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DAVID HOCKNEY: A LIFE PROPERLY FRAMED
I grew up with David Hockney.
Not literally. I never knew him. But his work appeared at regular intervals throughout my life as a painter, and each time it seemed that he had gone off somewhere I hadn’t expected.
When I first became aware of him, it was through his portraits, drawings, and paintings of flowers. I was struck by the fact that he was so unapologetically representational at a moment when so much of the contemporary painting around me seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. In my mind, he sat somewhere between Matisse and Fairfield Porter. There was Matisse’s flattening of space and pleasure in color, but also something of Porter’s conviction that the world immediately around you, your friends, your rooms, the flowers on the table, was sufficient material for serious painting.
IS AN ARTIST’S PALETTE BIOLOGY OR TASTE?
I once attended a dinner at Jan and Warren Adelson’s home. Their New York gallery is known for its collection of American Impressionists and the work of John Singer Sargent. As I moved through the house during this charity event for the Hudson River Museum, I began to recognize paintings at a glance—Sargent and Eakins, a drawing by Ingres, a grisaille gouache by Homer, a medallion by Saint-Gaudens. Nothing was labeled. It was a home, not a museum. But the work announced itself.
Then, over a desk, there was a painting that stopped me. At first, it looked like scratches of color. After a moment, a waterfall began to resolve, but what held me was the color—a very particular Veronese green. And then it clicked: Twachtman. John Henry Twachtman. Adelson confirmed it.
I’ve always been struck by how specific an artist’s palette can be. Not just a preference for color, but something closer to identity.
LOOKING WITH ROGER FRY
The first time I read Roger Fry, my immediate thought was: finally, someone who looks at a painting the way I do. Not emotionally first, not narratively, not in search of reassurance or uplift, but through a disciplined form of attention. What we now call formalism felt, in his writing, less like a theory than a discipline—a way of agreeing to stay with what is actually there. Fry’s focus on line, color, rhythm, and spatial structure was not a narrowing of meaning but a refusal to dilute it.
MARGUERITE MATISSE: A Daughter's Courage in Occupied France
In dawn of the 20th century in France was marked by a vibrant and transformative artistic landscape, with the Impressionist movement having laid a fertile ground for the emergence of diverse modern art expressions.1 At the heart of this era stood Claude Monet, a foundational figure of Impressionism, celebrated for his profound ability to capture the subtle nuances of light and his dedication to exploring singular subjects through extensive series of paintings. Among his most iconic works are those depicting water lilies, a subject with which his name became intrinsically linked in the public consciousness.
