Howard Hodgkin

Gagosian Gallery, Rome

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2013

Rome, Gagosian Gallery, Howard Hodgkin, New Paintings, 2013, p. 47 and cover, illustrated in colour

Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, The Go Between: A Selection of International Emerging Artists form the Ernesto Esposito Collection, 2014-15, p. 135, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the green has less blue undertones in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals some minute chips to the extreme outer edges of the frame. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light
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Coming to the fore during an era when Pop and Conceptual art reigned supreme, Howard Hodgkin has created an oeuvre based on the immovable tenets of vitality, vivacity, and vividness. Executed in 2011-12, Moss perfectly crystallises this artistic intent through its vibrant passages of high-key colour.

Hodgkin’s pictures all describe situations, people, objects or phenomena that are familiar to him. However, they are never illusory. They are designed to be objects in their own right – alluding to their subject matter without trying to recreate it. It is for this reason that Hodgkin prefers old wooden frames in selecting his ground. By painting over their edges his statement is purposive; that these are not supposed to be windows for looking through; but rather flat panels to be considered on a surface level, on the merit of their own aesthetic. In the artist’s own words: “I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations” (Howard Hodgkin quoted in: Marla Price, Howard Hodgkin: The Complete Paintings Catalogue Raisonné, Fort Worth 2006, p. 14). This non-illusory approach is exemplified in Moss, where the deep daubs of verdant green seem to recall the fecund fertility of the forest floor, without directly representing it.

The present work, as with any of Hodgkin’s most effective production, belies his perennial deference to Indian art. The artist was introduced to the subcontinental aesthetic tradition by a school teacher when he was thirteen years old and it has remained at the heart of his creative consciousness ever since. Its influence is manifested in Moss not only through its aforementioned flatness – perhaps a nod to a painting style which does not adhere to perspectival laws – but also through the harmonious glow of its varied colour. The impact of the dominant green, and the poetry of its subtle modulation in tone across the panel, gives way to the harmonious hues of blue and dark ochre, smeared onto the ground beneath.

However, in the conception of Moss, it would also appear that European precedent was important. We might particularly examine the influence of artists from Fin-de-Siècle France. Georges Seurat has always been relevant for Hodgkin – another painter who occasionally used wooden frames as his ground and the innovator of pointilisme, that rhythmic method of juxtaposed dots of colour to which the present work bears such an unmistakable resemblance. Meanwhile, in Claude Monet’s lauded oeuvre we can observe a similar sense of flatness; in his Nymphéas series there is a comparable sense of tapestry-like proto-abstract intensity which makes each form appear to play out on the very surface of the picture plane, as opposed to in some fictive dimension beyond. The present work is also redolent of the work of Paul Cézanne, from whom we get the same mood of unbridled depictive energy. Just like Cézanne, Hodgkin's his paintings are charged with dynamism and executed in jabs and dabs of thick impasto. Through comparing Hodgkin with these post-Impressionist heavyweights, we can understand that Moss, which at first appears so instinctive and gestural, was not only borne out of personal emotional significance, but also articulated using considered historical deference to separate, even contrasting, artistic precedent.

In his speech opening Hodgkin’s 2006 retrospective at the Tate Modern, the celebrated Irish poet Seamus Heaney said that Hodgkin’s art celebrates what Dylan Thomas called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower” (Seamus Heaney quoted in: Jonathan Jones, ‘Howard Hodgkin: Once I stop painting they should start measuring my coffin’, The Guardian, 27 March 2014, online resource). This description seems to perfectly distil Hodgkin’s style and approach, and surely applies to few works as aptly as to Moss.