Special relationship

A new exhibition explores the key role that India played in the work of artist Howard Hodgkin. Yvette Huddleston reports.
LOST AND FOUND:  Howard Hodgkins painting From the House of Bhupen Kakhar.  Picture:  Guzelian/The Hepworth WakefieldLOST AND FOUND:  Howard Hodgkins painting From the House of Bhupen Kakhar.  Picture:  Guzelian/The Hepworth Wakefield
LOST AND FOUND: Howard Hodgkins painting From the House of Bhupen Kakhar. Picture: Guzelian/The Hepworth Wakefield

Artists are often inspired by, or associated with, certain places at certain points in their lives but few have had such a long-lived and fruitful relationship with a country as acclaimed painter Howard Hodgkin had with India.

It is this profound and enduring connection which is celebrated in the latest exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield. Howard Hodgkin: Painting India, which opened earlier this month, explores the influence that India had on Hodgkin’s work over a sustained period of his over fifty years of practice. Sadly, Hodgkin died in March this year, at the age of 84 after a short illness but he was involved with much of the planning and vision of the exhibition in its early stages.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We approached Howard with the idea of doing an exhibition about his passion for India, partly because we felt that not many people knew how much India had influenced his work but also in the context of the ongoing exploration in our exhibitions of the relationship between artists and place,” says curator Eleanor Clayton.

“He was absolutely delighted because India has been such a key inspiration for him. We then found out that he had gone back to India pretty much every year since his first visit in 1964 and for the last four years he had been spending three months every year painting in his studio there. Because of that it also allowed us to look at the whole of his career from the 1960s right up to his most recent works.”

It is a beautiful exhibition, full of vivid colour and movement – as a viewer it almost feels as though you have travelled through the country that was so close to Hodgkin’s heart. Although the work is abstract, the sense of place is powerfully communicated as is the evocation of the emotion associated with that moment in time. Hodgkin once described himself as an artist who made ‘representational pictures of emotional situations.’ This comes across very strongly in all the pieces, 35 in total, in the exhibition.

“I talked to him about the quotes we have included in the show and he sometimes got annoyed about some of the things that were constantly being quoted back at him,” says Clayton, smiling. “But he said that he absolutely stood by that one.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There is a lovely story about one of the paintings in the exhibition which Hodgkin had painted in the mid-1970s and which he had lost track of. It had a particular personal significance for him since it depicted the house of his close friend the Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar who died in 2003. From the House of Bhupen Kakhar had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1977 and sold the following year.

Hodgkin was very keen for it to be in the show so Clayton and her curatorial team set about finding it. It was finally located in a log cabin in Wyoming and, although Hodgkin didn’t actually get to see it before he died, Clayton was able to share the news with him and show him a photograph. He was delighted and moved to tears.

“A lot of his paintings are of very personal moments,” says Clayton. “He was someone whose emotions were close to the surface when it came to remembering old friends who had died or injustice but he was also very quick to recognise the joy and beauty in the world.”

This is evident in much of the work which, though often small-scale, almost leaps out of its frame and off the wall such is the vibrancy, vitality and intensity, apparent in every bold brushstroke.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The bright colours and movement convey the warmth, sunshine and energy of India but the influence of the country on Hodgkin’s work extended beyond the visual. “He felt that the people were very open there, which was very different to the quite formal British background and upbringing he had,” says Clayton. “He also said that India was an escape from his everyday life and that it was important for him to get outside of himself.”

It was perhaps this sense of a ‘freeing’ up of his feelings that flowed in to his subject matter which often has a searing intensity and rawness about it. In an interview in 2015 Hodgkin said: “The best subjects are human encounters, awkward dinner arties, unfortunate love stories, failed marriages. Almost anything, but it has got to have a powerful emotional punch.”

Also on display in the show are rarely seen pohotgrpahs and documents from Hodgkin’s personal archive. “It is something I always find very interesting – the artist’s story,” says Clayton. “I was amazed when I came across this travel archive which was so evocative. He writes the way he paints – it is short and explosive, to the point.” The journals date back to the 1970s documenting his early journeys to India and also material relating to a 1992 British Council commission for a mural in New Dehli with the architect Charles Correa.

Last winter Hodgkin paid what was to be his final visit to India and he said shortly before his death that “Looking back I think my painting now is closer to the real world than it has ever been.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Some of the most poignant images are those that were created in the last years of his life. They so powerfully demonstrate that his creative urge and invention was not in the least diminished. “I think the exhibition shows how he was continually pushing himself as an artist,” says Clayton. “Right up until the end he was still working so inventively.”

Howard Hodgkin: Painting India is at the Hepworth Wakefield until October 8. www.thehepworthwakefield.org

***

Howard Hodgkin, widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest painters, was born in 1932 in London.

He studied at the Camberwell School of Art from 1949-1950 and Bath Academy of Art from 1950-1954. He spent some time teaching until 1972 and was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery. In 1984 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and the following year won the Turner Prize. He was knighted in 1992.

His first retrospective was at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1976. He died in March this year having recently returned from a trip to India.

Related topics: