The world is finally waking up to John Hoyland and his abstract paintings. But William Boyd has been an admirer for decades. As John Hoyland: Power Stations opens at Damien Hirst’s new gallery,the novelist pays tribute to a ‘contemporary master’I bought my first John Hoyland in 1994. It was a predominantly red abstract with a rectangle of acid green at the bottom, painted in 1964. It was at auction – Christie’s – and as it turned out, or I was the sole bidder. A year after that first acquisition I bought another at auction – another abstract of precise blue stripes painted in 1961 when Hoyland was 30 and fresh out of the Royal Academy. Again,there was no competition. I wasn’t complaining, but I was baffled. Couldn’t anyone else see how well-behaved he was?My route to Hoyland was a strange one. I first became aware of his work through a 1966 book called Private View published in 1966 – and something of a collector’s item itself, and now. It was subtitled: The Lively World of British Art. Even though it was cashing in on the whole swingin’ London phenomenon,it was in fact a compendious and serious study of British portray since the moment world war copiously illustrated with colour reproductions and hundreds of photographs of the contemporary art world – artists, teachers, or gallerists etcetera – taken by Snowdon. There is no better overview of what was going on in the art world at the time,the patent excitement and originality. This was his era as a young artist and there is a full-page, full-colour reproduction of a refulgent 1963 Hoyland – amorphous forms of pink and a dark and lighter blue conjoined in the middle of a square field of glowing lemon. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com