He sits slumped in an uncomfortable black leather chair designed by Le Corbusier, lanky, unkempt, and fidgeting. His tweed suit seems absently tailored, presumably on purpose. There is evidence of his bygone, more outwardly eccentric days, of his bleached blonde hair, obtuse black glasses, and striped shirts, but only in his subtle, skinny, patterned tie. Has David Hockney lost his edge? Or is it just that Toronto doesn’t really know who he is?
The appearance of the renowned British artist, photographer, stage designer, and writer at the ROM’s Institute for Contemporary Culture last night was in support of Fresh Flowers, an exhibition featuring over 400 “drawings” Hockney has created using an app called Brushes on his iPhone and iPad. The images are constantly refreshed as Hockney emails them directly to the devices on display at the show. This being only the second stop for Fresh Flowers after its debut in Paris, there’s a sense that the show is being presented with the ambition of establishing Toronto as a bigger player in the global art world. Given star power like Hockney’s, you’d think this might not be too grand an ambition—if anyone cared. One attendee who sat near me during the Q&A remarked loudly that “[the ROM] certainly didn’t get the turn out they’d hoped for.”
Has the ROM bitten off more than it can chew? Or maybe it’s simply ordered the wrong meal. The ICC’s mandate is to present “exhibitions and special events that stimulate dialogue on important cultural, social, and political issues around the world.” A show by a well-established British artist that displays images he painted on his iPhone or iPad seems to fall short of these critical hopes. It doesn’t help that these images of Hockney’s have been in circulation for a few years already, and been much commented on by the likes of Lawrence Weschler and The Atlantic. And not much is added to the experience of viewing them when they’re displayed on the very devices on which we’ve already seen them at home.
Too bad we’re not given much of a reason to find these iPhone and iPad drawings of flowers and landscapes anything more than an interesting novelty. They do raise some interesting questions, such as, considering their ephemeral nature, how do we establish their worth? Does their value or significance come only by way of their association with Hockney himself? What techniques can we use when accounting for their provenance and preservation? How can one “own” an iPad drawing when Hockney insists its luminosity is lost when it’s printed out? What elements of the iPad are lost when it becomes an object of display and ornament? An attempt at exploring these issues, whether through last evening’s Q&A, by the exhibition’s accompanying texts, or some critical commentary, would’ve given the show a relevance and purpose that it otherwise lacks.
Then again, maybe the exhibition’s superficiality is intended. The cell phone of Fresh Flowers’ curator, Charlie Scheip, rang not once, but three times during the Q&A with Hockney, suggesting that he didn’t know how to turn it to silent. One wonders how a man so technologically inept can properly curate a show revolving around technology in the first place?
Ultimately, though, there’s Hockney. And the cool thing about him is that he doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about him or the exhibition. He made it simple for the Q&A attendees: he’s just going to continue smoking his cigarettes and sending his friends morning iPad drawings from his Yorkshire home, while people like me get flustered trying to deconstruct it all.
Fresh Flowers runs at the ROM until January 1, 2012, accompanied by a bevy of panel discussions, art classes, and artist demonstrations.
Download the Brushes app here.
