David Hockney Contributes to Immersive Art Craze
By Natasha Long
Between 25 January – 23 April 2023, David Hockney’s new exhibition, Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away) will run at the Lightroom at King’s Cross, London. Unlike any exhibition the artist has been involved in before, this show will project his paintings directly onto the walls. It will be immersive, multi-sensory, overpowering – a real show – and will include six thematic ‘chapters’, accompanied by a score by Nico Muhly and commentary from Hockney. The large-scale digital images of well-known, hardly-seen and newer pictures will radically alter the experience of seeing them.
Image Credit: The Times
At the age of 85, Hockney has embraced the world of media at every turn in his artwork and has responded to evolving technologies by celebrating the opportunities they present. He experimented with Xerox collage in 1986, for example, and regularly uses photography and video in his work. Hockney’s mastery of the iPad as a tool was showcased by the Royal Academy in 2020 with a curated exhibition of iPad drawings he’d made in Normandy. This new exhibition shows that Hockney is keeping up with the latest developments in how we view contemporary art, too.
Immersive experiences like this one are a relatively new form of art communication and have seemed to receive praise and criticism in equal measure. They are seen by some as a money-grabbing gimmick, while others are attracted by the promise of a new tourist activity or an Instagram-worthy photo setting. They cater to younger children, too, who might find them more engaging than a traditional museum.
For better or for worse, London has embraced immersive art enthusiastically and successfully. In recent years, the city has held popularity-reviving immersive exhibitions of works by Vincent Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt and Edouard Manet, which Hockney has actually dismissed, telling the BBC: “They are dead. They can’t add anything to it. Well, I’m still alive so I can make things work better. The audience will feel in this. They will feel in the forest. They will feel on the cliff. I think it is something very new.” For him, then, this is more than a stunt; it’s an artistic impulse underlined by theory.
Image Credit: The Times
His involvement is a positive contribution to the development and rise in popularity of this medium, and powerfully demonstrates how one living artist wants people to look at his work. Visitors who might have felt uneasy at the Van Gogh experience, knowing the artist never intended it to happen, can relax with Hockney, who wants us to be there.
Bibliography
David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away). Lightroom. https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/david-hockney/
‘The Eye Popping History of Immersive Art in London’. Thursday 6 October 2022. https://www.timeout.com/london/art/the-eye-popping-history-of-immersive-art-in-london
‘David Hockney Joins Immersive Art Trend With New London Exhibition’.. Wednesday 16 November 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/16/david-hockney-joins-immersive-art-trend-with-new-london-exhibition
‘David Hockney: The art of technology’. Thursday 19 January 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2012/jan/19/david-hockney-art-technology
‘David Hockney’s forest is art to get lost inside’. The Times. Wednesday 16 November 2022 David Hockney’s forest is art to get lost inside | News | The Times