Howard Hodgkin b. 1932

M. Knoedler & Co., New York
Joshua Mack, Byram, Connecticut, 1984
Acquavella Galleries, New York

New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Howard Hodgkin: Recent Work, 1984, no.9;
Venice, XLI Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, British Pavilion, and toured to Washington D.C., The Phillips Collection; New Haven, Yale Center for British Art; Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft; and London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings, 1984-1985, no.37, p.111, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue;
New York, John Good Gallery, Recent Abstract Painting, 1986;
Nantes, Musée des Beaux Arts, British Council exhibition touring to Barcelona, Centre Cultural de la Fundacio Caixa de Pensions; Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Dublin, Trinity College, Douglas Hyde Gallery,  Howard Hodgkin: Small Paintings, 1990-1991, no.12, p.37, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue.

Marina Vaizey, 'The Intimate Room', The Sunday Times, 29th September 1985;
Jed Perl, 'Winter Notebook: Recent Abstract Painting', New Criterion, April 1986, pp.57-58;
Andrew Graham-Dixon, Howard Hodgkin, Thames and Hudson, London, 1994, p.38, illustrated in colour;
Michael Auping, John Elderfield, Susan Sontag with a catalogue raisonné by Marla Price, Howard Hodgkin Paintings, Thames & Hudson, London, 1995, no.188, p.182, illustrated.

It is frequently assumed that Hodgkin’s art stands outside the main tradition of post-war art, is neither abstraction nor figuration, is a peculiarly British art, and in many ways this view is correct. However, this is a simplification which does little service to the art itself.

Whilst the artist has famously stated that he is ‘a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations.’ (quoted in Andrew Graham-Dixon, Howard Hodgkin, London, 2001, p.7), this in itself flatters to tell us something about his paintings. What Hodgkin’s art achieves is a synthesis of subject and symbol, forming images that hint at a theme, yet, like a page of text in a novel, provides the raw materials with which the viewer constructs his own reading of the painting.

Hodgkin’s apparently descriptive titles aid but also beguile this process. The title of the present work, Passion, tells us enough to begin the process of reading the image, the strong colouring immediately throwing up a variety of personal references for the viewer. This initial reading of both image and title is clear so far. However, it is here where the next stage begins, taking this overtly simple format, and one which the artist frequently uses as a basic form, to make the painting an image which becomes the representational picture of an emotional situation. In this, Hodgkin’s painting can be seen to have a Proustian quality, the careful and considered simplicity of the image providing the trigger to our own memories and thoughts.