Another good Yorkshireman gone. I invited him to speak to the Annual Dinner of the Isle of Wight Labour Party - when we still had these things; wish we still had. We'd endured difficult times, and I wanted the boost which he would give to us: and he did.... I never expected him to accept our invitation, but - he and his then wife turned up and spoke to us, enabled by a bottle or two; it made a great deal of difference, as he must have known it would. It put us back in the centre of the Labour movement, where we'd always belonged; and our vote clambered upwards, through difficult but at least less impossible times: he knew that the future did not lie with revolutionary slogans and impossible demands. God knows we've slumped back again since then: but we'd never have made the progress we did in subsequent years but for the support of Roy Hattersley and Sir Gerald Kaufman - who also went out of his way to re-establish our reputation as a non-revolutionary but still socialist party. I could only wish that our politicians these days had their intelligence, articulacy, realism - and approachability.
The great David Hockney and Roy Hattersely were very different people; but both of them inspired me in their very different ways, and both are a great loss - the one to art, the other to our politics. And Gawd bless the both of them.
I posted this on the Guardian's comment page, and shared it with Painters Online: it's not that I think any words of mine deserve repetition, but it's as near as I can come to a memorial tribute to the greatest British artist of our time.
Well, I knew it had to happen - he fought back from a stroke a few years ago, but physically had been on a long decline; as an artist however, he could still surprise you (and how he revelled in it, quietly chuckling away as he took a long drag on a cigarette). What I valued about him was that he was never obedient - to rules of painting, societal expectations, received opinion; but he didn't break rules just for the sake of breaking them: he was never so predictable. Though he used modern methods and equipment, he still valued traditional techniques, as witness his comment that acrylic paint is often at its best when used for glazing, the application of transparent colours over opacity - an ancient technique, one facilitated by the fast-drying medium.
I don't know that his views on the camera obscura really add up, particularly when applied to Vermeer - but his pursuit of that opinion indicated his endless curiosity; and his courage in expressing it. I'm not sure that the book on which he collaborated added much to art history, since by definition its claims could not be proved. The point is, though, that in the end it doesn't matter - artists use tools of all kinds, are fully entitled to, and always have - the point lies in what they do with them; and as he tried everything he could lay hands on, he would have scorned the idea that some expressed at the time that this would have been "cheating", or that it in any way detracted from the reputation of artists who may have benefited from extraneous aids.
We had a famiily get together to celebrate my sister-in-law's - shouldn't that be sister's-in-law? - 75th birthday, and mine, which followed it.
I was presented with painted birthday cards from my great niece, and great nephew - as I'm old, I forget ages; but I think something along the lines of 13, and 9. Probably completely wrong. However, they're clearly bent on artistic careers; or at least I hope they are, at least in the sense that they derive as much pleasure and consolation from art as I have for the last 60-plus years.
So here we are: great nephew's work on the left, great niece's on the right.
