Shared memories in colour

Howard Hodgkin: Last Paintings
Gagosian, Grovenor Hill, London
June 1 – July 28, 2018

The Gagosian gallery at Grosvenor Hill is currently showing an exhibition of Howard Hodgkin, a widely known British painter I first discovered at Tate Britain in 2006. That earlier retrospective spanned his entire career from the 1950s and, although Hodgkin wasn’t celebrated as a major figure in British art until the 1970s, it revealed the early formation of his visual language. I still remember it as a feast for the senses — full of vibrant colours and expressive, emotionally charged brushwork.

This new exhibition at Gagosian presents the final six paintings Hodgkin completed in India before his death in March 2017, alongside more than twenty works never before shown in Europe. Seeing his work again feels like a continuation of a story I began following more than a decade ago, and these last paintings act almost like a golden epilogue to the show I saw at Tate.

Although his work seems abstract at first sight, Hodgkin consistently insisted that he was not an abstract painter. His lifelong exploration focused on representing emotions, personal encounters and, above all, memories — specific experiences the viewer can relate to through their own recollections.

In a 2016 interview with Kenneth Baker, Hodgkin said:
“I can’t control the viewer. But I tell them what the picture’s about, always. I’ve never painted an abstract picture in my life. I can’t.”

He spoke passionately about his commitment to subject matter and explained that it is only once the physical reality of a painting is established that the subject can begin to reveal itself. Yet he lamented that people often failed to see that his paintings were built through shape, drawing and composition.

Shared memories are a key part of his work, and reading the titles of the paintings offers an immediate insight into what he had in mind when he created them. Some were especially evocative for me. Portrait of the Artist Listening to Music captures a moment of private contemplation, while Darkness at Noon creates a shadowed atmosphere in which The Art Blackberry performs as if she were a sculpture emerging from the dark.

Although we both liked many of the works, my favourite pieces didn’t always match those loved by The Art Blackberry. Each of us responded to the paintings that resonated the most at that moment, sometimes adding our own interpretations. With Don’t Tell a Soul, for instance, my position before the green brushstrokes over yellow seemed to suggest “the birth of an idea” or “a moment of inspiration.” And in front of Love Song, I felt like a butterfly hovering over flowers, forming a personal connection with the painting.

Hodgkin represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1984 and received the Turner Prize in 1985. He was also included by The Independent in its list of the 100 most influential gay people in Britain. Yet what stands out most in this exhibition is the way he transforms deeply personal recollections into shared emotional experiences — all through the language of colour.