockney worked on “A Hollywood Collection”, a suite of prints, with master printer Ken Tyler, who ran the printmaking studio Gemini Graphic Editions Limited in Los Angeles, California. Although Hockney made other prints with Gemini in the years between 1965 and 1973, “The Weather Series”, which contains the print “Lightning”, was the second major suite made there. It is in part inspired by the representation of weather in Japanese prints. This image however also suggests 18th and 19th century European depictions of landscape and weather, with overtones of the caricature style of Hogarth.

In tackling weather as a subject, David Hockney looked to 19th-century Japanese u-kioye woodblock prints by Katsushika Hokusai and impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. Both artists depicted a wide range of atmospheric and lighting conditions in serial formats—Hokusai most famously in his prints of Mount Fuji and Monet in his well-known paintings of grain stacks, and other subjects.

The “Weather Series” suite contains six prints illustrating the subjects of rain, snow, wind, mist, sun, and lightning.  Hockney’s “Snow” , in which repetitive horizontal bands of tonal gradation suggest spatial recession, is most explicitly indebted to Japanese woodcuts, while the hazy silhouettes of Hockney’s “Mist” recall Monet’s painting of poplar trees on the River Epte. Hockney’s “Wind” illustrates the serial relationship between “The Weather Series” prints, as the weather elements in the “Snow”, “Mist”, “Sun”, and “Rain” prints are shown whirling in a Los Angeles gust.