Q & A with DAVID HOCKENY : A Painter Gets Back to Business of Painting

It is nearing dusk, a time when artist David Hockney says the fading daylight makes the blues in his paintings turn very electric.

Hockney guides a visitor through his Hollywood Hills studio, its walls covered with large, colorful abstract landscape paintings that have already set the art world buzzing about their scale, scope and ambition. Casual in a denim shirt, knit vest and cords, the 57-year-old Englishman is taking a last look at the new work before everything heads off to Venice’s L.A. Louver Gallery for a show opening on Thursday.

It’s been rare in recent years that Hockney has taken so much time for painting, busy as he has been traveling the world designing operas and working on other projects. Besides his traditional opera stagings in Los Angeles and elsewhere, he designed costumes and scenery for Placido Domingo’s TV broadcast “Operalia 1994,” in Mexico City last summer. A major retrospective of his drawings starts in Hamburg in August and, after a stop in London, arrives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art next February.

But first comes the L.A. Louver exhibition, the largest locally since his retrospective in 1988 at LACMA. Besides the new, often huge, abstract landscapes and his drawings of friends, the show includes two dozen small paintings of his two dachshunds, Stanley (named for Stan Laurel), 8, and Boodgie, 6.

As Hockney poses for a photograph, one of the dogs licks his face and then relaxes for the camera. “They quite like photographers,” Hockney explains. “They were born in Hollywood.”

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Question: Let’s talk first about the abstract paintings . . .

Answer: I began two canvases and then stopped because I did a lot of prints for Gemini (the Los Angeles-based printmaker). The paintings were complicated, and for what I was trying to do I needed a lot of time. And for about four years, I could only paint through short periods, because of opera.

Both “Turandot” and “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” are big and spectacular pieces. I have to calculate what I think it would take and I always miscalculate. It always takes longer. They take a long time and are even elaborate to restage.

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Q: Is there an adjustment going back to paintings?

A: Theater is collaboration. Here you take all the responsibility. I have an assistant to help run the studio (but) when I’m painting I prefer to be here on my own. I like the silence.

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Q: There is quite a difference in subject and scale between the abstracts and your dog portraits.

A: There are two kinds of painting really: of an inner world and an exterior world. I painted the dogs when I took a break from these big paintings. I drew the dogs last year . . . and then I started painting them from life last November.

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Q: Isn’t it difficult to paint them from life?

A: Well, they don’t stay still that long. Even when they’re sleeping during the day, they tend to turn over. And if I find them in a terrific position, I know it might not be for very long. I calculated that it takes six minutes for Stanley to eat. I’d set it up and be ready to start, since I only had six minutes. You have to work pretty fast. I might take my time a little on the cushion or something but not that much.

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Q: Are your dogs particularly paintworthy?

A: A fluffy dog is a fluffy dog. It’s always the same shape. Smooth-haired dogs are very nice to draw. You can actually see their bodies. They are such wonderful subjects--the way they curl up and sleep, the amazing variety of positions.

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Q: Were there other concerns that drew you to painting your dogs?

A: I think in January I wanted desperately to paint something loving. In the last six months of last year, I lost four friends--two died of AIDS, (New York art museum curator, critic and arts administrator) Henry Geldzahler had liver cancer and (painter) Sandra (Fisher) Kitaj had a sudden (stroke). I felt such a loss of love I wanted to deal with it in some way.

I realized I was painting my best friends. They sleep with me; I’m always with them here. They don’t go anywhere without me and only occasionally do I leave them. They’re like little people to me. The subject wasn’t dogs but my love of the little creatures.

A friend says they were very tender paintings. But what else could they be? They’re my dogs. I’m not painting somebody else’s dogs. I’m not a dog portraitist.

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Q: Are you still as interested in new technology?

A: I play with things. I’m deeply interested in printing (and) I only got a computer because I already had the printing machine. And I got bored with the glass screen because it’s textureless. Also, if you’re drawing, the instrument that you use to draw is the same no matter what kind of marks you’re making--for a thick line, a thin line or a textured line, you pick up and hold the same instrument. That’s not true in painting.

You can now design for theater on the computer, but it’s too slow. I said, “Give me a scissors and cardboard and I can do it quicker.” High tech still has to be combined with low tech. The hand is low tech. The heart is low tech.

* “David Hockney: Some Very Large New Paintings With Twenty-Five Dogs Upstairs and Some Drawings of Friends,” L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 6 through May 6. (310) 822-4955.