Damien James

When David Hockney isn’t turning the art world on its ear with his camera lucida theory, which relocates the heart of the Renaissance from Italy to the Netherlands, or reinventing his own art by bounding medium after medium, he seems to be talking to Lawrence Weschler, Pulitzer-nominated author and transcendent historian/thinker, whose forthcoming book entitled “True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney,” will be discussed by both men at MCA on July 8. Hockney also celebrates an exhibition of his new landscape paintings at The Arts Club of Chicago, “Looking at Woldgate Woods,” running through July 18. That Hockney and Weschler are so accomplished in their respective fields, and that their fields intersect in so many compelling ways, should create an electric evening of conversation. Hockney’s genius as an artist and his seemingly total recall of the minutiae of all published art history folds perfectly into Wechsler’s own encyclopedic knowledge, furthered by Wechsler’s uncanny eye for the “convergences” that unite past and present. It was his writing for the New Yorker in 2000 that brought the world’s attention to Hockney’s controversial and highly criticized theory about the techniques of the old masters, and the two have been continuing the dialogue ever since.

David Hockney in conversation with Lawrence Weschler, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago, (312)661-1028, ext. 36. July 8 at 7:30pm. $20.

(2008-07-01)

Also by Damien James

Tip of the Week
At first glance, Jeff Abell’s new work at Vespine Gallery looks like simply rendered watercolor washes with red, blue, purple and orange hues melting the air around various strangely familiar male bodies. Closer inspection reveals that they aren’t paintings at all, but inkjet transfers
(2008-06-10)

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