Nicky Charlish
posted 12 January 2007

David Hockney and fellow Yorkshireman Alan Bennett are sometimes mistaken for one another. The reasons for this are obvious: the mop of schoolboy-like hair, the specs, the sex. They're also in danger of both being mistaken in another way: as being cosy. But just as the playwright has his unexpected sides, so does the painter. This exhibition reveals some for us.

Hockney came from a family which appreciated the arts and didn't regard them as something to be hidden. In his portrait 'My Parents' (1977), painted when his reputation was well-established, we see his mother and father arranged on a sort of art-promoting tableau. His father peruses an art book, his mother looks as if she's a professional model who has adopted a conventional portrait pose, whilst the centre of the picture features a table whose contents include a set of Proust's Á la recherche du temps perdu (in translation) and a mirror which reflects a reproduction of Piero della Francesca's 'Baptism of Christ'. You can sense parental pride here (although his father's pose suggests that he thinks his son shouldn't get too big-headed about his achievements). Yet the artist as a young man seemed to lack confidence. In his painting 'Self-Portrait' (c.1954) he seems glum and also rather surprised, as if he's been caught unawares. And in his 'Self-Portrait' (1954) his bright clothes - one wonders how they went down on the streets of Bradford - don't disguise the feeling that the art student nevertheless feels himself to be dowdy, like an impecunious character from the pages of Lucky Jim.

A decade later, things have picked up for Hockney with his first visit to New York. And impressions - part reality, part fantasy - of that visit are given in his series of drawings The Rake's Progress (1961-63), a title he took from Hogarth's work. His blank face in 'The Arrival' suggests that he didn't know what to expect from the Big Apple. Even in 'The 7 Stone Weakling', a scene featuring Hockney looking at two passing well-built male joggers - which is surely subject matter that would arouse his interest - his expression remains blank. Perhaps it was Hockney's fear that his career might founder at any moment that produced 'Cast Aside', in which the artist is about to be thrust into the open jaws of a reptilian animal. But America - or rather, California - would be a promised land for Hockney. The painter-perfect light, glitz and homosexual attractions of that state are captured in 'Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool' (1966), where we see the back view of a young man exiting a backyard swimming pool in bright sunshine. But exposure to American high life didn't turn Hockney into a painter who kept to safe subjects. His painting Andy Paris 1974 depicts Andy Warhol in a relaxed pose but his expression, especially his intense eyes, shows that he's missing nothing.

Hockney's move across the Atlantic, however, didn't result in his neglecting British topics. In one of his best known works, 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy' (1970-1), we see designer Ossie Clark - with a white cat perched on one of Clark's legs - and his wife Celia in an upper room in West London. Both look wary, as if they've been caught out in a row. The open window between them symbolises the division in their deteriorating relationship. The cat, with its back to us, seems to be anticipating this break up, looking out of the window in search of escape. From 1970 we have a possible clue to this work's background. And that's the painting 'Ossie Wearing a Fairisle Sweater', in which the staring, dismayed Clark looks old beyond his time and seems to portend his later, wasted years and early death. The painting 'Celia in a Black Slip, Reclining Paris December 1973', shows her looking younger, as if released from a burden, and almost come-hitherish. Drawings of established figures from British cultural life include 'Stephen Spender' (1969) whose nose and mouth give the poet the expression of a delicate yet angry eagle ready to pounce, whilst 'JB Priestly' (1973), shows the creator of novels such as Angel Pavement and The Good Companions as combative rather that as a dispenser of avuncular wisdom.

In the 1980s, Hockney started to experiment with a Cubist style, and with the use of photograph-based collages (an art form which, arguably, belongs in the school corridor on parents' day). These were not his best moves. His painting of novelist Christopher Isherwood, 'Christopher Without His Glasses' (1984) make Herr Issyvoo look as if he's received a thorough going over from some Brownshirts with the aid of Francis Bacon. The collage is an art form which can be used to give shock value, but requires the most skilful hands for this banality to be avoided. The ones here are competent. But the best comment that can be made on this double-episode is that Hockney abandoned these forms for a return to traditional work in watercolour and oils as well as drawings. He felt that the human eye and hand provide the best ways to capture the nature of his sitters.

Hockney moved to surer ground. His drawing 'Henry Dying Long Island' (1994) shows a dying man whose face reflects both bitterness at the ending of life and a sense of peace that the struggle is soon to end, capturing the co-existence of these feelings rather than their conflict. The sentimentality to which this scene could give rise is deftly, masterfully, avoided. And his 'Self-portrait with Charlie' (2005) shows the artist looking away from his canvas at the mirror - and, so, at us - with a wary expression. He's not just checking on something to be included in the painting. He's reminding us that his work is not easy, cannot be taken for granted.

And this gives us a clue to the answer for an obvious question. How has Hockney survived in an age when the art establishment has turned its back on representational art? Why hasn't he been relegated to the art history books when an art student emulating his style today would risk being condemned for being traditional (and uncommercial)? Cynics might say that his sexuality has shielded him from attack: no critic wants to be thought of as a gay-basher. Other might say that coming to fame in the magic, do-no-wrong era of the Sixties has spared him from obscurity. The real reason is that Hockney is superficially safe - you can see what you're getting - until you realise that he's giving you far more than surface appearances. He's revealing the guts of each subject, the feelings behind the forms, without any fancy stuff. Yorkshiremen pride themselves on common sense, a commodity that can often be a camouflage for the commonplace. With Hockney, it's sensual and disturbing.

Till 21 January 2006.