Hockney Underground
You either like it or you don’t.
A poster by world-renowned artist David Hockney at the Piccadilly Circus tube stop in London is controversial. When asked by the City of London to participate in a campaign to invigorate tourism post-pandemic, Hockney contributed a work inspired by the traditional design used to identify stations throughout the London Underground. (photo, below) The Hockney work has been criticized as too child-like and “phoned in.” Moreover, criticism has been leveled because Hockney was invited at all. Some local, and especially struggling, artists feel they could have benefitted by Hockney’s absence from the project.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, proclaimed the Hockney work—produced on the artist’s iPad—to be “brilliant.” A spokesman for the Mayor of London’s office said: “David Hockney did his new tube art completely for free, and it was commissioned around his new Royal Academy Exhibition.”
And maybe not all is lost for local artists. Impressed by the quality of submissions and the acreage of space provided by the Underground’s walls, the same spokesperson said “Supporting creative freelancers, artists and performers will be at the heart of ‘Let’s Do London’ as it continues to develop throughout the year.”
As for Hockney’s Piccadilly Circus interpretation, for what it’s worth, I love how it makes me laugh. There’s something about human frailty and the courage of improvisation in that sunken “s.”
(Quotations taken from an article by Max McLean in the Evening Standard.)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.