Hockney’s perception
he’s right of course
Today I read a New Yorker article - an interview with the great artist, David Hockney.
If you are at all familiar with the work of David Hockney, you will know that one of his primary themes is perception; He has made drawings and collages and great, startling and beautiful, proto-Picasso reverse perspective, cubist - al la fauve - paintings. Think of his pink porch overlooking the terrace in the California paintings of his home, and you’ll get the picture. Or think of his picture of Vincen’t chair. In the interview with the magazine, David mentions that his curiosity about the artist’s use of perspective as a vehicle for perception is ongoing, and a deep well for which he, now eighty four, and admittedly with limited and fewer, than we can all hope for, years left, is plenty deep for someone else to carry the brush forward.
Keeping in mind Hockney’s enormous output investigating this subject, he goes on to talk about the use of a camera as the primary instrument to understand the world. Which, of course, he discounts, as you might expect, as a treacherous ocular oracle. Yellow, he says, and - if you have ever tried to take a picture of a green sky just before a storm, or the pink hue of a sunset rising over snowy rooftops - cannot be camerafied. Likely you encountered, as he implies, something grayer, a sort of weirdly condensed spectrum that produces a dimmer view of the color; a kind of pale, flat disappointment. He’s right, of course.
The picture that I show at the top of this writing is one I made using my iPad. I tell my wife frequently, far too often I suspect - especially when she is trying to do her own work and provide a paycheck so we can have goddam health insurance (I digress- which I will always do when it comes to the subject of American healthcare..), is that it is truly unimaginable what these little machines can help you do. In fact, I continue - she working hard to remain interested, listens - you see, I say, its not that they can draw for you but that they can help you do things you would otherwise never have imagined, but I say - emphasizing the key point - you have to be open to letting the machine help you solve your little picture puzzle, right? Yes, mm hmmm, of course. You have to let it surprise you. Yes (dear god)…
My brother’s son is always using his telephone machine, which drives my brother, like every other, person of our generation, nuts - sit at the table and put that damn thing away - while he only occasionally sneaks a peek between mouthfuls of something au gratin and then dismisses it because its me railing about that American healthcare system. I told him in really, what I must say, was an enormous and important insight - you see little brother, his world is more defined by that gizmo than the trees in your backyard, or your dog under the table: Can I be excused? Oh dear god, go, please, go. And, as cyber world continues its every worthless permutation of something moving or sounding or jumping to no value, I remain and am encouraged by the absolute rightness of my comment. Wait, I think its dis-couraging, isn’t it?
When David Hockney talks about the concept of perception as we understand it to be, he’s talking about a world where trees have leaves that fall, get crispy underfoot, get wet, smell and dissolve. I think he’s right that this particular theme is a rich vein, but I think to understand the world we live in is to straddle this dimension with the one inside our machines. It used to be considered that time was the fourth dimension, now, I think there’s another dimension and it’s algorithmic. There will probably be a lot more in store for us as the string unravels, but for now perception is filtered at least half of the time, or, if you ask my brother regarding his son, most of the time - get off your bed and go outside and leave that goddamn thing in your room- through the magical, mystical corruptible, digital screens. This, I think is the vein that the perceptual progenitors of the present and future will mine. But not me, I’m just going to make pictures on my iPad, or wait, am I… couldn’t be. Crap.