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Hello and welcome to Kiraltane İstanbul Literature House. This evening we are joined by Edith Devaney, Curator of David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring, which is at the Sakit Sabanja Museum in Emirgan until July 29th. So hello Edith, how are you? Very well, thank you. And you're joining us from Los Angeles, is that right?
Yes, I'm in Los Angeles where it's quite early here, but that's fine. It's a beautiful day. It's always lovely weather here. Brilliant. And so you are the curator of this show, but you also work with David Hockney. So tell us a little bit about your work as a curator and on the show. Of course, yeah.
So I used to work for the Royal Academy of Arts in London on Piccadilly, the famous old institution. And I was a curator there for many, many years. And that's actually where I first David. And during COVID, David and I were talking about this work that he was producing at that time. And we put it together into an exhibition. And this was actually the last exhibition I did for the Academy.
So I curated it as a curator at the Royal Academy. And at the same time as I was putting this show together, David was persuading me to come and work for him. So I now work for David Hockney and his foundation and his business. And the office is based in Los Angeles. His home is in Los Angeles, but he travels a lot for his work. But I am here with all of the staff running everything. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. I'm going to go round circles in this, but he came to Los Angeles for the light and the sun because he wanted to imbue his pictures with that, which he did. And it wasn't until he went back to London, I think it was around 2002, to spend time there when Lucien Freud was actually painting his portrait.
And he was walking through Regent's Park every day during the spring and just realized the drama of spring, which is something in his youth that he hadn't quite noticed, which, you know, when we're young, we don't. We don't appreciate that. But, you know, this middle-aged man was kind of walking through Regent's Park and thinking, it's dramatic, it's beautiful, it's so fast changing every day. There's a difference. And he always had it in his head that he interrogated as a subject.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
And as soon as he got one, he was one of the first people that got one because it was launched in California and he got one sent over immediately. He spent a year in the middle of planning for this exhibition perfecting his technique on the iPad. So this ability to be able to draw on it. So the arrival of spring 2011, which was included in that exhibition, was done on the iPad. It included a painting as well, but there were 50 works on the iPad which were then printed.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. He tackled the subject again in 2013 in charcoal and it was quite a melancholy period of his life when he was about to leave Yorkshire and come back to Los Angeles and that's very very beautiful and it's full of kind of loss and longing.
But he had in mind in the, I don't know, about 2016 to 2018, that he'd like to do the arrival of the spring somewhere else. Obviously, it had to be in the Northern Hemisphere where the springs were good. But he thought, well, if I go to Normandy, it will be different. You'll still have the full drama of spring, but the planting will be slightly different. The trees will be different. It's a new subject to tackle.
And he hoped that he would start in 2019, but he didn't actually start until 20, which is when the lockdown happened. And again, when he first thought about it, he wondered, you know, should I do it in oil? Should I do it in watercolour? How do I tackle this? It coincided with a new programme being developed, especially for him on the iPad by a mathematician who was able to work with David. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. He was producing these works, doing over one a day, but he was also sending them to a number of us. There's about sort of maybe 10, 15 of us that he would send these works to. And I mean, psychologically, it made such a huge difference. You know, this subliminal message, not that he was trying to deliver a message, it was this message about, well, life will continue, nature will continue. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. ... ... ... ... ... ...
Bir şeyden bir şeyden bahsediyor. Bir şeyden bir şeyden bahsediyor. Bir şeyden bahsediyor. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. The other thing that's kind of interesting from a climate change perspective, which so many of our heads should be very much on that subject, is this notion that actually nature will continue. And not only will it continue through the pandemic when we've all stopped, it keeps going. We stopped and that continued. But it also will adapt to whatever changes we throw at it.
And, you know, spring, we hope, will continue in any form. And, you know, I can't help thinking of that particular sequence that he did, which is of the sunset. And, you know, when you have six works that are all of the same subject, from the same perspective, and this, going back to that kind of, you know, very primitive notion that people had about İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
They would be giving praise to it, hoping that it would come up the next day and knowing that if we didn't have the sun, we were in trouble. They knew enough about how the sun affected the natural world and how it helped everything to grow and nurture it. And I feel as if those kind of very ancient thoughts are kind of contained in this body of work as well. Yeah, I mean, they also thought, I mean, relatedly, I think it's interesting because, you know,
He's also known as such a great, one of the great portraitists, you know, of the 21st century, we could maybe say. But it's interesting because I was thinking about that also as I was walking through the gallery and that it feels like his approach to landscape captures so much that actually feels familiar from it. You know, it feels like as much a portrait of whether it's... İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
I don't know, it's almost the intangible that goes into his work. He captures the beauty that goes beyond, I don't know necessarily if I'm doing a very good job of explaining what I mean, that goes beyond the landscape somehow. Yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, it is so much more than just a representation. And he is very faithful to the scene that he has in front of him. And I think that, you know, one of the things he talks about,
... ... ... ... ... ve yorkshire yorkshire yorkshire yorkshire yorkshire yorkshire yorkshire yorkshire İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. ... ... ... ... ... İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
And he took two years away from painting to write this thesis about how artists have used the camera and the lens for years. So he went back to Angra and was able to identify that those portraits are so spot on because of the use of the camera. He wasn't suggesting that Angra wasn't a great painter. The point he was making was you need to be able to draw to do İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
...landscape en plein air, ...which was considered quite unfashionable at the time. And that has continued, ...this idea about sort of that direct engagement with the landscape. And it's continued in Normandy. So, you know, it's the birthplace of impressionism, French impressionism. And, you know, that started in Normandy.
And the impressionists would look at the landscape and interpret it in their own way. But it goes back to this idea about, you know, you're there, you're engaging with it. You know, Monet was in his garden. Courbet was there looking at the sea, you know, and David was there physically in that one space in Normandy, charting. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. Hmm. And the fact that he's in his 80s, he's never too old to learn a new way of working. And with this new iPad, I mentioned that it was a new program had been developed to his specifications. It's unbelievably complicated because he's able to work in layers, which gives him enormous freedom. But it's that kind of keeping so much in his head and sliding layers out and making a change to the background and putting it back in again.
So that was something that the iPad allowed him to do. But it's also that thing about, yes, he's not carrying the paraphernalia around the garden with him. So he's not having to set up an easel. He's there with the iPad and he didn't start work immediately. And in colder weather, he's able to drive out in his truck and just sit there with the iPad, you know, against the steering wheel and draw from there. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. in the same way as he would to an oil painting, he was able to get down the essence of the scene very, very quickly. He could get that down and then work on the rest. So all of those fleeting elements of nature, like the moment that the sun is hitting the blossom or the misty early morning that the sun burns off within 20 minutes, he was able to capture that really quickly on the iPad. He couldn't have done that in oil.
And he realised quite quickly it was the only way that he could actually do this series of work and work in such volume because there's 116 of them. And he was averaging, it was more than one a day. I mean, it was just this unbelievably intensive period of work where he was just absolutely kind of just completely caught up in it.
It is amazing to see him working because not only is he able to work in layers and he's able to pull up a palette and select a palette for himself from the colours on the iPad in the same way as he would do for the oil painting. He's also thinking ahead about the size that these works are going to be when they're exhibited. So he's working on a screen this sort of size and the prints are big. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
So all of that is in his head, you know, the complexity of working in layers, the thinking of what he's already done, the knowing that the scale is going to be different, so the mark making has to account for all of that. And then he oversees the whole printing process as well to make sure that the luminosity that he's able to achieve in the screen is also visible on the final printed work.
And they are like paintings. He calls these iPad paintings. And they've got all of the qualities of paintings. And I think you've seen it, Thomas. When you go into the exhibition, that's what they look like. And you forget that they're iPads and it sort of doesn't matter. The importance is the image, not the medium. And I think maybe sometimes too much attention is given to that. Yeah. And I wanted to ask a little bit also, how did you approach the installation? Because the exhibition is...
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
It's a really interesting question because you would imagine that because of the narrative quality, and that's another thing I just want to talk about a little bit later, but because of the narrative quality of it, it suggests that it should be hung chronologically. However, when you do that, it doesn't quite work visually. So David gave me license to make it work within reason so that you do get a sense of, you know, you're starting in winter and you end up in spring.
And each venue, the architecture of the galleries is very different. So it does force you to look at it slightly differently. And we did a hang in advance, a digital hang at the Sebaci Museum, which looked fine. But then when we got to the point of hanging it, we actually made an awful lot of changes. And one of the things we did, which I think is really successful and just kind of works within the configuration of the galleries, is to group together some of the works of the same scene.
farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı farklı And the idea of the narrative was something that was very strong for David, that he wanted to tell the story. It's the story of the arrival of spring. And he was excited about going to Normandy for several reasons. I mean, one of them is the kind of, you know, it is where Impressionism started, but it was also the place where the Bayeux Tapestry is housed. And it's near Monet Chivigny as well.
And the Bay of Tapestry, David had seen it in the 60s and hadn't seen it again until he went to Normandy four years ago. And he just became so engaged with it and talks about it as being a really wonderful work of art and loved the narrative quality of it, the unfolding of it. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim.
İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. I thought it worked incredibly well, those little sequences, because it reminded you that, yeah, it's both a fixed moment in time, but also an eternal one. Yeah. And it's something that we forget. And it sounds ridiculous, but we forget that this is constantly changing and we forget to look at it.
And I think that there is this, there's something about his work and his landscape work that does encourage us to go back into nature and look at it again and interrogate it because we forget to look. And one of his favourite phrases is, you know, he says, I think it's a mad world. I mean, particularly during COVID. He said, I think it's a very mad world, but it's very beautiful if you look at it closely. And I think he's helping us to really kind of engage with it and to look at it much more closely.
Yeah, and I think there's something very wonderful about sort of emerging back into the sunlight at the Sabanjo Museum with its beautiful gardens and very different natural features. But it's amazing how, I mean, as you said, it kind of teaches us how to look or how to see again. And you find yourself looking at the world around you in a different sort of way. Yes. Yeah. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. Teşekkürler.