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Collaborating with chaos

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 28th May 2008

Andrew Lambirth talks to the artist John Hoyland about his life and work

John Hoyland dislikes being called ‘one of Britain’s leading abstract painters’. He thinks it’s lazy thinking, and over-reliance on labelling. ‘They don’t say: “Lucian Freud, leading figurative painter” — he’s just a painter. Or “Francis Bacon, leading melodramatist”.’ Mention of Bacon sends him off on a tangent, one of the digressions that make Hoyland’s conversation — along with his forthright opinions — so rewarding and enjoyable. ‘I look at Bacon’s paintings and instead of being moved by them they make me want to laugh. They’re supposed to be horrible and moving and frightening, but they’re so shrill and so theatrical. I like drama in music or painting, but not melodrama.’ And having dismissed one of the most expensive and sought-after of modern British artists, he leans back and grins. Hoyland is not too keen on auction rooms and the prices they generate. His own Sixties’ work is currently a focus of buyers’ attention, generating auction records, and he finds it rather annoying. A true artist, he is really only interested in his latest work or what he is about to do, not in the achievements of 40 years ago.

‘I think the vultures are circling a bit,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘I suppose artists’ early work always fetches more money. It can be irritating when people forget whole swathes of work, like the paintings I did in the Seventies and Eighties.’ Of course, what is needed is a full-scale Hoyland retrospective, and the Tate is the place for such a show, though under the current regime such an exhibition is unlikely. Has England so many artists of international stature that they can afford to ignore such a figure as Hoyland? Of course not, yet it seems that our museums are more interested in showing foreign artists than the home-grown variety. Meanwhile, Hoyland continues to paint in his London studio just north of Smithfield Market, and to have shows of vibrant new work. One exhibition has just finished at Beaux Arts in Cork Street, while another continues at Lemon Street Gallery in Truro until 7 June.

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