Yahoo News Russell Tovey Cocurates David Hockney Exhibition in Shanghai
On Tuesday, the British actor and curator Russell Tovey landed in China to unveil his first project in the country, which opened the next day at Shanghai‘s Modern Art Museum.
Titled “David Hockney: Paper Trails,” the exhibition examines the British artist’s works on paper and prints through 129 artworks, mapping out the emotive terrain of the 86-year-old artist’s dynamic and vivid compositions.
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Curated by Tovey and Shai Baitel, the Modern Art Museum’s artistic director, the exhibition is open to the public until Sept. 10.
For Tovey, curating is a process of embracing an inner geek.
“I’m not an academic, so the way I approach art is through passion and love,” said Tovey, who also tackles topics on his popular podcast “Talk Art,” which he launched with curator Robert Diament in 2018.
“It’s about looking and looking again. It’s about how Hockney revisits the same subject, be it friends, be it family, be it a chair, or a vase, or flowers. He revisits it because he’s not exhausted by it,” he added. “I was really able to discover and learn about his work like I did as a kid.”
For Tovey, the most striking part of the exhibition features Hockney’s portraits of Celia Birtwell, a British textile designer who was Hockney’s close friend and longtime sitter and the former wife of famed British designer Ossie Clark.
“This is a love letter to their connection, their friendship. We’re seeing it from really early on to almost the present day and how her clothing has changed over the years. Celia is a fabric designer, and you see how she really cares about design and fashion and we can follow how that evolves over time,” Tovey said.
“It makes me consider my friendships, friends I’ve had for years, and hopefully when I get to his age, if I get to that age, that I will look back and see all the friendships that I had and how important they were to me,” Tovey added.
Talking about why the exhibition highlighted works on paper and prints, Baitel said it was a way to pay tribute to China’s long tradition of printmaking.
“Printmaking started here and was mastered here, and Mr. Hockney was a master of works on paper,” Baitel said.
“It was a proper context, especially given his visit to China in 1981 and his ‘China Diary,’ which was published in 1985,” Baitel said. “It depicted various landmarks, landscapes, architecture, among other elements that impacted his art and art making.”
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