Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look – an 'absorbing' exhibition

The National Gallery's intimate show features 'whimsical triptych' by the two artists

Two masterpieces (My Parents (1977 - R) and Looking at Pictures on a Screen (1977 - L)) by David Hockney that feature reproductions of Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ
The trio of paintings are 'dizzyingly layered'
(Image credit: Guy Bell / Shutterstock)

The National Gallery's new show, "Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look", comprises just three paintings: Piero della Francesca's Renaissance masterpiece "The Baptism of Christ" flanked by two of David Hockney's colourful works.

The idea, said Eddy Frankel in Time Out, is that you slow right down and "take the time to consider, think about, absorb and really, genuinely look at the art". Hockney was "besotted" with Piero's painting and spent countless hours studying and obsessing over it.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Painted in 1977, "My Parents" depicts Hockney's "serene" mother and "twitchy" father. Between them is a green cabinet topped with a vase of brightly coloured tulips and a mirror reflecting a postcard of Piero's painting. The other piece, from the same year, "Looking at Pictures on a Screen", shows Hockney's friend, the curator Henry Geldzahler, examining the posters of four paintings from the National Gallery (including "The Baptism") taped to a folding screen.

"Everyone is seeing, looking, analysing", said Time Out, and images are "twisted, substituted and copied". The painting of his parents is "70s Hockney at his best", while the other work is slightly less successful yet still "clever".

"The more you look" at the paintings, "the more you see," added Laura Freeman in The Times. This "absorbing, puzzle-box show" is "less a case of spot the difference, more spot-the-artist's-mind-at-work".

"What is deliberate, what is unconscious – and what is the slightly fanciful imagining of a spectator getting carried away in the game?"

Explore More

Irenie Forshaw is a features writer at The Week, covering arts, culture and travel. She began her career in journalism at Leeds University, where she wrote for the student newspaper, The Gryphon, before working at The Guardian and The New Statesman Group. Irenie then became a senior writer at Elite Traveler, where she oversaw The Experts column.