October 11, 2006
David Hockney Portraits
Went to a preview party of David Hockney's impressive Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I dolled up in a red printed blouse by Celia Birtwell and fought my way up the red carpet. What a battle, especially as a button on my black leather coat somehow got entwined with a button on a stained duffel coat, belonging to one of the psychotic fans eagerly waiting to get a close-up glimpse of the arriving Stars. But, I survived!
Richard Young, my old photographer from the 'Ritz Newspaper days' was judged civilised enough to be allowed inside the NPG. All the other paparazzi were hovering outside.
The Art World + its entourage - i.e. Mick Rock, Suzy Menkes (veteran fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune) + Penelope Tree etc., were drinking in a claustrophobic room outside the gallery. So, I took the opportunity of walking round David's exhibition while it was empty. What a nostalgic show! It brought back a load of old memories seeing old friends on and off the walls.
David Hockney was surrounded by admirers, including painter Allen Jones, who looks very well-preserved. 'Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all,' David pontificates. Well, all the established faces from the Art World were there all right, including Gregory Evans, Hockney's suave business manager, David Graves, Hockney's London's assistant and his wife Anne Upton, who is one of Hockney's oldest girlfriends and regular models.
I used to hang out in David Hockney's basement in Powis Terrace, Notting Hill Gate during the early Seventies, and at the show's party, I kept bumping into world-weary survivors from those crazy days. 'If only we had known how to capitalise on it then,' said Maurice Payne, David's old etcher. What's he talking about? He capitalised all right, etching for David throughout the years. Manolo Blahnik, also a regular visitor to the basement was jet-lagged. 'I did eight cities in the States, had to come back to London for one day in order to host a friend's party, then returned to the States to do more cities,' he wailed, proving he's a victim of his own success.
Terence Pepper, director and curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery gave me a copy of his glossy new book on Angus McBean. In exchange, I gave him a copy of my newly published novels, "Frantic" and "Crushed", published by Eiworth Publishing.
Soon the gallery filled up with international art tarts and their minions - they were out in droves. Also, a load of face-lifted, American art collectors gushed up to Celia Birtwell, Hockney's long-time muse. There are loads of paintings and drawings of her throughout the ages in the exhibition, including a beautiful one of herself in an Ossie Clark dress. It belongs to an unknown private collector and has never been seen in public before. A smitten art collector from Mexico was droning on to her how his life had changed since he first clapped eyes on her in a Hockney painting, while Andrew Palmer, Celia Birtwell's 'friend' looked on protectively.
Celia stood there in the centre of attention, being photographed - left, right and centre, looking serene. She was dressed in black and red, the same colours she wore in the famous Hockney double portrait of herself and her late dress designer ex-husband, Ossie Clark, also in the show. She's the best textile designer in the world, but the Art Tarts of both genders were only interested in her, as her role of Hockney's muse. It was a strange feeling walking round the gallery with her youngest son, George Clark, whom I've known since he was a baby (now running Celia's shop with his wife Bella), looking at pictures of Ossie, his late dad.
'The show is full of dead friends,' Kasmin - Hockney's old art dealer quipped, and he was right. Divine, Andy Warhol, Man Ray and W.H. Auden and co. were on the walls. But, the portraits weren't all of dead ones. There were plenty of live ones too.
Go see.
Posted by frances on October 11, 2006
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