National Gallery
Until 27 October 2024
“Images embrace us: they open up to us and close themselves to us in so far as they conjure up in us something that we could call an interior experience.” –Georges Didi Huberman
「圖像包圍著我們：它們向我們敞開，也對我們關閉，彷彿在我們內心喚起了一種可以稱為『內在體驗』的東西。」 ——喬治·迪迪·於貝爾曼
The exhibition, Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look, is organised around a response to Piero della Francesca’s “The Baptism of Christ” (1450’s) with two paintings by Hockney which record a personal way of indicating his own history of a lifetime of looking at this work. It is framed by the idea of a notion of slowing down to look, and with this to discover the means of attending to the act of looking. For Hockney this process includes possessing a postcard and a poster reproduction of the painting, so becomes a way of tracing a special form of memory, which might even be akin to the process of praying. This investment with the image is coupled with an abstracted gesture of painting the room with a blue hue (chosen by Hockney) which serves as a symbolic setting for the three paintings on view. The actual display is a close hang, which evokes the structural schema of a triptych, thus lending intimacy to the conversation of the discrete paintings.
Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look exhibition © The National Gallery, London
Piero’s painting has played an important role in the history of the collection and has become one of the most cited of all the assembled masterpieces. The much-employed idea of a painting becoming a ‘painter’s painting’ is central to the identity of this work, which at once is sacred in its address, but rigorously abstract in its means. In this it becomes a fold of Christian aesthetic experience, but also Platonic in its realisation of its inward schematic accord. In this, grace and beauty are discovered as relational forces. Passion is thus rendered as twice over, a moment in the narrative of Christ stilled into an image of revelation, but also within the construction of a perfect geometry through which to do so. Aristotle termed abstraction as a form of special attention, or even a mode of attending (techne) to what is held in the process of becoming into presence. In this way the stillness of passage opens itself to the purity of this becoming, which is a coupling of the image and temporal discharge within presentation.
We might imagine the different stages that this devotional work has come to signify for Hockney. Central to it is surely the retention of the idea that painting at its pinnacle, not only never dies, but also renews itself through the vision of others within a process of its coming to be. Yet in this there is a decision to be made, not only between the difference between a painting of devotion, and the act of painting as a devotion to art, but also between the image as an icon, and the essential emptiness which resides within representation itself. It is this contrasting exhibition of essential traits that an enigmatic quality comes to the fore. What comes into presence is the moment when heaven and earth, human and spirit are conjoined that is indicated by sacred geometry providing for the setting into place.
There is within such an enigma or even difference within the standing apart from human duration, a tension within our age which has been commonly portrayed as the endless re-producibility of the image that is freed from the sense of having an original source. Rather than be amazed by the spectacle of artefacts in Museums being employed as backdrops for ‘selfies’, instead to see this as the logic of a disappearance of the image as its own original. The two Hockney paintings are situated in a period marked by the notion that seeing is still believing giving way to the introduction of the digital image, and with this, the advent of simulation as a cultural reality. Both the Hockney paintings have an aura of nostalgia now because they speak to a condition which is increasingly remote or even obsolete. As such they read as fragile, or even thin images, as opposed to the structural and iconographic density of Piero’s painting. This might appear as a paradox, but it is one that traces the historical passage of the relationship of the image and temporality. If the Hockney paintings attest to a condition of sparsity, it is because they are offered to the projected screen of visibility itself without the semblance of a recessional void afforded by the invisibility of a deeper schema in which visibility comes into being. This is an outcome in part, of a conflation between the two apparatuses of photography and painting. It is one that offers itself as the seduction of real appearances as being a mode of open availability. Hence, we are given over to the two Hockney paintings in which figures are given over to a silent process of looking or being-with reproductions of paintings. Projection is here coupled with reproduction, which constitutes itself as a logic of visibility due to the circularity which is imposed. This affords a pleasure of immediacy in ways that suggest being without striation or interruption. What it is we see, is met by the anticipation of what we expect to see, because nothing much by way of consequence withdraws from within the initial circularity of both paintings.
Making Christ visible and the visible readable, is not part of the same continuum, but it might appear as such. Something interrupts, a network of opacities which is the rightful terrain of poetics. The poet utilizes these dense patchworks that serve to interrupt passage as a means of abstracting away from the more immediate sign economy that would serve to align visibilities within the logic of the real. This explains why the poet might seek out the moisture in things whereas the more analytically inclined art historian might elect a much dryer rendition leading to interpretation or a putting into place.
What it is that we see, is not the same of what it is that we seek. This exhibition affords us is a rich play of seeing and seeking that is in excess of the process of interpretation. This reveals a tenderness of the in-between of vision and ethical exposure that is offered by this small fragmentary exhibition. It suggests a narrative founded on a portrait of intimacy and yet it might also advance out of a spell of fascination, a remoteness born out of an enigma of times passage. Perhaps we do not learn through a series of advancing steps capable of bringing forward the transparency of reflection, but rather sink back into the fog of misunderstanding only the smallest segments that might be revealed in the very idea of there being a discrete history of such entities. With such a question, a shadow might be cast over the assumption of enlightenment which gives way to another form of passion yielding itself to an essential mode of obscurity or a setting apart from.
此次展覽圍繞霍克尼對皮耶羅·德拉·弗朗西斯卡的《基督受洗》（1450年代）所作的回應展開，展出了他兩幅描繪這一主題的作品，記錄了他一生中凝視這幅名作的個人經歷。展覽的核心理念是“慢下來觀看”，旨在探索觀看行為的本質。對於霍克尼來說，這個過程包括擁有一張《基督受洗》的明信片和一張海報複製品，成為他的一種特殊記憶方式，甚至類似於祈禱般的儀式感。這種對圖像的深刻投入還表現為展廳被塗成藍色的抽象性動作（由霍克尼親自選擇），為三幅畫作營造出象徵性的展示背景。展覽的掛畫形式緊密排列，仿佛在呼應三聯畫的結構，促成了這些獨立畫作之間的親密對話。
皮耶羅的這幅畫在館藏歷史中佔有重要地位，成為引用最頻繁的傑作之一。「畫家之畫」這一理念在這幅作品中得到了完美展現，作品既具神聖性，又以嚴謹的抽象手法呈現。它既是基督教美學體驗的一部分，同時也體現了柏拉圖式的內在幾何和諧，優雅與美麗在其中被視為一種相互聯繫的力量。基督的受難在這裡被凝固成一幅啟示性的圖像，同時也在完美的幾何結構中展現了這一瞬間的神聖性。亞里士多德將抽象視為一種獨特的關注形式，甚至是一種techne，即關注事物如何成為存在的過程。通過這種方式，圖像的靜止狀態開啟了純粹存在的可能性，這種存在與圖像和時間流逝緊密相連。
我們可以想象霍克尼在不同階段對這幅奉獻作品的感悟。其核心無疑是這一理念：當繪畫達到巔峰時，不僅永不衰老，還能通過他人的視覺不斷煥新。然而，在這個過程中，藝術家面臨的不僅是奉獻畫作與奉獻藝術行為之間的抉擇，還需要在圖像被視為神聖象徵和它本身可能無法完全表達意義的局限之間找到平衡。正是在這種對比中，神秘的品質開始顯現。此時，天地、人類與精神在神聖幾何學的引導下融為一體，成為整個展示的根基。
在這種矛盾與分離中，我們這個時代普遍感受到圖像無限可複製性帶來的緊張感。圖像從其原始背景中解放出來，變得不再獨特。與其對博物館裡的文物成為自拍背景感到驚訝，不如將這現象視作圖像逐漸消失的邏輯演變。霍克尼的兩幅畫作處於一個視覺信仰逐漸讓位於數字圖像和模擬技術成為文化現實的時代。如今，這兩幅畫作帶有懷舊氣息，因為它們記錄了逐漸遠去甚至顯得過時的情境。它們看起來脆弱且「稀薄」，與皮耶羅畫作的結構和圖像密度形成了鮮明對比。儘管這似乎是個悖論，但它揭示了圖像與時間關係的歷史演變。如果說霍克尼的畫作呈現出一種「稀薄」狀態，那是因為它們只展示在一個可見性的表層上，缺乏通過深層結構提供的那種退隱與空間感。這部分是攝影與繪畫這兩種媒介之間相互滲透的結果。它提供了一種真實外觀的誘惑，作為一種開放、隨時可得的形式。因此，霍克尼的畫作引導我們進入一個沉默的觀看過程，或者說是與繪畫複製品共存的體驗。投射與複製在此交織，構建了一種由循環性驅動的可見性邏輯。這種循環帶來了一種即刻的愉悅，彷彿所有事物都停留在最初的圓環中，從未真正退出。
使基督可見與使可見的事物變得可讀，這兩者並不屬於同一連貫體，但它們可能表面上看起來相似。某種東西打破了這一不透明的網絡，而這正是詩學的合法領域。詩人利用這些稠密的拼貼來打斷通道，從而脫離更直接的符號邏輯，而符號邏輯則是用來將可見性與現實的邏輯對應起來。這也解釋了為什麼詩人傾向於在事物中尋找濕潤、感性的一面，而更具分析性的藝術史學家則偏好更加乾燥、理性的演繹方式，從而進行解釋或給事物一個固定的位置。
我們所看到的並不總是我們所尋求的。本次展覽為我們提供了一種超越解釋過程的豐富視覺體驗與探索樂趣。它揭示了視覺與道德暴露之間的一種柔情，這柔情源於展覽中那些精心挑選的片段。展覽暗示了一種基於親密肖像的敘事，但也可能是來自時間流逝之謎的遙遠吸引力。或許，我們並非通過一系列漸進的步驟來掌握清晰的反思，而是退回到誤解的迷霧中，只能捕捉到其中微小的片段，彷彿這些實體蘊含著某種獨特的歷史。這樣的問題可能會讓我們質疑啓蒙時期的觀念，轉而展現出另一種情感，讓人接受某種內在的模糊性或疏離感。
Text by Jonathan Miles
Edited by Michelle Yu
