AT the Hayward Gallery, the exhibition of Howard Hodgkin's paintings 1975-1996 is now into its final week, and has been hugely successful if the press notices are to be taken as final.
Hodgkin is now probably better known outside Britain than even Lucian Freud, since Freud has a very limited reputation in America, whereas Hodgkin (of course, a younger artist) has a firm footing there. He is, at the moment, probably England's leading entry in the international stakes.
After a long period in which it remained largely anchored in its own "tonal" tradition, English art - like the English public - is now enamoured with strong colour. And Hodgkin, like Malcolm Morley and John Hoyland, is an Englishman in reaction against the drabness of his homeland, who embraces exoticism and the lush colours of warmer climes - the Mediterranean and Aegean, the Tropics, even the South Seas. Hodgkin does not go as far in this as the other two, and he is closer to French art than they are, though like them he has his roots in the 1960s and in English Pop.
I would sooner see 20 to 30 chosen pictures of his than the large number hung in the Hayward and I like him in a small or smallish format better than in a large one; but nobody can seriously question that Hodgkin is a fine, individual painter, refined and intelligent, who fully deserves his current standing.
Whereas the works by Frank Auerbach at the Marlborough Gallery (which ended last week) left me with a feeling of a man marking time. For at least 30 years Auerbach has been in the front rank of British painters (though he was born, of course, in Germany) and in his way he is as rich a colourist as Hodgkin. Yet the female heads and grotty London streets which dominate his subject matter begin to look repetitive and Auerbach (much respected by his fellow-painters both as man and artist), seems in urgent need of self-renewal.
The Purdy Hicks Gallery on Bankside (easiest found by taking the tube to Blackfriars, then crossing the river and going hard left) is mounting paintings and graphic works by Hughie O'Donoghue. The impressive carborundum prints are similar to those on view in the Rubicon Gallery in Dublin; most of the large paintings are based on the same subject matter - the experiences of O'Donoghue's father as a despatch rider in France in 1940. Typically, they are heavyweight, brooding works, which demand time and contemplation, but richly repay it (until March 1st).
THE work of another, but very different, Irish artist can be viewed at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street - Patrick O'Reilly, who has recently been seen in the Hugh Lane Gallery and during Galway Arts Week. As before, I am much impressed by his sheer energy, by the fertility of his ideas, and by the level of technical (not to say technological) skill he employs. I am told, ex-officio, that the exhibition has made a good impression on London opinion.
