Howard Hodgkin THE MARK OF COLOR by Jennifer Samet

There’s something impossible and almost greedy about Howard Hodgkin’s paintings -- the way his marks, dashes and curves of viscous paint on wood create dynamic, emotionally resonant objects. In the clear white space of Gagosian Gallery, these boldly colored, widely brushed paintings glow and overwhelm; they exceed their space.

And, in fact, Hodgkin is an artist who brought painting forward from an era of sculpture and installation, by treating the whole picture -- the frame included -- as one experience. As an artist, he embodies this subtle space of transition. Hodgkin has had an impressive career -- he won the Turner prize in 1985 and was the subject of a Metropolitan Museum retrospective in 1995 -- but he’s also a solo traveler in the art world.
The exhibition includes 21 paintings, made over the last 10 years. Although Hodgkin’s paintings look spontaneous and rapidly made, many are considered or worked over for years. They vary in scale from 10 x 13 inches to 80 x 105 inches. All are painted on wood, most with frames that turn them into three-dimensional objects. Moving through the gallery, we meet and re-visit themes and types of marks, which recur on differently sized panels, with varying colors and moods evoked.
On one wall near the front of the gallery are three paintings with a window motif: broad marks that form a loose rectangle or frame atop the actual frame of the painting, and more transparent strokes of color within, suggesting a landscape in the distance. They test the possibilities of creating illusionistic space and a host of natural associations with that most basic of means -- the mark of color.
In Early Morning (2010-11), the rectangle is outlined with umber, inside of which is rich, clear blue. On the same wall is Knightsbridge (2009-11), larger and more three-dimensional with its molded white frame. It has the same window format, but here, a blue becomes the frame, while deep, drippy, loose strokes of red and green form the “landscape,” calling up very different sentiments. Opposite these paintings is the small but richly condensed Dark Evening (2011), with short daubs of blue-white paint becoming the window frame into a nocturnal space in the distance -- suggesting the sea, rain, an encompassing dampness.
Around the corner is the mid-size painting Flag, where black strokes outline and are partially submerged by a “rainbow” of red, orange and green. Here the central motif floats to the foreground, instead of vice-versa. It echoes some of the marks in the painting that greeted us at the entrance -- the diptych Blood -- where red, green and black marks meld and interlock against the white surface, and where Hodgkin dispenses with the frame.
At one of the end are the two largest pieces, part of a four-painting series titled with lines from the American folk song Home, Home on the Range. Painted on a blond, unframed wood panel, And the Skies Art Not Cloudy All Day is the most provocative and curious, comprised only of green marks -- punctuating the surface, clustered at the top, and becoming sparse to empty at the bottom.
It succeeds mostly as part of the group: contextualizing his goals and the range of his experimentation. Hodgkin simultaneously references the heroic scale of Abstract Expressionism and the panoramas of the Hudson River School, and is determined to show that emotive range, and the creation of space on the picture plane, is not dependent on spectacle.


Please continue reading here: Art worlds leading online magazine and Hodgkin THE MARK OF COLOR also Decorative Art online