The brilliant Joan Jonas represented the USA at Venice in 2015. The US pavilion galleries were filled with video installations, drawing, sculptures and props, which explore the fragility of nature, whilst taking on some of the qualities of a stage set.
“Hockney also began to experiment with theatricality, as in the 1963 paintings The Hypnotist, Two Friend and Two Curtains, Play within a Play and Closing Scene. This is often a literal theatricality, with curtains and staged spaces.” 1.
It is at the David Hockney retrospective at the Georges Pompidou, that I first got to see the painting The Hypnotist, a work made in the early stages of Hockney’s long career. A gold frame encompasses a green curtain, which marks the stage, the setting of the work. There are two male figures in the picture plane facing one another. The Hypnotist to the left of the image in furious concentration, hands raised and to the right a ruddy cheeked, blond and younger male in red. The chasm between them is transgressed by the concentration of The Hypnotist made visible in a white bodily form and lightning bolt which physically connects to the brilliant blue eyes of the youth. There is a suggestion in the black floor of a tilt, almost a measure or a leaning towards, in favour of the power of the hypnotist. This is emphasised by an orb form in grey, which appears to be rolling or prioritising the left side of the canvas. ‘The Hypnotist’ in bold text appears within this black field.
There is something sinister in this power relation between the older and the younger male. The red clothing of the younger almost, if not a cassock, are suggestive of the clothing worn by choir boys. The male in black appears more like a religious figure, in his uniform. A not fully articulated and ghost-like form appears to be realising itself behind the boy. The question is how powerful is the dominant male, is it power over or some sort of transference to the younger one that he is trying to achieve? That this happens on a stage has all the implications of a performance that The Hypnotist as title implies; but yet the articulation of the bodies, the older males physical gesture shows effort, whilst the younger male appears passive and receptive or powerless and immobile. Power and age stand in opposition to youth and good looks.
It is in this moment of suspense, in this particular frame of the narrative, in the non-telling and the un-known, where we are essentially left to consider the motives of the individuals that this painting really works.
1. Alan Woods, Pictures emphasising Stillness, pg 36; David Hockney, edited by Paul Melia, Manchester University Press, 1995
Where to see it:
Currently Touring as part of the David Hockney Retrospective
Tate Britain, London, 9th Feb – 29th May 2017
Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, 21st June – 23rd October 2017
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 27th November 2017 – 25th February 2018
