David Hockey's A Harlots Progress

A rewiew about David Hockneys A Harlots Progress

As anticipated, there was an overwhelming response from member museums to this sereis of prints. We are extremely grateful to the following individuals who formed the selection panel for the gift: Adrian George (Curator, Government Art Collection), Sarah Elson (Trustee of Contemporary Art Society and art historian) and Mary Doyle (Co-Director, Drawing Room).

The Whitworth Art Gallery has, for many years, had a significant relationship with the exhibition of works by David Hockney. In 1969, as part of the gallery’s celebration of its newly opened exhibition galleries, the Whitworth presented a large exhibition of Hockney’s prints and paintings. Included in the exhibition was the entire series of A Rake’s Progress (1961-63). The work was again exhibited at The Whitworth in 2003 as part of the ‘Editions Alecto, 1960-1981’exhibition. Thematically, the Whitworth’s collection provides a rich context for Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress as it holds the most significant collection of single sheet prints by William Hogarth in the UK outside London.

The curators see this as a valuable way into the collection for a variety of research specialisms and academic courses in the University of Manchester. When stored, the work will be accessible in the Prints and Drawings Study Room, and as part of gallery’s redevelopment plans, a new Collection Study Centre will be constructed giving even easier access to the stored collection of works on paper.

About A Rake’s Progress

A Rake’s Progress is a semi-autobiographical story about Hockney, the ‘rake’, and the down and outs of his life in New York in the early 1960’s. The format, story and numbering system is based on William Hogarth’s 1735 suite of prints of the same title. Originally Hockney’s intention was to produce 25 etchings, as a book; however this was later reduced down to 16 and printed as a portfolio in 1965 by Editions Alecto. Hogarth’s 18th century prints tell of the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, a spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bedlam.

In Hockneys’ he tells the story of arriving in New York, receiving money, dying his hair blonde, marrying an old maid, losing money, with his eventual fate not the Bedlam prison but Bedlam, the mindless masses of the ‘other people’, the only way of distinguishing the 'rake' from the other robotic figures is by a small arrow above his head, he has finally been subsumed into the uniform crowd where personal identity has disappeared.

Plaster
I have been experiencing with pouring plaster onto different surfaces to create a surface to paint on so that the mould would work as a canvas. Here is what has worked the best so far; the creases in a plastic bag, duct tape and bubble wrap.

Costume design for a Rakes Progress

Over the holidays I have been working on taming my drawings and doing some mood boards for costume. At the same time these mood boards have been practise for my fmp; I am not going to do costume design firm my fmp but the drawings and the layout of the boards help with showing other people my ideas in an interesting way.

Link to Andrew Logans website

http://alternativemissworld.co.uk/#/history/amw1972

Alternative Miss World

Andrew Logans Alternative Miss World

What is the Alternative Miss World?Started in 1972, The Alternative Miss World is not about beauty - it's about transformation - and when it comes to costume absolutely anything goes. Like the real Miss World there is day wear, swim-wear and evening wear and the all important personality interview! But Logan refuses to let anyone rehearse, and anything can - and often does - happen.It's about creative free-reign, about the ordinary becoming extraordinary. Contestants over the years have been famous and infamous, celebrated and unknown, a parade of freaks, fops, show offs and drag queens... including Andrew's many friends and family! The climax is a tear stained coronation with Logan's dazzling Crown Jewels made of broken mirrors.

Just a few quick design ideas for the Rakes Progress poster project. I wanted to do my poster around the prostitutes in the gambling scene.

Reflecting on todays textiles session

In todays textiles session I worked on doing more design ideas for Sarah in a Rakes Progress, I started off by working really expreimentally using collarge and making them look visually interesting. I was using things such as parcel paper, news paper, bits from magazines, foil, sitching on the sewing machine, cartridge paper and tissue paper. After experimenting with drawing over the paper I started drawing over fabric or drawing an eighteenth century dress then putting the fabric diagonally down it to show what the dress would be made out of.
For the second half of todays session I decided to work on a mood board and putting loads of diffent designs together, i worked in permanent marker of magazine cut outs of models so i drew the dress over what the model was already wearing, this worked because it shows that some styles have stayed and its both moder and contemporary.
Next lesson on friday i need to refine my fashion drawings and choose a design and do some variations of that design.
I am also going to try to draw the dresses on people instead of mannequins.

Kelly Moore.
I stumbled across this artist whilst doing some reasearch into life drawing, this isnt really relivent to my work at the moment but I really love how his work is so raw and free. He is a self taught expressionist artist and has had no formal training. He uses collarge in his work which gives it a differnent effect. I like that he paints outside of the line that he has already drawn and that you can see the canvas/wood underneath the paint.

In my life drawing sessions I have noticed that I avoid drawing the hands and feet. I tent to just draw the legs and the torso and then just pencil in the hands and feet lightly and then smudge the background. I need to work on drawing the hands and feet because it is very noticeable that there is something missing. This also applies to my fashion drawings in textiles and costume.

Here are a few tutorials that i found on you tube and have watched. Next life drawing session I am going to focus on drawing the hands and feet in a simple way and then add shading once ive mastered the shape and then hopefully my drawings will start to look better and fuller.

How to draw feet

In the end I want some of the worksheets to look life this.
I am also going to time myself as I'm drawing.

Documentary on Alternative Miss World

Contestants

A link onto the guardians website for Alternative Miss World

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/2009/may/01/alternative-miss-world-andrew-logan

Large Rakes Progress painting

As a group we did a large mixed media painting of a Rakes Progress showing the gambling scene. The painting is made up of charcoal on the background to make it dark, to make the background dark we used words such as "disease" and "sex" over and over again to build up the darkness. To get the silhouette of the characters we drew around each other and also made the costume for Tom so that he was the focal point of the piece. Objects such as string were added for the harp and things for the frames of the paintings. The paintings are of Roman emperors, one is perfect and the others have their faces slashed so you cant see them properly. We highlighted the emperor with a golden frame which does stand out on the painting. 

 I took photographs of the painting and edited it in photoshop. I wanted the image to seem surreal and like it was all just a bad dream to Tom when really it was his life. I distorted the image by adding waves and making the figures look ghostly but i think it would have worked better if I had took the yellow tones out first.

The image in negative so that the figures are in black. This is supposed to suggest that they are up to no good and that there is a certain darkness about them. I like the odd spots of blue as they stand out.

Close up of a section of the painting. We used glitter in some of the paint because the glitter represents the cheap nature of the scene as they are in a brothel surrounded by prostitutes and they are gambling. I wish I had done an image about the fire that is starting in the background but none of the characters seem to notice.

Life drawing.

At first it took me quite a while to get back into doing life drawing, I found it difficult to get all of the models body into perportion but after doing a few sessions I am finding it easier and I think I have improved compared to last year. I have toned down my drawings so they are not as expressive and they are more controlled. I am also working on defining the shadow and light and dark areas on the body.

This was my first drawing of todsays session, I drew the models legs too short so I knew that this is what I needed to work on with my next drawing. I wanted the attention to be on the model and I didnt want to draw the chair but if I did it would have looked like she was floating.

Todays second drawing. I tried working on getting the tones to stand out more.