Teylers Museum dedicated to David Hockney
Hockney’s Eye - Art, technology and depiction
23 September 2022 – 29 January 2023
This autumn, Teylers Museum will be dedicated to the work of David Hockney, one of the best-known and best-loved artists of our time. In the exhibition Hockney’s Eye (23 September 2022 until 29 January 2023), Hockney’s work will be shown in direct dialogue with drawings, paintings and scientific objects. Find out about Hockney’s original theories on perspective and the use of optical aids. Discover how he experimented with them, and view the work of the Old Masters through his eyes.
Drawings, paintings and digital artwork
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with The Fitzwilliam Museum and The Heong Gallery, Downing College in Cambridge, curated by Jane Munro and guest curators Martin Kemp and Martin Gayford. Hockney’s Eye opened to the public in Cambridge a week a go, and will come to Teylers Museum, with special modifications, in September. Hockney’s drawings, paintings and photographic and digital artwork will not only be shown in the Exhibition Gallery, but also integrated in the museum’s historical picture galleries. Reconstructions of historical drawing devices, such as a perspective frame, a convex mirror and a camera obscura, will be made for the science rooms and the Pieter Teyler House.
The world on a flat surface
Throughout his career, Hockney (United Kingdom, 1937) has studied how the Old Masters translated spatial reality onto a flat surface. According to Hockney, they not only did this on the basis of direct observation (‘eyeballing’ is Hockney’s term) or using linear perspective, but for centuries they also made use of optical devices, such as lenses and mirrors. In Hockney’s Eye, this important – and not uncontroversial – theme in his oeuvre is the focus of an exhibition for the first time. Hockney’s work will be shown next to the work of Old Masters like Claude Lorrain and Pieter Saenredam and the optical instruments they may have used, according to Hockney. In Teyler’s unique historical context, as a laboratory of the sciences and art history, visitors will look through Hockney’s eyes at the history of art. You will also discover how he continues to find new and dynamic ways of depicting the visual world, by, for example, reversing perspective or using unconventional aids, such as the camera lucida.
Hockney’s Eye opens at Teylers Museum on 23 September. Tickets can be booked starting on 25 August via teylersmuseum.nl.
Note to the editor / Not for publication: For more information and to request a high-res image, please contact Heleen van Halsema, Marketing and Communications (hvanhalsema@teylersmuseum.nl / 00 31 (0)6 4746 0005 or 00 31 (0)23 516 09 71). Please note: strict rules apply to the use of David Hockney's images.
Image: David Hockney, Self Portrait, 22nd November 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 91,4 x 76,2 cm. © David Hockney
Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson