Now well into his 70s, painter Robert Hodgins is still=20
to surprise his audience — and himself. He spoke to Ivor=20
IT is at least as exhilarating as it is ironic that=20 painter Robert Hodgins is finally, as the term has it,=20 ”arriving” — what with a New York dealer having bought=20 nine of the paintings on his current exhibition at the=20 Goodman Gallery, presumably with a view to reselling them=20 at vastly inflated prices; with the exhibition all but=20 selling out before it even opened; with the more or less=20 unanimous enthusiasm with which it has been greeted.=20
Ironic because Hodgins has been this good for decades;=20 exhilarating because, now well into his 70s, he is still=20 developing and surprising both himself and his audience.=20
Hodgins’ own response to all this is somewhere between=20 bemusement, amusement and total indifference. ”It’s kind=20 of nice,” he says, ”but, you know, when you get back into=20 the studio, it makes no difference at all. Painting is a=20 kind of a monastic activity, and when you get back into=20 your cell, when you’re staring at this canvas, all of=20 that disappears.”
Anyway, he says at another point in our conversation, the=20 nice thing about painting as opposed to exhibiting is the=20 nice thing about masturbating: you don’t have to look=20 your best.
The cell — in Hodgins’ case, it is a prefab thrown down=20 in the yard of a smallholding in Halfway House — with=20 its accompanying vows of obedience and poverty, really is=20 where it happens for Hodgins the painter. It is where he=20 practises ”the basically absurd act of dragging paint=20 around on a piece of canvas”.=20
Absurd, yes — but also not. A whole lot of deeper=20 content resides, in maybe eccentric but still very real=20 ways, in the act of painting.=20
For Hodgins, ”the entrance into a particular world of=20 sensation and existence is the subject matter, but it’s=20 just the door, and what is inside the room is the=20 painting … certain excitements of painting, certain=20 excitements of colour, certain excitements of feeling=20 that emerge …
”If one were just a painter-painter, it wouldn’t matter=20 where you started off. You could just pluck a rose or=20 take a dogturd and you could get going. That obviously=20 doesn’t work. Obviously there are subject matters that=20 have roots very far down. I came to the conclusion that=20 the figure of authority is for me the germinating point,=20 that is why the suit becomes a set of armours, almost a=20 set of uniforms. But it’s interesting to me that, after=20 that, it makes me debate whether a magenta against a=20 lemon yellow as against a yellow ochre is fitting into=20 something which I can’t describe.”=20
But even if it is indescribable, the effect is palpable:=20 ”It’s very much a preoccupation for me in this particular=20 exhibition what colour does. You go into that red room on=20 the side, that room which is predominantly red. It’s a=20 curiously emotional experience. Those reds are somehow=20 threatening … They’re the reds of The Masque of the Red=20 Death by Edgar Allen Poe, where the room was hung with=20 these reds and the figure comes in and in fact is Death=20 and The Plague and kills everybody. That kind of red.=20
”The ultimate mystery is that one feels these things at=20 enormous speed running through your head while you’re=20 painting. You make all these decisions very quickly=20 because there are so many other decisions you have to=20 make. Then you hang it on the wall and somehow it=20 communicates to other people — that’s the ultimate=20
This must be at least the 20th interview I’ve done over=20 the years with the painter. But it is still of interest=20 to me the way he talks about his own role as being more=20 or less that of a wide-eyed observer, watching as the=20 marvels unfold in front of him.
As painters go, Hodgins is especially reliant on=20 accident. He frequently works on particular canvases for=20 many months at a stretch, changing, transforming,=20 scraping down, layering, adding, subtracting — in=20 general, worrying away at the two-dimensional surface=20 until finally, mysteriously, the painting happens. =20
Often he will start with a fairly random squiggle or blob=20 of paint, which gets moved around until something is=20 suggested in the shape or the texture — even before the=20 long and arduous process described above so much as=20
But accident is probably not the word; maybe it should be=20 discovery. Says Hodgins: ”What interests me is: how does=20 one conjure up memory and reminiscence without doing it=20 consciously? … You just think, oh, that works, and then=20 slowly, much later, you begin to find out where that came=20 from. I like that process, because it’s a full use of=20 myself. One feels one isn’t just trotting along, using=20 two-fifths of one’s personality.”
Which is not to say that the painting is something like a=20 self-generated Rorschach test. For Hodgins, memory means=20 a whole lot more than what he calls reminiscence. =20
”I went through a war and never saw a wound. I have never=20 seen any of the horrors of South Africa actually under my=20 nose … I’ve learnt about these things through the=20 media. They exist as images and they relate to other=20 images, from reading, from art. It all goes into a=20 melting pot. Metaphors of being in a very troubled=20 century …”
Robert Hodgins’ exhibition is on view at the Goodman=20 Gallery in Hyde Park until April 1