Reasons not to see David Hockney: Bigger & Closer

I've been to every David Hockney exhibition in London for many years - and reviewed many of them over the last two decades - but I will NOT be going to the David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) lightshow xtravaganza at the Lightroom at Kings Cross.  

• First, because I've seen virtually all the original artwork first hand 
• Second because I'm NOT a fan of huge immersive "experiences"; and 
• Third, although I'm OK with a dark room and a video playing during an exhibition: 
• and I always watch those all the way through
• and I loved Hockney's videos of changing seasons in the Yorkshire Wolds. 
• But I'm not a teenager....
• and I don't want to spoil my memories of "the real thing".

However if you want to get a taste of what it looks like and what other people think see below.

This is a video of some of the 50 minute experience which I found on Facebook (Yorkshire Post)

The Reviews of David Hockney: Bigger and Closer

Seems like I'm not alone in NOT wanting a sensory overload in a crowded room.... I've not seen so many 2 star reviews of anybody for quite a while! 
(If you want to see my reviews of his 'real exhibitions - see the end)

The shorthand conclusion seems to me to be that if this were to be the last show of his work in his lifetime - this would be a major disappointment.

Two star reviews

Gigantic projections of the painter’s work fill entire walls in this immersive audiovisual extravaganza – but there is no real art to catch the memory or move the soul The Guardian

• David Hockney: Bigger and Closer review – an overwhelming blast of passionless kitsch | Jonathan Jones | The Guardian
• David Hockney at the Lightroom review: full immersion into the artist’s career produces mixed results | Evening Standard
• David Hockney: ‘Bigger & Closer’ | Time Out

there’s too much that disappoints and irritates. You don’t really get a feel for much of the best of his work. There are none of the marvellous paintings from the very early 1960s, the exquisite drawings of the 1970s. There’s limited art history, too, so there’s no explanation as to why so much of what we’re looking at resembles the work of Picasso. Neither do you get a feel for the materiality of the media he extols; somehow the luscious beauty of paint, its very stuffness, gets entirely lost when blown up this big. Evening Standard

Non-starred reviews

• I don’t need a lightshow to immerse myself in art | Jan Dalley | Financial Times
• ‘Affecting’ or ‘Passionless’? Critics Are Divided on David Hockney’s Newly Opened Immersive Light Show | artnet news
• David Hockney: Bigger & Closer, Lightroom, review: Colossal sensory overload | Florence Hallet | i

David Hockney at Lightroom

Photo by Justin Sutcliffe

More about David Hockney

I've written about David Hockney on a number of occasions on this blog. You can READ my posts BELOW - they're organised backwards by years. Plus see images of a lot of his artwork in proper exhibitions!

2019

• David Hockney: Drawing from Life (2020) at the National Portrait Gallery (May 2019)

2018

• Hockney adds another way of making art to his portfolio (September 2018)

2017: 

• About David Hockney and Watercolour

David Hockney Midsummer: East Yorkshire 2004 (watercolours)

2016: 

• A biography of Hockney on iPlayer first shown by the BBC in 2015 (and repeated in 2016)

2014

• Hockney, Printmaker (Review #2) - The Etchings - about Hockney Printmaker at Dulwich Picture Gallery
• The Arrival of Spring - David Hockney's latest exhibition - 85% of the digital drawings in The Arrival of Spring had been sold before this exhibition opened at Annely Juda Fine Art.
• Hockney is bigger than Van Gogh!- about my final and fourth visit to A Bigger Picture on the final night

2012

• David Hockney on sitting for Lucian Freud
• Review: David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture

Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 & 29 November 2006, 2006 by David Hockney
Oil on 6 canvases, 182 x 366 cm
Courtesy of the Artist | Copyright David Hockney | Photo credit: Richard Schmidt

• 22nd January 2012 - Who's made a mark this week? "This post this week has rather a slant towards Hockney, digital art on an iPad and pastels - which pretty much reflects my week."
• 15th January 2012 - Who's made a mark this week? This has a lot of references to the publicity overdrive for the A Bigger Picture exhibition at the RA and includes references to interesting articles

2009 

• David Hockney - recent exhibitions - about various recent exhibitions in various countries
• Review: David Hockney - A Bigger Picture - about Bruno Wollheim's film David Hockney - A Bigger Picture
• David Hockney "15 sketchbooks" DVD - a further update

2007

• Turner Watercolours with Hockney and Shirley - about Hockney's curation of BP Summer Exhibition: Hockney on Turner Watercolours (11 June 2007 – 3 February 2008).
• Drawing, tea and DVDs at the National Portrait Gallery - another long slow look at the at the David Hockney Portraits exhibition before it closed

2006

• David Hockney: Fifteen Sketchbooks 2002-2003 - Update on DVD availability

• David Hockney and Shirley - sharing art and sketchbooks - about the David Hockney Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and his Fifteen Sketchbooks completed in 2002-3003
• Two London exhibitions for David Hockney about 
• "David Hockney Portraits - Life Love Art" at the NPG and 
• "A Year in Yorkshire" in at the Annely Juda Gallery

and finally for other fans this is the David Hockney website - http://www.hockneypictures.com/home.htm