Tag / david hockney

by GJ.Larrow

An Explosion of Color

While the Fauvism and Pop Art movements happened nearly fifty years apart from one another, the two movements occasionally link together with striking similarities, in use of color, iconography, and brush work. While Fauvism itself was about the strong use of color and shape over realism in color and form, Pop Art used those lessons in a way that makes it such a well known movement even today, without Fauvism, it is likely that Pop Art would have looked much different.

Andy Warhol. Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Silkscreen ink and acrylic paint on two canvases; Each 2054 x 1448 x 20mm. Aspen Art Museum, Aspen USA.
Kees Van Dongen. Portrait de femme. Oil on Canvas; 61 x 49.5 cm. Christie’s, New York.

            When discussing Pop Art, to most people Andy Warhol comes to mind. Considered to be one of the founders of the movement[1], his use of bright color and repetition added to the signature style. Comparing his piece Marilyn Diptych to Kees Van Dongen’s, Portrait de femme can help show the styles similarities, the bright colors, heavy eyeliner and mascara and plump lips, the barely there toning in the faces and the bright orange backgrounds, contrasting with other shades of yellow and cyan to make all the colors pop. Despite the two pieces being two completely separate mediums, they call to one another.

Andre Derain. Waterloo Bridge, 1906. Oil on Canvas; 80.5 x 101 cm. Museuo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
David Hockney. Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. Acrylic on canvas; 84 x 120 in. Private Collector.

            Another two paintings to compare are Waterloo Bridge, 1906, by Andre Derain and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, by David Hockney, you can see the almost mosaic style of laying down color, the strong dashes of green and blue throughout the pieces, that while applied differently, combine to a similar effect. David Hockney, also considered to be a major player in Pop Art, has later art that is even compared to Fauvism[2], especially for pieces like Nichols Canyon, and The Garden, with bright heavy strokes and use of pattern and line.

While other aspects of the two movements can look or represent much different things, it’s easy to see the influence that color had on both movements.

[1]Justin Wolf “Pop Art Movement Overview and Analysis,” The Art Story, 2021 https://www.theartstory.org/movement/pop-art/

[2] “Nichols Canyon”, AaronArtPrints.org https://www.aaronartprints.org/hockney-nicholscanyon.php

Sources

Nichols Canyon By hockney. Accessed September 28, 2021. https://www.aaronartprints.org/hockney-nicholscanyon.php.

Wolf, Justin. “Pop Art Movement Overview.” The Art Story. Accessed September 28, 2021. https://www.theartstory.org/movement/pop-art/.