David Hockney’s Blue Guitar No1, 1976 © David Hockney, made by Dovecot Studios (detail)
Aberdeen Art Gallery is home to a visual feast of fashion and fine art at the moment with the special exhibition Artist Textiles – Picasso to Warhol. The vibrant and colourful exhibition explores how giants of modern art adapted their work into fabrics for fashion and home furnishings.
Artist Textiles showcases works by celebrated artists of the 20th century including Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Sonia Delaunay. To coincide with this stunning exhibition, a tapestry of David Hockney’s Blue Guitar No 1 has gone on display at the Gallery. Hockney (born Bradford, 1937) is considered to be one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was an important contributor to the Pop Art movement of the 1960s.
View of the tapestry inspired by David Hockney’s Blue Guitar No1, 1976 © David Hockney, made by Dovecot Studios, on display at Aberdeen Art Gallery
The tapestry is a woven translation of Hockney’s 1976 portfolio of 20 etchings entitled Blue Guitar. These were inspired by the 1936 poem, The Man with the Blue Guitar, by American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, which itself had been inspired by a 1903 painting by Pablo Picasso called The Old Guitarist. Hockney was a great admirer of Picasso, and filled his etchings with references to the master, both in terms of imagery and style.
The tapestry echoes the colours, quality and feel of Hockney’s etchings, with motifs including landscape, still-life, and portraits against a neutral background. Unlike the work in the Artist Textiles exhibition, it was never intended for mass reproduction but blurs the line between fine and applied art. It was woven at the Edinburgh Tapestry Company’s Dovecot Studios. Since the 1960s Dovecot Studios have translated the works of many famous artists, including Eduardo Paolozzi, Elizabeth Blackadder and David Hockney, all of whom are represented in Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums’ collection. The large metal sculpture, Gexhi by Eduardo Paolozzi, (pictured) is on display in Gallery 1 and some of his fabrics are included in the Artist Textiles exhibition.
View of the tapestry inspired by David Hockney’s Blue Guitar No1, 1976 © David Hockney, made by Dovecot Studios, on display at Aberdeen Art Gallery
