Life and Coincidence
A recent article (link below) about David Hockney
quoted his reflections on painting as being an
"old man's art".
David Hockney says he’ll keep on painting into his 80s
and may well have
his greatest work ahead of him.
“Painting is an old man’s art.
I told Lucian Freud that a long time
ago.
I think it is, actually. It means it’s an accumulation of things.”
Further along in the comments section
references were made to the Japanese artist Hokusai.
Hokusai, on his death-bed at the age of 87 said
"If only Heaven will
give me just another ten years...
Just another five more years, then I
could become a real painter."
and this quote
"I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works
that won
some reputation,
but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy
of attention.
At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds
and beasts,
insects and fish, and of the way plants grow.
If I go on
trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am
eighty-six,
so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential
nature.
At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine
understanding of them,
while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more
I
will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke
I paint
will be alive.
May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to
prove that this is no lie.”
Hokusai must the source
for the unidentified artist
in Ester Freud's book.
(earlier post).
But this whole discussion prompts
an examination of the work of older artists.
A thought to cheer me
as I stiffly descend the stairs
on a cold winter morning!
Matisse
"Matisse,
on the other hand,
soared in his last creations of cut-up coloured
papers,
doing some of his best work in an entirely new medium. "
