Gary Hume (born 1962) first found acclaim in London in the late 1980s, when his bold paintings of hospital doors, rendered at life-size scale in high-gloss hardware store paints on aluminum panels, drew much attention and ushered Hume into the ranks of the Young British Artists. Twenty years later, Yardwork features recent paintings and sculpture completed by Gary Hume in his upstate New York studio. The pictures explore familiar themes in Hume's work, including flowers, birds, doors and female figures. In the new work, however, the doors are now barn doors, as opposed to the hospital doors found in his earlier works; the blackbirds, roses and daisies are all things he sees from his window, not images drawn from books or media. Yardwork includes an essay by Dave Hickey that places Hume's paintings in the context of a group of artists the author names abstractionists of daily life.
"We can contribute more to the discourse of art by considering the political benefits of Gary Hume's paintings. They do what art once did: they keep us high-hearted and off-kilter. In their presences we must drop down out of the global-digital ozone. If our egos can stand the diminution, we can think for a moment about paintings and roses--about a global culture that resides not in our heads but beneath our feet, from whence it spreads away. In this mode we can learn to appreciate objects that don't reassure us with a brand-name look, that don't conform to some iconic shape in the platonic array of genteel styles. If we can get smaller and then smaller still and consequently more lifelike, we may stop caring when someone asks us, 'Who painted those funky ponytails?'"
Dave Hickey, excerpted from Will Heather Be There? in "Yardwork, from which this image is also reproduced.
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FROM THE BOOK
"In Gary Hume's painting, particularly, there is a 'shade tree' aesthetic at work--a rough-hewn democracy that legislates an avuncular kind of leveling. The mighty are graded down a peg or two and the vulgar are graded up. Like Warhol, Hume seems dedicated to getting it exactly wrong, albeit in a very British manner. Everything he paints undergoes a sly class-conscious adjustment. The gridded deployment of shapes and colors in Hume's barn door paintings, you will note, fulfill all the requirements of high-style postwar American abstraction, except for the fact that they depict barn doors this is hard to ignore, and this soupcon of bathos keeps gravitas at bay. On the reverse track, Hume's paintings of roses and bouquets embraces a format that has been in high demand by little old ladies in brick cottages for decades. In Hume's paintings this format is rendered inappropriate for cottages by non-verisimilar color, a grayed-down atmosphere, and the nuance of modern wit. What all this means, of course, is that the art world, for once, has elected a real democrat. Whenever possible we want him to be there at the party, to shine without shining."
Dave Hickey, excerpted from Will Heather Be There? in "Yardwork.
FORMAT: Hbk, 10 x 12.25 in. / 60 pgs /29 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $47.5 GBP £30.00 ISBN: 9781880146538 PUBLISHER: Matthew Marks Gallery AVAILABLE: 10/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery. Text by Dave Hickey.
Gary Hume (born 1962) first found acclaim in London in the late 1980s, when his bold paintings of hospital doors, rendered at life-size scale in high-gloss hardware store paints on aluminum panels, drew much attention and ushered Hume into the ranks of the Young British Artists. Twenty years later, Yardwork features recent paintings and sculpture completed by Gary Hume in his upstate New York studio. The pictures explore familiar themes in Hume's work, including flowers, birds, doors and female figures. In the new work, however, the doors are now barn doors, as opposed to the hospital doors found in his earlier works; the blackbirds, roses and daisies are all things he sees from his window, not images drawn from books or media. Yardwork includes an essay by Dave Hickey that places Hume's paintings in the context of a group of artists the author names abstractionists of daily life.
